What does instant finality mean, and how does it compare with Ethereum or bitcoin? – Public Mint

Bitcoin and Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work consensus protocols are designed to tolerate temporary chain splits when blocks are found simultaneously by two or more miners. When this happens, miners work on different versions of the chain until one of them takes the lead, becoming the longest chain. When this happens, transactions in the competing chain are discarded and the ones which hadn’t been added to the winning side are “reversed” and sent back to the queue. Splits rarely last for more than one or two blocks, and that’s why it’s recommended to wait for a number of confirmations before considering transactions final in these networks.; the more confirmed blocks, the smaller the probability of splits and reorgs, eventually tending to zero. That’s what’s called eventual (or probabilistic) finality
Public Mint’s immediate finality means transactions are irreversible after a single confirmation. The network’s IBFT 2.0 consensus means forks, chain splits, and block reorgs are impossible. As a consequence, Public Mint has a much higher throughput and guarantees settlement much faster than PoW-based blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

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