In this blog we give an overview of the impact that Ouroboros Byzantine Fault Tolerance (OBFT) nodes had on our stake pool performance. For this we replayed the last 4 leader logs.
Migrating to a fully decentralized (d=0) Shelley requires a smooth path for users of the Cardano blockchain. As such IOHK is supporting backward compatibility with the Byron era via OBFT nodes.
The resulting effects of the OBFT nodes are shocking. During 4 epochs 24 assigned slots were stolen from our stake pool by OBFT nodes. This resulted in only 9 blocks to be forged. Or 72% of the assigned slots to our stake pool were overlapped by OBFT nodes. As such our pool ROA plummeted to 2.43%. where an ROA was promised of ~5%.
See below the results of epoch 221 till 224.
To us it seems there is more behind this effect of OBFT nodes. The effect of OBFT nodes on a small stake pool seems to be larger than on a large stake pool. The result of delegators leaving a small stake pool because of bad performance has immediately a negative impact on the stake pool.
Let us know what you think about the effect of OBFT nodes on a small stake pool. Is it coincidence, bad luck or is it a way to reduce the number of stake pools (especially smaller ones) ?