ELI5: If a block has more inputs than outputs, what does that mean or what can be inferred?

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1

I am curious about this question. Also, why does the number of kernels matter so much to put it up on most of the grin blockchain viewer website things. I forgot the name for them. Brain fart.

Edit: block explorers

2

It doesn’t mean much. Likely someone, perhaps a big miner or exchange, is consolidating many outputs into one.

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3

Why would they want to do that?

4

They probably shouldn’t. It’s bad for privacy and just generally unnecessary. But sometimes they’ll end up doing that unknowingly due to how their wallets choose inputs, or possibly they may be moving a large amount to some form of cold storage, which may be done in a single transaction.

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5

Thanks! Just briefly, Could you have the opposite occur, where there are much more outputs than inputs? If so, what could that mean?

6

You could. That would only happen if the sender deliberately chose to do that. One possibility could be that a mining pool is doing payouts to many miners from a single coinbase.

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