Ethereum Miners Analysis – Past 60 Days

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Our focus in this article is to study the ethereum.core.fact_blocks table,

  • Are there certain miners that prefer mining blocks with fewer transactions?
  • Are some miners only mining blocks with high transaction counts?
  • By analyzing the distribution of transaction counts, you can determine what constitutes low or high transaction counts

Overview Of Ethereum Miners

On Ethereum’s blockchain, mining involves creating blocks of transactions. Traditionally, mining is used to describe crypto currencies as gold analogies. Digital tokens are also scarce, and mining is the only way to increase their volume. Ethereum is also the only currency that can be issued post launch through mining. The mining process creates, verifies, publishes, propagates and secures blocks in the blockchain, unlike these examples.

Keeping the network secure by mining ether. Ethereum is a decentralized system that needs everyone’s agreement on how transactions should be ordered. In order to protect the network from attacks, miners solve computationally difficult puzzles.

After Sep 14th 2022, we will no longer be able to mine Ethereum once the Ethereum merge is launched. The following tweet provides information about this proposal.

Approach

Using the ethereum.core.fact_blocks table in this dashboard,

  • Our focus was on finding the number of transactions mined per block, as well as the distribution of blocks with the number of transactions
  • As a next step, we can see the numbers of transactions processed by miners compared to average transactions, as well as their percentages on a daily basis.
  • In the next part, we will see how miners are distributed by the number of transactions mined per block
  • Furthermore, we can also see the miners who frequently mined more than 500 txns per block
  • Lastly, we will look at the top 10 miners and their top 5 block sizes, which are selected individually by each miner.

From the graph below, you can see the minimum, maximum, and average transactions mined per block for the past 60 days. According to the graph below, the minimum number of transactions mined per block is between 2-3.  During July 26 2022, a maximum of 273.42 average transactions were recorded. On Sep 04 2022, we can observe a maximum of 1418 maximum transactions, and on August 30, 2022, we can observe a minimum of 702 maximum transactions. The maximum transactions that are mined on a blockwise basis are showing a downward trend. There may be a reason for this because the Ethereum merge is removing the mining. 

We can see here the distribution of blocks based on the number of transactions. The total number of mined blocks across all buckets is 371,708. 46.84% of the total mined blocks came from the top two buckets, while 64.5% came from the top three buckets. The lowest number of Mined Blocks is 41 (S.901 to 950 txns), while the highest number is 87,056 (A.1 to 50 txns).

Between July 11, 2022 and September 9, 2022, there were 3.1K miners. Out of the two categories, Processed Txns.Below Average contributes the most (68.12%) to the total Miners. In this case, the lowest number of processed transactions is 987 (Processed Txns. Above Average), whereas the highest number is 2.11K (Processed Txns. Below Average). It was observed that the maximum number of miners was 55 on July 29, 2022, and the minimum number of miners was 46 on September 1, 2022. Here we can see processed Txns.below Average has a steady percentage of Miners.

From the below graph out of the two categories, Processed Txns.Below Average contributes the most to the total miners which is almost 70%.

According to the graph below, we can see how miners have distributed the number of transactions mined per block over the past 60 days. We can see that a maximum of 50 txns are mined per block by a maximum number of miners. There are a total of 19 categories of transactions taking place with miners per block. Among the top 5 mining categories, transactions per block are between 1 and 250. A very small number of miners fall under the category of 901-950 transactions mined per block. 

The following graph shows the miners who mined more than 500 Txns per block frequently for the past 60 days. We can see that the total number of blocks mined is 1,272. A total of 49.69% of total blocks were mined by 0xea674fdde714fd979de3edf0f56aa9716b898ec8 Miners, and 66.9% were mined by the top 2 miners. A total of 42.06% of total blocks mined were from K.501 to 550 txns, and 57.94% of total blocks mined were from the Top 2 blocks.  The lowest total number of blocks mined is 5 (0x2a20380dca5bc24d052acfbf79ba23e988ad0050), while the highest total number of blocks mined is 632 (0xea674fdde714fd979de3edf0f56aa9716b898ec8). A total of 24 blocks have been mined (S.901 to 950 tracts) and 535 blocks have been mined (K.501 to 550 tracts).

