user125350: so when two equally valid blocks are discovered at roughly the same time, a conflict occurs, nodes should wait for the strongest fork of the chain to emerge and develop before placing trust in the transactions within it. My question is how many additional blocks, above and beyond those of it's rival, must a fork of the chain achieve before nodes consider the rival fork to be stale and discard it? Is does this depend on the configuration of the node?
note that I'm not asking how many confirmations one should wait for before trusting a chain, but rather how many additional blocks are required before other nodes consider the competitor stale and actually discard it.
Thank you!

user48884: One block. A node will always follow the valid blockchain that has the most cumulative work, even if it is more by just the work done for a single block. There's no reason to delay changing to the other branch if it has more cumulative work. The split should be resolved as soon as possible; by switching when one branch is observed to have more cumulative work than the other, the split can be resolved as quickly as possible.

125350: <p>so when two equally valid blocks are discovered at roughly the same time, a conflict occurs, nodes <em>should</em> wait for the strongest fork of the chain to emerge and develop before placing trust in the transactions within it. My question is how many additional blocks, above and beyond those of it's rival, must a fork of the chain achieve before nodes consider the rival fork to be stale and discard it? Is does this depend on the configuration of the node?</p>
<p>note that I'm not asking how many confirmations one should wait for before trusting a chain, but rather how many additional blocks are required before other nodes consider the competitor stale and actually discard it.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
 48884: <p>One block. A node will always follow the valid blockchain that has the most cumulative work, even if it is more by just the work done for a single block. There's no reason to delay changing to the other branch if it has more cumulative work. The split should be resolved as soon as possible; by switching when one branch is observed to have more cumulative work than the other, the split can be resolved as quickly as possible.</p>
