In the Introductory blockchain course, you(Ivan) say that the reason for the 10 minutes block is to try to avoid orphaned blocks. If that’s the case how come Ethereum does a good job with only 10-20 sec blocks? Why they don’t have lots of orphaned blocks?
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They do. That’s why some exchanges have ETH deposit on 30 confirmations.
Yeah you’re right about the 30 confirmations, that’s 300-600 seconds or 5-10 mins which is awfully similair to btc block time. But exchanges also make you wait for btc for 2-6 confirmations. Plus, I’ve done hundreds of txs on ethereum and never seen a transaction getting unconfirmed(temporary ending up in an orphaned block). Maybe there’s something more to this.
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Not sure if there is any other reason why they don’t orphan as much (if that’s even the case). One thing that comes to mind is that ETH blocks are usually 20-30kb so they can propagate way easier than bitcoin’s 1mb full blocks. I would assume the lower size of the ETH blocks are ratio adjusted somehow with the bitcoin bigger block size due to the current file propagation of the internet. That’s why if we had no delay with propagation we could have scaled on chain with bitcoin without a problem. Also we have to keep in mind that ETH blocks don’t have a maximum block size. They are limited by units of gas that can be spent in one block.