Blocks per week as an indicator of the difficulty bomb - Data Science - Ethereum Research Ethereum Research Blocks per week as an indicator of the difficulty bomb Data Science quickBlocks February 26, 2022, 5:18pm 1 Go to the bottom for the latest chart. This chart (blocks produced per week) may be of interest to the core devs as they plan the timing of the hard fork for the Merge. Blocks produced per week stands in for the number of seconds it takes on average to produce a block, which stands in for the effect of the difficulty bomb. Here’s the repo for the ‘R’ code that creates the chart: tokenomics/explorations/difficulty at main · TrueBlocks/tokenomics · GitHub. The data was created using this code: trueblocks-core/difficulty.cpp at fc4edc17c75739393e93add4ef805c137b747b03 · TrueBlocks/trueblocks-core · GitHub. image2702×1574 339 KB The vertical dashed grey lines are the hard forks. The pink vertical line is June 15th The horizontal grey dashed lines are how many blocks would be produced in a week if the per-block production were 14 seconds, 16 seconds, 18 seconds, etc. I think it will be pretty easy to see where the bomb is in its ‘explosion.’ You can see that it stays pretty flat until it goes off, but once it goes off, it really does explode. I’ll try to produce this once a week (on Friday’s), but if I forget and you’all find it useful, please poke me. This data was produced with TrueBlocks, which all you’all should check out. It’s really good for data science with on-chain data. Thanks to OmniAnalytics and Tim Beiko for helping me get this done. Hope it helps. Cheers. 11 Likes quickBlocks March 4, 2022, 10:06am 2 image2534×1570 316 KB yulesa March 7, 2022, 12:29am 3 It can be automatized using Dune. dune.xyz Dune Analytics Ethereum Ecosystem analytics by and for the community. Explore and share data from Ethereum Mainnet, Matic, Optimism and xDai for free. 4 Likes quickBlocks March 11, 2022, 10:27pm 4 Oh. This is great. So I don’t have to update it. Cheers. 1 Like yulesa March 11, 2022, 11:17pm 5 The graph is a little clunky, though. From my perspective the bomb is starting to be visible. quickBlocks March 11, 2022, 11:22pm 6 It doesn’t update already? As far as the bomb, I don’t think it’s started to go off yet. That’s why I had the horizontal lines across at each ‘second’. So the top-most one is how many blocks there would be in a week if each block was 14 seconds. If each was 16 seconds, it would be down at the next horizontal line. This is the latest chart – you can see it hasn’t really started to decend. image2548×1576 296 KB quickBlocks March 17, 2022, 8:31pm 7 image2980×1684 461 KB It would be great to get someone to double-check this work? Repo link above. The solid red line is June 15. The dashed red lines are each time the bomb’s period was at period 31 for comparison. (Period 31 is where it was reset in December.) 2 Likes quickBlocks March 25, 2022, 12:02pm 8 Latest installment. I guess we’re starting to see a very slight effect. Notice from previous bombs how quickly it comes once it starts to come. Red vertical line is June 15. Stay tuned… image2642×1766 325 KB quickBlocks April 1, 2022, 10:54pm 9 Latest installment. I see a slight dip. I expect we will start seeing an effect in the coming weeks. A higher hash rate delays the first ‘appearance’ of the bomb, but there’s a concern that once the bomb appears it will be more virulently. The horizontal grey lines are the number of seconds between blocks given the number of blocks produced in a week on the y-axis. I’m going to post another chart shortly to show another view. image2396×1796 371 KB quickBlocks April 1, 2022, 10:58pm 10 This chart shows the real block number (in red), the fake block number (in green), and the bomb’s period (the staggered blue line which changes discontinuously every 100,000 blocks). The dashed grey horizontal line is what I call the “We should start paying attention” line. If you look closely at previous bombs, you can see the slight diminishment in the block number over time. We’re not seeing that yet, but stay tuned. image2542×1578 386 KB nollied April 2, 2022, 6:22am 11 quickBlocks: The dashed grey horizontal line is what I call the “We should start paying attention” line. If you look closely at previous bombs, you can see the slight diminishment in the block number over time. We’re not seeing that yet, but stay tune is a “bomb” a stark decrease in the block-production rate over a certain period of time? what is it about the time preceding hard-forks that cause such down-spikes? is it because node-runners deactivate their nodes to update the software? what does this mean for the transaction rate for ethereum? does it remain at a stable rate? do these bombs have measure-able impact on gas prices? quickBlocks April 2, 2022, 10:29am 12 I’ve written about a lot of this here: Adventures in Difficulty Bombing. An exercise in predicting the future… | by Thomas Jay Rush | Coinmonks | Medium. That link also has links to a bunch of other articles as well. About the impact on gas price, I’m not sure. It has had, mistakenly I think, a serious effect (at least on the arguments surrounding) the block reward, but I don’t know about gas prices. 