Collators aggregate parachain transactions block candidates and producing state transition proofs for validators based on those blocks.

Phala is a specialized privacy-preserving cloud computing blockchain powered by Polkadot Relay chain.

PHA holders own and govern the protocol. Phala’s investors include IOSG Ventures, Incuba Alpha, Candaq Fintech Group, and others.

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Phala

# Phala Block time Methodology

## 1. Overview

Block time measures the average time interval between consecutive blocks on the Phala blockchain, aggregated daily. This metric helps assess the blockchain's performance consistency and network health by tracking how regularly new blocks are produced. The calculation measures the time difference between consecutive block timestamps and averages these intervals within daily periods.

## 2. Data sources

- **Phala blockchain blocks**: Raw block data from the Phala network containing block timestamps and sequential block numbers for all blocks produced on the network

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block data extraction
- **Purpose**: Extract relevant block information and prepare for time interval calculations
- **Logic**: Retrieve block timestamps and block numbers from Phala blockchain data. The genesis block (block number 0) is excluded because it has a timestamp at the start of Unix time which would create an artificially large time interval
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` contains the exact time each block was produced, `block_number` provides the sequential ordering of blocks

### Component B: Previous timestamp identification
- **Purpose**: Identify the previous block's timestamp to enable interval calculations
- **Logic**: Use a window function to retrieve the timestamp of the immediately preceding block for each block, ordered by block number. This creates pairs of consecutive block timestamps needed for interval calculation
- **Key fields**: `previous_timestamp` contains the timestamp of the block that came before the current block in the sequence

### Component C: Block time interval calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate the actual time intervals between consecutive blocks
- **Logic**: Compute the difference in milliseconds between each block's timestamp and its previous block's timestamp. Blocks without a previous timestamp (the first block after genesis) are excluded from the calculation
- **Key fields**: `block_time` represents the millisecond interval between consecutive blocks, `timestamp` is truncated to daily granularity for aggregation

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Block time intervals are grouped by day and averaged to produce daily average block times
- **Currency conversion**: Not applicable for this time-based metric
- **Time aggregation**: Block timestamps are truncated to day-level granularity, and all block intervals within each day are averaged together
- **Final calculation**: The final metric is the arithmetic mean of all block time intervals (in milliseconds) that occurred within each calendar day, with standardized metadata including chain identifier, market sector, and business segment classifications

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

avg(block_timestamp - previous_block_timestamp)

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Block time

Block time

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