5

According to IOTA Engineering:

IRI 1.5.3 addresses the blowball problem seen on Mainnet.

What exactly is the blowball problem and what causes it?

Improve this question
0

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

The blowball problem is this phenomena where a huge quantity of new transactions select more or less at the same time the exact same transaction (most of the time the latest milestone) as branch and trunk transaction.

On a tangle vizualizer this phenomena is visible in the form of "balls" where the center of the ball is a milestone, and the ball consist of a huge amount of tips.

enter image description here

It's a problem for the convergence of the tangle because when a walker reach the center of the ball it will have the choice between a wide variety of tips with more or less the same transition probability. Intuitively, we can understand that it take more time to obtain a solid consensus when facing such a wide variety of choice. And once the consensus is reached (i.e. some of the tips originally forming the ball have accumulated enough weight to attract the majority of the future walkers), all the other tips forming the ball will be "left behind" (i.e. forever tips).

The causes can be :

  • a problem/bug with the tip-sel algorithm
  • a spammer intentionally selecting the latest milestone as branch and trunk
  • something else ?
Improve this answer
2
  • I stated 2 situations creating blowballs. It is possible that I forgot/don't see something else.
    – ben75
    Commented Aug 3, 2018 at 17:09
  • Any idea why this happens? --> read my response to the end. The wallet don't select the tx, IRI does. The way to select tips is not enforced by the protocol. The challenge is to not be affected by blowballs (reducing their impact).
    – ben75
    Commented Aug 3, 2018 at 20:28

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.