Below is a graph that shows miners who mine less than 500 Txns per block frequently. The total number of blocks mined is 365.58K. In total, the 0xea674fdde714fd979de3edf0f56aa9716b898ec8 Miners contributed for 27.57%, and the Top 3 Miners contributed for 52.78%. 47.36% of total blocks mined came from the top two blocks, and 65.2% came from the top three blocks. 0x6a0806cca96c0600224de365f45b9e042c03e35b is the lowest total Blocks Mined and 0xea674fdde714fd979de3edf0f56aa9716b898ec8 is the highest total Blocks Mined. The low total number of Blocks Mined is 910 (J.451 to 500 txns) and the highest total number of Blocks Mined is 86,593 (B.51 to 100 txns). 

The total number of mined blocks across the top 10 miners is 292K . More than 30% of total mined blocks were contributed by 0xea674fdde714fd979de3edf0f56aa9716b898ec8, while more than half contributed by the Top 2 Miners. The lowest mined blocks total is 9K (0x3ecef08d0e2dad803847e052249bb4f8bf2d5bb) while the highest is 101K (0xea674fdde714fd979de3edf0f56aa9716b898ec).

Based on the top 5 block sizes selected by Miner #1, the maximum number of transactions chosen by this miner is 1-50 transactions, followed by 51-100 transactions. The most popular transaction categories for Miner#2 and 3 out of their top 5 block sizes are 1-50 transactions and 51-100 transactions.  From Miner#4 and Miner#5, 51-100 transactions were selected out of their total transactions from each. Miner#8 can be seen to have almost 60% of his transactions falling between the 1-50 range of transactions. Most of the categories of miner#10’s top 5 chosen categories are in more than 20%, except the category ‘1 to 50 transactions’. That means this miner doesn’t choose the category of ‘1-50 transactions’ very often.

Based on individual analyses of these Top 10 miners, the majority of the miners have selected the ‘1-50 transactions’ and ’51-100 transactions’ categories for their transactions.

Observations

  • From the above analysis, we can see that the minimum number of transactions mined per block is 2-3.  A maximum of 273.42 average transactions were recorded during July 26 2022. The maximum number of transactions on Sep 4 2022 was 1418, while the minimum number of transactions on August 30, 2022 was 702.
  • There is a downward trend in the maximum number of transactions mined on a block-by-block basis. Possibly, the mining has been removed as a result of the Ethereum merge. 
  • Also, from the above analysis, we see that a maximum number of miners mines a maximum of 50 transactions per block.  There are just a few miners who mine between 901 and 950 transactions per block. 
  • A total of 1,272 blocks have been mined by miners who mine more than 500 transactions per block frequently. There are 365.58K blocks mined by miners who mine fewer than 500 transactions per block. As can be seen from the graph, more miners use fewer than 500 transaction categories for mining.
  • According to the individual analyses of these Top 10 miners, the majority of their transactions fall into the categories of ‘1-50 transactions’ and ’51-100 transactions’.

SQL Reference

with 
miner_txns as (
  SELECT 
    	MINER,
    	tx_count,
  		block_number,
    	width_bucket(tx_count, 1, 1500, 20) as bucket_number,
    	concat(chr(64+bucket_number), '.', ((bucket_number - 1) * 50) + 1 , ' to ', bucket_number * 50, ' txns') as bucket,
  		tx_count
  FROM ethereum.core.fact_blocks
  where tx_count > 1
  
  and block_timestamp >= CURRENT_DATE - {{days}}
),
miner_blocks as (
  	select 
  		miner,
  		count(block_number) as total_blocks_mined
  	from miner_txns
  	GROUP BY miner
),
miner_buckets as (
  	select 
  		miner as miner,
  		bucket,
  		count(block_number) as blocks_mined
  	from miner_txns
  	group by miner, bucket
),
miner_blocks_bucket as (
  	select 
  		miner_buckets.*,
  		blocks_mined / total_blocks_mined * 100 as perct_mined
  	from miner_blocks
  	INNER JOIn miner_buckets using (miner)
)
SELECT * FROM miner_blocks_bucket

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