All About Ethereum - Uncles - YouTube

Hello and welcome to AltcoinXP, my name is anthony and today I'm talking all about ethereum

Uncles

This is gonna be a complicated one, so bear with me.

Uncles are Ethereum's equivalent to Bitcoin's Orphan blocks.

In order to understand uncles, we must first understand orphans.

Let's draw it out.

In a blockchain based peer to peer network, we have all of these miners connected to each

other, trying to solve a block.

When one miner solves a block, he relays that information across the entire network.

However, as we can see.

Not all miners hear about this newly found block at the same time

Therefore, this miner will continue mining the previous block

This opens up the possibility of two or more miners being able to solve a block at the

same block height.

When this happens, the bitcoin network forks, then comes back together when the next block

is solved.

Because of Bitcoin's 10minute block time, a block has 10 minutes to relay across the

network.

So these orphans only happen 4-5 times per week

We wanna keep orphans from happening because it delays confirmation time to at least 20minutes.

As a 2nd block needs to be solved before verification of the previous blocks can happen.

�. But Ethereum wanted block times faster than

10 minutes.

How did they accomplish this without increasing orphan rates?

Well, they did this by giving the orphan block miners a rewards and renaming those blocks

to uncles.

This to increase network security.

Because miner's wouldn't mine Ethereum if there was a large chance their block would

be orphaned as they wouldn't get a reward for their work.

�.

The protocol behind this is called GHOST, or �greedy heaviest observed subtree�

As far as I know, GHOST wasn't invented by anyone in ethereum.

It was introduced in 2013 by a couple of Bitcoin researchers.

Then the Ethereum devs modified this protocol to fit their needs.

...

So, why the name change from Orphans to uncles?

Well, in bitcoin, orphaned blocks eventually get left behind...

making them orphans.

However in Etheruem, these blocks are not left behind but instead included in the next

7 blocks.

Because they are still part of the block family tree, they are considered uncles.

They came from the same family but aren't directly part of the new family.

...

Now, I said that these uncles are included in the next 7 blocks and that rewards are

given to miners who find uncles

So what does the reward structure look like.

Well, here's a little something I made to breaking it down.

The miner who's block is included in the main chain gets a block reward of 5 ether.

The miner who mined the uncle gets 4.375 ether.

Each uncle the main block miner includes with his new block gets 0.15625 Ether

So if a miner includes all 7 possible uncles, he gets an additional 1.09375 Ether

Plus all transaction fees.

�.

This also makes forking a bit more difficult with Ethereum than Bitcoin.

With Bitcoin, the network chooses to follow the longest chain of blocks.

However, Ethereum follows the chain with the most Uncles.

Actually, I'm not sure if it follows the chain with the most uncles or the block with the

most uncles.

That's something to think about.

Either way, This is what's meant as following the heaviest chain...

Or.

The H in the GHOST Protocol.

�

So that's basically it.

That's all about Ethereum Uncles are and why they exist.

They allow Ethereum to have block times well under 20 seconds.

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Ending Screen black screen.

As you can see in my p2p diagram

If this node solves a block at the same time as this node, at some point both correct blocks

will reach a node and that node needs to decide which one to keep and which to throw away.

This happens sometimes with bitcoin's 10 minute blocks, but it happens way more with ethereum's

15 second block time.

When this happens, one of the block has to get orphaned, because we can't have two solutions

accepted for the same block.

If that happens, the network forks.

a way to reward miners who do not have low ping connections

decrease centralization by increasing profit chances of high ping nodes

Uncles are blocks that didn't make it in time.

Say two people found the correct solution to a block

The person with the lower ping would win the block reward, because he would be know as

the first person to have found the block, due to his lower ping

Ethereum wanted faster block times, When doing so you increase the risk of orphaned blocks

Because the faster blocks are found, the more chance someone else found it at the same time

as you.

This is what orphan blocks are

In ethereum these orphan blocks are a little different, because miners are still paid for

the orphaned blocks they find

This is done to increase the security of the network

Miners are more likely to stay mining if they are paid even though they aren't the official

block finder

With Bitcoin, the longest chain is considered the true and safe chain, however in ethereum

the �heaviest chain� is considered the proper chain

heaviest meaning the chain with not only the most block, but also the most orphans

The uncle block reward is less than the main block reward and it deminishes as more blocks

are found

until 7 blocks have passed , where the reward resolves at 0

Miner received 1/32 of ether for each uncle included in the block.

I don't know why

Valid Uncle blocks are rewarded to halt network lag (time to propagate a valid block to the

whole network).

Uncles included in a block receive 7/8 of the static block reward � or 4.375 Ether-

with a maximum of 2 Uncles allowed per block.

See the links in the descriptioin for further reading.

https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/guides/what-are-mining-rewards-in-ethereum/

https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/34/what-is-an-uncle-ommer-block

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Design-Rationale#uncle-incentivization

DRAW THISS

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/11/toward-a-12-second-block-time/