2 Likes quickBlocks April 11, 2022, 4:25am 13 It’s coming… image2538×1580 371 KB 3 Likes quickBlocks April 19, 2022, 1:12am 14 At block 14,600,000, which happened this week, we entered into period 39, which based on previous bombs is when we usually start seeing a diminishment in block times. I’m not seeing that yet. This is not yet concerning, but is becoming “interesting.” (See below). Here is an estimate, assuming no growth in block times, of when the next three doublings in difficulty will happen. (A doubling happens when the period changes – period = fakeBlockNum/100000 – fakeBlockNum = realBlockNum-10,700,000 – the additional difficulty at each block is 2^period). blockNumber timestamp date name 14000000 1642114795 2022-01-13 22:59:55 UTC 14100000 1643450273 2022-01-29 09:57:53 UTC 14200000 1644784417 2022-02-13 20:33:37 UTC 14300000 1646123109 2022-03-01 08:25:09 UTC 14400000 1647466065 2022-03-16 21:27:45 UTC 14500000 1648811420 2022-04-01 11:10:20 UTC 14600000 1650160464 2022-04-17 01:54:24 UTC 14700000 1651492241 2022-05-02 11:50:41 UTC (est flat) 14800000 1652822241 2022-05-17 21:17:21 UTC (est flat) 14900000 1654152241 2022-06-02 06:44:01 UTC (est flat) In this estimate, which extends to period 42 (the same period just prior to the Byzantium fork–see above charts), I add NO additional seconds to each block. This may seem conservative, but it tries to take into account the possibility that the much higher hash rate we’re seeing now (compared to the past) may be masking the increasing difficulty of each change of period (bomblet). This next group of data is a slightly less conservative estimate showing a one-second slowing down of blocks with each doubling. If this happened, we may be at 16-second blocks by the end of June): blockNumber timestamp date name 14000000 1642114795 2022-01-13 22:59:55 UTC 14100000 1643450273 2022-01-29 09:57:53 UTC 14200000 1644784417 2022-02-13 20:33:37 UTC 14300000 1646123109 2022-03-01 08:25:09 UTC 14400000 1647466065 2022-03-16 21:27:45 UTC 14500000 1648811420 2022-04-01 11:10:20 UTC 14600000 1650160464 2022-04-17 01:54:24 UTC 14700000 1651837086 2022-05-06 11:38:06 UTC (est onesec) 14800000 1653730218 2022-05-28 09:30:18 UTC (est onesec) 14900000 1655823350 2022-06-21 14:55:50 UTC (est onesec) My growing concern is that due to a much higher hash rate, unlike previous bombs, this bomb’s effect may not appear at all until it appears massively. (In other words, this bomb may truly explode!) The higher hash rate may be hiding the initial, smaller shocks to the system (the bomblets) which are being recovered from more quickly, so much so that they don’t reveal themselves in the weekly production. (I looked at a daily chart that also does not show much of a slow-down.) The concern is that once the system loses its ability to recover from the shock of a doubling, it will lose that ability in a serious way. I’ll keep watching it. We should start seeing a recognizable diminishment in block times soon. If not, we’ll need to dig deeper. 3 Likes watersky April 25, 2022, 6:41pm 15 You can also track this on Coin Metrics here ETH_Mean_Block_Time_and_Daily_Block_Count1200×709 80.2 KB 2 Likes quickBlocks April 29, 2022, 2:01pm 16 Latest chart fresh off the presses… image2828×1784 467 KB 2 Likes quickBlocks May 5, 2022, 11:22pm 17 Chart as of today. The bomb is clearly starting to show. It’s reasonable to estimate its future progress based on previous bombs. image1920×1363 199 KB 3 Likes CryptoWhite May 7, 2022, 1:30am 18 I guess a new hardfork for delaying the difficulty bomb is around the corner jgm May 11, 2022, 6:40am 19 On the basis of daily block time we’re already at the point where Arrow Glacier kicked in. blocktime-recent1785×885 23.7 KB 3 Likes quickBlocks May 12, 2022, 10:55pm 20 Some new charts. Back in December, I was asked to predict 15-second blocks by mid-June. Impossible to be certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case. The red line is June 15. The dashed red lines are the last time we were at the same period in each of the previous forks. Much higher hash rates now has tamped down the effect, but that won’t last forever. The blue dashed vertical lines are the previous forks. The table tries to compare past forks with the current one and predicts the next bomblet to be around May 18. 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