Introduction

Mining is the process of creating a block of transactions to be added to the Ethereum blockchain.

The word mining originates in the context of the gold analogy for crypto currencies. Gold or precious metals are scarce, so are digital tokens, and the only way to increase the total volume is through mining. This is appropriate to the extent that in Ethereum too, the only mode of issuance post launch is via mining. Unlike these examples however, mining is also the way to secure the network by creating, verifying, publishing and propagating blocks in the blockchain.

Mining ether = Securing the Network

Ethereum, like Bitcoin, currently uses a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. Mining is the lifeblood of proof-of-work. Ethereum miners - computers running software - using their time and computation power to process transactions and produce blocks.

In decentralized systems like Ethereum, we need to ensure that everyone agrees on the order of transactions. Miners help this happen by solving computationally difficult puzzles to produce blocks, securing the network from attacks.

Method

In this dashboard I will be using Ethereum database to answer two questions:

• Do certain miners prefer mining blocks with lower transaction count?
• Do certain miners only mine blocks with high transaction count?

By using ethereum.core.fact_blocks table we can find some useful data about miners and blocks they have mined. First we need to know what is the range of transactions in blocks that I have done this by creating a distribution of blocks based on number of transactions that have occurred in blocks.

Next we can show changes in number of low transaction blocks and higher transaction blocks over time.

After that I will define low or high transaction count miners and blocks to find what group of miners prefer to mine blocks with low transaction count and blocks with high transaction count.

Let’s see the result!

Over Time Analysis

Based on the above chart I have defined under 100 transactions as low transactions count and over 200 transactions as high transactions count. By this definitions we can visualize number of low transaction count blocks and the miners who have mined these blocks over time and do the same for high transaction count blocks.

As you see number of low transaction count blocks has decreased over time and also number of miners which are mining low transaction count blocks has decreased over time and after January 2020 this number did not reached to 100 miner per month anymore.

And number of high transaction count blocks has increased over time and also number of miners which are mining high transaction count blocks has increased over time.

Analyze Miners based on total performed transactions

The following two charts show distribution of miners based on total number of transactions they have performed so far.

We can see about 70% miners have mined only blocks which contains under 100 transactions.

Based on the above distribution I have considered miners that have mined under 10,000 transactions as low transaction count miner and miners that have mined over 1,000,000 transactions as high transaction count miner.

By these definitions we can say:

• low transaction count miners prefer to mine blocks containing under 100 transactions.

• Number of mined blocks with over 100 transactions by high transaction count miners is much higher than number of same blocks mined by low transaction count miner.

Analyze Miners based on total mined blocks

The following two charts show distribution of miners based on total number of blocks they have mined so far.

We can see about 65% miners have mined under 10 blocks in total.

Based on the above distribution I have considered miners that have mined under 100 blocks as low block count miner and miners that have mined over 10,000 blocks as high block count miner.

By these definitions we can say:

• low block count miners prefer to mine blocks containing under 100 transactions.

• Number of mined blocks with over 100 transactions by high block count miners is much higher than number of same blocks mined by low block count miner.

We can see number of blocks with over 200 transactions in high block count miners (2.7M) is more than 10 times of number of the same blocks in low block count miners (2009).

Conclusion

• About 70% miners have mined only blocks which contains under 100 transactions.

• About 65% miners have mined under 10 blocks in total.

• The miners that mined higher transactions in total, also mined blocks with higher transaction count.

• The miners that mined higher blocks in total, also mined blocks with higher transaction count.

• Number of Low transaction count blocks has decreased over time and also number of miners which are mining low transaction count blocks has decreased over time.

• Number of high transaction count blocks has increased over time and also number of miners which are mining high transaction count blocks has increased over time.

• low transaction count miners prefer to mine blocks containing under 100 transactions.

• low block count miners prefer to mine blocks containing under 100 transactions.

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