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In Bitcoin the block confirmation time is set at 10 min using POW and DoD. This reduces the chance of conflicts (temporary forks) from nodes that simultaneously solve POW solution.

How are these conflicts reduced when block confirmation time is low, and transactions / second is high, as in Ethereum and other public Blockchains?

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    Quick question: what is DoD?
    – Richard Horrocks
    Commented Dec 28, 2016 at 18:39

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How are these conflicts reduced when block confirmation time is low...

The conflicts aren't reduced, and there is a greater number of orphaned blocks.

Ethereum handles this using its GHOST protocol, in which miners are incentivised - by way of an increased block reward - to include the orphaned blocks in the main chain.

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  • Just wanted to confirm that an orphaned block cannot be included as is, into the main chain, correct? Instead, the transactions it contains would have to be applied to the final state of the latest block in the main chain, (i.e. the current system state) to create a new block (which, I think, would need a new nonce hash to be computed).
    – Ajoy Bhatia
    Commented May 25, 2017 at 20:25
  • Richard, I would be really interested to know your answer to Ajoy's question, if you can provide it.
    – Tesa
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 22:09
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    Hi @Tesa (and Ajoy) - thanks for poking me on this. The uncle blocks are added to the chain-as is - they're not added into a new block. In the block itself they're contained as a list. Having said that, I'm not sure of the mechanics by which the uncles' transactions are applied to the state of the block they've been included in. Ajoy has a good point. The uncles could presumably be included in blocks later than down the line, so how would their transactions be applied to a later state? I think this would make a good new question. :-)
    – Richard Horrocks
    Commented Jul 30, 2017 at 15:35

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