The Orphaning Cliff: Ethereum's Hidden Block Death Threshold
· 5 min read
Ethereum's block orphan rate should be nearly zero. It isn't — and the reasons why are more interesting than the number itself.
Over the last 30 days, 1,783 blocks were proposed on mainnet and then lost. Not missed (nobody tried), not reverted (execution failed) — proposed, gossiped, and then quietly discarded when another block won the fork choice. That's 59 blocks per day that disappeared into the void.
Most of them arrived on time.