High orphan rates on FPPS Ethash

I've noticed some days I'm getting what I would call extremely high orphan rates on the posted shares for FPPS. I've read through the help/documentation a few times on it and can't seem to pick out whether it's an issue with my mining software, or the pool, or something else.

At its peak, I was seeing orphan rates of above 20%. I took a break from ETH to mine RVN for a few days after the hard fork, and upon returning to prohashing saw that my orphan rate was about 0.5%. A few days later it's back up to ~15%. It also most days starts lower, and climbs incrementally through the day. I don't see any errors in TRM or PhoenixMiner. Periodically my suboptimal shares will go from zero to 3-4% but it's rare from what I've seen.

Can you elaborate on how orphan rate is calculated, whether it is impacted by my mining or the pool (or both)? Does it "reset" daily as it seems to drop overnight sometimes. Is it tied to suboptimal shares reported in the dashboard? Trying to figure out if I can do something to lower it as taking a fifth of my earnings as penalty obviously is a problem.

Thanks!

Though I can't speak for the pool, here's my .02:

TLDR; This is a pool issue and has nothing to do with your miners.

By "orphan" I believe you are referring to "orphan blocks". If a pool receives a proposed solution for the current block from one of its miners, it is responsible for submitting this solution as fast as possible to the blockchain in the hopes that it is accepted as the actual solution by all of the blockchain participants. If multiple solutions are submitted to the blockchain at the same time, one is selected as the winner who gets the reward while the other solution(s) are "orphaned". ETH and some other coins have a unique construct in that they also pay a "consolation prize" in the form of an uncle block to some of the losers. See: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/uncle-block-cryptocurrency.asp

With the low blockchain TTF on ETH blocks (<15s) and a high nethash, it is quite common to see uncle and sometimes orphan blocks on pools. However, a well configured pool with good low-latency connection to the blockchain usually has a very low orphan rate (< 2%) and a reasonable uncle rate (5%-ish).

On the flip side, I have no orphans on my FPPS. I average about 1% suboptimal. But no orphans.

Thanks guys for the insights. Appreciated.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. If I check my mined shares, and drill into the details (below). I tend to hover around 8-14%, and I've seen as high as 23% or so. Seems... undesirable. But at the same time I'm just a hobbyist and only been mining a few months so wrapping my head around some of this is rough

HelloMrThompson wrote: Thanks guys for the insights. Appreciated.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. If I check my mined shares, and drill into the details (below). I tend to hover around 8-14%, and I've seen as high as 23% or so. Seems... undesirable. But at the same time I'm just a hobbyist and only been mining a few months so wrapping my head around some of this is rough

I'll add a support ticket to the system to examine what could be causing so many uncled blocks, and someone will get back to you during the weekend.

Ah yeah looking there it says 14% I'm guessing that is for the whole pool. I myself don't have any reports by my miner.

Steve Sokolowski wrote:
I'll add a support ticket to the system to examine what could be causing so many uncled blocks, and someone will get back to you during the weekend.

Thanks Steve I really appreciate that. Also glad to better understand the possible sources and knowing that it appears not to be an issue with my mining setup.

This issue has been resolved. It seems that the system was being overly conservative with estimating the Ethereum uncle rate. The orphan rate is now accurate, at around 0.9%.

Steve Sokolowski wrote: This issue has been resolved. It seems that the system was being overly conservative with estimating the Ethereum uncle rate. The orphan rate is now accurate, at around 0.9%.

Hi Steve just a fyi the orphan penalty rate at 11 am this morning was 17.32%.

I'm on mobile so I can't easily post a screen this time. Doesn't seem to be resolved yet.