Ok, I may have answered a lot of questions on this forum, but I have one now.
It has been often said on this forum that because of the orphaned block, the pool payout to miners converges to about 97% PPS, instead of 100%.
Therefore, if blocks were -never- orphaned, the payout would converge to 100% PPS. However, it is my understanding that when a block is orphaned, the pool (and the Bitcoin Network) act as if that block had never existed.
Therefore, I do not see how it makes a difference to the payout value that some block are orphaned, since acting as if it had never existed, is the same as if no block was ever orphaned, no?
The pool expects to find blocks at a given rate. This is what the PPS payout rate is based on. An orphaned block counts as a "found block" (per expectations of the rate of finding blocks) but the pool does not get the BTC for it.