BEP-341: Validators Can Produce Consecutive Blocks

BEP
5

FAQ

Q1: Could there be more large reorganizations (reorgs)? How to handle them?

  • If Fast Finality functions correctly, there will be no additional reorgs.
  • If Fast Finality fails but validators do not act maliciously, there will also be no additional reorgs.
  • If Fast Finality fails and validators act maliciously, more reorgs may occur because a validator can produce multiple high-difficulty blocks in a row. The length of reorgs will increase proportionally to the number of consecutive blocks produced by a single validator.

Q2: Hidden block attacks are also critical. How to handle them?

To enhance stability, we should increase the incentives for Fast Finality. Fast Finality allows transactions and blocks to be finalized more quickly, which is a crucial feature and foundation of the BSC. Increasing its incentives appropriately is necessary. The current version already supports governance for these incentives.

Q3: How effective is the approach to combating MEV (Miner Extractable Value)?

Governance through the systemRewardAntiMEVRatio has some effectiveness in combating MEV, but it is limited. If the profits obtained through MEV far exceed transaction fees, this approach will be ineffective.

Q4: What’s the impact on validators?

  • Under heavy network load, validators can process more transactions, increasing their income.
  • Due to consecutive block production, validators can handle transactions continuously for a longer period, giving them more time to optimize MEV.

Q5: What’s the impact on users?

  • For regular transactions initiated by users, the transaction packaging delay remains unchanged.
  • For transactions targeted by MEV, validators tend to place them in the later blocks they produce consecutively, increasing the packaging delay.
  • Users may experience more MEV extraction, but its impact is limited. For example, if a validator consecutively produces four blocks, the time they control transaction processing is 12 seconds, which is comparable to Ethereum.

Q6: What happens if a validator misses one or more of its in-turn blocks?

As before this BEP was enabled, a backup validator will produce low-difficulty blocks. The fork choice logic remains unchanged. This will result in the miner who is selected for the low-difficulty block to produce fewer in-turn blocks in succession.

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