Cold knowledge | These four types of block explosions are closely related to your income

1. Normal block

In addition to the block reward (coinbase), there are also fees paid to miners for sending transactions due to packaging transactions. Generally, the more congested the network is, the higher the miner fee income will be.

The Ethereum block contains normal blocks of transactions, of which 2ETH is the coinbase and the extra amount is the mining fee.

2. Empty Block

The mining pool generates blocks normally, but the packaged block only contains one transaction for the block reward, and the income is only the block reward.

The above picture shows an empty block with a Bitcoin block height of 587,605 and a transaction number of 1. This block can only get a block reward of 12.5 BTC.

3. Orphan Blocks

The miners performed the calculation work normally, but after the mining pool submitted the block, the block was not recognized by the network (it may not be the longest chain).

The main reasons for orphan blocks are: if two blocks are mined in a very short period of time, one of the two blocks will become an orphan block according to the principle of recognizing the longest chain; it is also possible that the mining pool cannot broadcast the block in time due to network delays or poor node performance when broadcasting the block.

The Bitcoin network does not recognize orphan blocks, so mining pools cannot get orphan block benefits. However, since the responsibility for orphan blocks mainly lies with the mining pool, the mainstream Bitcoin mining pools currently bear the loss of orphan blocks themselves. Miners can get rewards as long as they submit shares.

4. Uncle Blocks

A unique type of block explosion in the Ethereum network. Generally, the shorter the block generation time, the higher the orphan block rate.

In fact, uncle blocks are also a type of orphan blocks, but Ethereum's GHOST protocol stipulates that the block that discovers the uncle block must also receive revenue.

So in fact, the network and technical strength of the mining pool determines the number of uncle blocks.

Block Types and Miner Revenue

Remark:

• “Proportional” means that the more blocks of this type are discovered, the higher the miner’s income will be.

• "Inversely proportional" means that the more blocks of this type are discovered, the lower the miner's income.

• “Irrelevant” means that the number of blocks of this type has nothing to do with the miner’s income.

It can be seen from the above figure that the loss of orphan blocks is borne by the mining pool, while the loss of uncle blocks is borne by the miners.

They are both orphan blocks, so why are uncle blocks so good? Or is it that the mining pool is evading some of its responsibilities? This is worth pondering!

Sir’s dream has always been to open a mining pool. After calculating the risk of orphan blocks, he decided that mining is the safest option.