user4012: What is block density? Pools currently before the Vasil upgrade are saying switch from 1.35.x back to 1.34.x to increase “block density”.

user5926: Each epoch is supposed to have about 21600 blocks per epoch, where an epoch is 5 days long. If every epoch had 21600 blocks, the density would be 100%. However blocks occasionally get skipped so the density will be less than 100%.
This is not the exact way that "chain density" is calculated (I forget the exact way it is calculated) but it should be enough to understand the concept.

user252: Just building on top of answer from Erik, a simple way to look at it would be :
(number of blocks minted so far in current epoch) / (number of slots so far in current epoch)
In ideal scenario, the density should match the active slot co-efficient (0.05 on testnet and mainnet, i.e. on average - 5% of chances for a random slot to have a block minted).
Is there a risk to protocol if density is too low? While it's far from ideal / healthy, current consensus network should work fine as long as there is 1 block in stability window , viz : 3k/f (i.e., 32160/0.05, which corresponds to ~ 1.5 days on testnet/mainnet).

4012: <p>What is block density? Pools currently before the Vasil upgrade are saying switch from 1.35.x back to 1.34.x to increase “block density”.</p>
 5926: <p>Each epoch is supposed to have about 21600 blocks per epoch, where an epoch is 5 days long. If every epoch had 21600 blocks, the density would be 100%. However blocks occasionally get skipped so the density will be less than 100%.</p>
<p>This is not the exact way that &quot;chain density&quot; is calculated (I forget the exact way it is calculated) but it should be enough to understand the concept.</p>
 252: <p>Just building on top of answer from Erik, a simple way to look at it would be :
(number of blocks minted so far in current epoch) / (number of slots so far in current epoch)</p>
<p>In ideal scenario, the density should match the active slot co-efficient (0.05 on testnet and mainnet, i.e. on average - 5% of chances for a random slot to have a block minted).</p>
<p>Is there a risk to protocol if density is too low? While it's far from ideal / healthy, current consensus network should work fine as long as there is 1 block in stability window , viz : 3<em>k/f (i.e., 3</em>2160/0.05, which corresponds to ~ 1.5 days on testnet/mainnet).</p>
