Ommers explained
What the heck is an “ommer?” An ommer is a block whose parent is equal to the current block’s parent’s parent. Let’s take a quick dive into what ommers are used for and why a block contains the block headers for ommers.
Because of the way Ethereum is built, block times are much lower (~15 seconds) than those of other blockchains, like Bitcoin (~10 minutes). This enables faster transaction processing. However, one of the downsides of shorter block times is that more competing block solutions are found by miners. These competing blocks are also referred to as “orphaned blocks” (i.e. mined blocks do not make it into the main chain).
The purpose of ommers is to help reward miners for including these orphaned blocks. The ommers that miners include must be “valid,” meaning within the sixth generation or smaller of the present block. After six children, stale orphaned blocks can no longer be referenced (because including older transactions would complicate things a bit).
Ommer blocks receive a smaller reward than a full block. Nonetheless, there’s still some incentive for miners to include these orphaned blocks and reap a reward.
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Written by
Jonas Sebera
Jonas Sebera
Fullstack Web3.0 Application Developer | Blockchain Technology | Smart contracts enthusiast