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This following shows our current and planned expectations concerning maximum likely chain-reorganisation depth. We would not consider transactions within this depth to have an exceptionally high chance of being permanent. These are our own expectations only and do not constitute any sort of guarantee<\/em>. They are derived from theoretical considerations, ongoing empirical data, human factors in contingency planning and the past experience of our security team. As with all things in the peer-to-peer space the risk is entirely with the individual operator.<\/p>\n In much the same way as many in the space, we will be monitoring the chain for any signs of protocol-level issues. If we have any reason to suspect that there is a protocol level issue we will update these expectations<\/strong> accordingly; the updates will be posted in the forums and on the official blog. All those who are interested in our expectations and recommendations would do well to keep themselves abreast of the blog.<\/p>\n ROADMAP<\/strong><\/p>\n Until 2015\/08\/08 18:00:00 CEST: 6000<\/strong><\/p>\n From 2015\/08\/08 18:00:00 CEST, 3000<\/strong> (approx 12 hours)<\/p>\n (1 day)<\/p>\n From 2015\/08\/09 18:00:00 CEST, 1500<\/strong> (approx 6 hours)<\/p>\n (3 days)<\/p>\n From 2015\/08\/12 18:00:00 CEST, 750<\/strong> (approx 3 hours)<\/p>\n (3 days)<\/p>\n From 2015\/08\/15 18:00:00 CEST, 375<\/strong> (approx 90 minutes)<\/p>\n (Rest of Frontier)<\/p>\n ADDENDUM 2015\/08\/08: You may be slightly perplexed as to the meaning of the “chain reorganisation depth”. Chain reorganisations happen when a node on the Ethereum network (one which could belong to you, me, an exchange, a miner, whoever) realises that what it thought<\/em> was the canonical chain turned out not to be. When this happens, the transactions in the latter part of its chain (i.e. the most recent transactions) are reverted and rather the transactions in the newer replacement are executed.<\/p>\n With Ethereum having a short target block time of 15s, this actually happens naturally rather often. Because it takes time for the blocks to percolate through the network, it’s easy for different parts of the network to have a different final block (or two, or perhaps even three) in normal operation since the miners often come up with them at roughly the same time. This is what we might call ephemeral forking<\/em>. Indeed, many of the ommers (n\u00e9 uncles) that you see in Ethereum’s network monitor<\/a> were once assumed by some nodes to be the final block in canonical chain.<\/p>\n When a re-organisation happens, or put another way, when the network reaches a more global consensus that it had earlier and a fork<\/em> is resolved, the nodes that had the now out-dated chain “reorganise” their chain, throwing away the recent and no-longer canonical blocks. Transactions are reverted and others executed to get in line with the other path of the fork.<\/p>\n Transactions can be mutually exclusive, like cheques; if I have
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