Following a fruitful initiation, Frontier surpassed its 100000th block earlier this week. Here are some intriguing figures from these initial blocks.
The initial 50 block timings (in seconds):
Immediately after genesis, the second block emerged in 29 seconds, followed by the next blocks at 31 and 29 seconds. This isn’t surprising as miners hurried with their configurations upon the announcement of the final genesis block.
Post these early blocks, we observe a notable reduction in the block time coinciding with the influx of substantial miners, reaching a floor of 1 second, the threshold mandated by the consensus protocol.
Let’s now examine the average block time (every 200th block from genesis up to block 10000):
We can observe the hashing power intensely engaging the network after the initial few hundred blocks, with block timings at 1-2 seconds as the difficulty adjustment mechanism catches up. This mechanism modifies the difficulty by diff/2048 per block based on the block time.
After several thousand blocks, we witness the difficulty climbing enough to elevate block times into the 4-5 second bracket. Beyond 9k blocks, we start nearing the target duration of 15 seconds.
Largest miners in the first 100k blocks (address, blocks, %) :
0xef247e639d49461d25f57e9362cade3120910ce0 851 0.81% 0x790b8a3ce86e707ed0ed32bf89b3269692a23cc1 914 0.87% 0x0037ce3d4b7f8729c8607d8d0248252be68202c0 949 0.90% 0xbb12b5a9b85d4ab8cde6056e9c1b2a4a337d2261 1102 1.04% 0x580992b51e3925e23280efb93d3047c82f17e038 1129 1.07% 0xf2d2aff1320476cb8c6b607199d23175cc595693 1141 1.08% 0x47ff6576639c2e94762ea5443978d7681c0e78dc 1159 1.10% 0x1b7047b4338acf65be94c1a3e8c5c9338ad7d67c 1335 1.26% 0xeb1325c8d9d3ea8d74ac11f4b00f1b2367686319 1446 1.37% 0xbcb2e3693d246e1fc00348754334badeb88b2a11 1537 1.45% 0xa50ec0d39fa913e62f1bae7074e6f36caa71855b 1692 1.60% 0xf8e0ca3ed80bd541b94bedcf259e8cf2141a9523 2437 2.31% 0x9746c7e1ef2bd21ff3997fa467593a89cb852bd0 3586 3.39% 0x88d74a59454f6cf3b51ef6b9136afb6b9d405a88 4292 4.06% 0xbb7b8287f3f0a933474a79eae42cbca977791171 8889 8.41% 0xf927a40c8b7f6e07c5af7fa2155b4864a4112b13 9151 8.66% 0xe6a7a1d47ff21b6321162aea7c6cb457d5476bca 11912 11.28%
While it’s impossible to definitively ascertain whether a single miner operates multiple coinbase addresses, assuming they utilize only one, we observe a fairly uniform distribution of hash power across the first 100k blocks. The address 0xe6a7a1d47ff21b6321162aea7c6cb457d5476bca accounts for 11% of hashing power, which is ethpool, the pioneering mining pool for Ethereum. Following that, we have two significant miners with about 8%. After these three, the allocation appears quite balanced, with most miners holding under 1% of total hashing power.
Nevertheless, developments unfold swiftly in the Ethereum ecosystem and when examining the past 15k blocks we note:
0x580992b51e3925e23280efb93d3047c82f17e038 327 2.2% 0xbb7b8287f3f0a933474a79eae42cbca977791171 496 3.3% 0xf927a40c8b7f6e07c5af7fa2155b4864a4112b13 612 4.1% 0x790b8a3ce86e707ed0ed32bf89b3269692a23cc1 674 4.5% 0xe6a7a1d47ff21b6321162aea7c6cb457d5476bca 5775 38.5%
Here it’s evident ethpool currently holds nearly 40% of the hashing power, whereas the 2nd and 3rd largest miners have dwindled to 4%
Consecutive blocks
Another compelling statistic is to examine continuous sequences of blocks mined by the same miner. This can provide insight into how hashing power and latency play a role for larger miners.
Shortly after launch, the maximum number of consecutive blocks observed was 6, such as blocks 1578, 1579, 1580, 1581, 1582, and 1583 mined by 0x9dfc0377058b7b9eb277421769b56df1395705f0.
Similarly, 0xbb7b8287f3f0a933474a79eae42cbca977791171 mined 6 blocks on several occasions, for instance, blocks 656, 657, 658, 659, 660, and 661.
This miner also claimed 5, 4, 3, and 2 blocks consecutively multiple times, which isn’t surprising given 21% of the total hashing power at that point.
This occurred very early post-launch when difficulty was escalating rapidly and numerous miners had yet to connect to the network. As hashing power normalized after block 5000, consecutive blocks of more than 4 were seldom seen for a while.
However, recently the most consecutive blocks recorded is 10, like blocks 103049, 103050, 103051, 103052, 103053, 103054, 103055, 103056, 103057, and 103058 by ethpool. Excluding ethpool, no miner has achieved more than 6 blocks consecutively.
Stay connected for more insights from the Frontier network as we monitor it over the coming months!
Gustav Simonsson is a developer within the Ethereum Security and Go teams.
