Topic: 10 minutes blockchain vs difficulty level - page 3. (Read 1865 times)
Certainly feels like the issue of energy consumption in relation to Bitcoin has been rising up the agenda and that change is probably needed sooner, rather than later.
I apologize if I ask the following obvious questions and perhaps risk wasting everyone's time. But, I have these nagging questions for a while now:
1). As I understand it, the 10 minutes delay is to create a new block that there's enough/ sufficient time to fill and confirm the transactions (globally). But isn't it quite wasteful to keep adjusting the difficulty level to maintain the 10 minutes delay ? What is so special about the 10 minutes delay? Has there been any study to quantify more accurately the amount of time to reach the nodes globally ?
1). As I understand it, the 10 minutes delay is to create a new block that there's enough/ sufficient time to fill and confirm the transactions (globally). But isn't it quite wasteful to keep adjusting the difficulty level to maintain the 10 minutes delay ? What is so special about the 10 minutes delay? Has there been any study to quantify more accurately the amount of time to reach the nodes globally ?
globally
That is a tough question ... are we talking about users ? nodes ? tx's ? if we talking about scale we need a metric isn't it ?
A miner gets a 'reward' after confirming a block and adding it to the chain, then after 101 confirmations he may use those rewards.
Until then, he is unable to spend the reward.
The 51% is regarding forks mostly, which directly influences who gets the reward for a certain block.
Of course you can. Mining is basically a lottery anyway, better equipment just lets you buy more tickets.
in current situation, do u still think mining is good in BTC? Until then, he is unable to spend the reward.
The 51% is regarding forks mostly, which directly influences who gets the reward for a certain block.
I'm still trying to figure that if it is possible that miners to win rewards purely base on randomness- like a lottery, rather than base on how expensive, and high power equipment...essentially leveling the playing field.
Of course you can. Mining is basically a lottery anyway, better equipment just lets you buy more tickets.
A miner gets a 'reward' after confirming a block and adding it to the chain, then after 101 confirmations he may use those rewards.
Until then, he is unable to spend the reward.
The 51% is regarding forks mostly, which directly influences who gets the reward for a certain block.
Of course you can. Mining is basically a lottery anyway, better equipment just lets you buy more tickets.
Until then, he is unable to spend the reward.
The 51% is regarding forks mostly, which directly influences who gets the reward for a certain block.
I'm still trying to figure that if it is possible that miners to win rewards purely base on randomness- like a lottery, rather than base on how expensive, and high power equipment...essentially leveling the playing field.
Of course you can. Mining is basically a lottery anyway, better equipment just lets you buy more tickets.
Thank you Gentlemen: for your informative and kind responses. As you could tell that I still have a lot to learn, but better late than never...
Regarding the item #4, forgive for being confused about how a Block get confirmed and awarded to a miner...I read somewhere that it would take 51% of nodes to confirm a block, but I think that 51% only applies to forks perhaps ?
If I understand correctly now, the block with longest chain won the rewards after ~ 10 minutes.
I'm still trying to figure that if it is possible that miners to win rewards purely base on randomness- like a lottery, rather than base on how expensive, and high power equipment...essentially leveling the playing field. Wouldn't that eliminate the unfair advantage of large mining companies vs smaller individual miner ? And decentralize the mining portion of blockchain ? I just don't think adjusting the difficulty level is the most sufficient way to confirm blockchain ?
On a good note: I finally get a round to setup my MacBook Pro to be a bitcoin core full node...
Thanks
Regarding the item #4, forgive for being confused about how a Block get confirmed and awarded to a miner...I read somewhere that it would take 51% of nodes to confirm a block, but I think that 51% only applies to forks perhaps ?
If I understand correctly now, the block with longest chain won the rewards after ~ 10 minutes.
I'm still trying to figure that if it is possible that miners to win rewards purely base on randomness- like a lottery, rather than base on how expensive, and high power equipment...essentially leveling the playing field. Wouldn't that eliminate the unfair advantage of large mining companies vs smaller individual miner ? And decentralize the mining portion of blockchain ? I just don't think adjusting the difficulty level is the most sufficient way to confirm blockchain ?
On a good note: I finally get a round to setup my MacBook Pro to be a bitcoin core full node...
Thanks
1). As I understand it, the 10 minutes delay is to create a new block that there's enough/ sufficient time to fill and confirm the transactions (globally). But isn't it quite wasteful to keep adjusting the difficulty level to maintain the 10 minutes delay ? What is so special about the 10 minutes delay? Has there been any study to quantify more accurately the amount of time to reach the nodes globally ?
You're not going to get the network any more energy efficient -- ie. higher transaction throughput for less electricity spent -- by simply decreasing the block interval. Apart from the orphan / propagation problem that aleksej already mentioned, this would also cause the blockchain to grow faster than is likely sustainable for healthy node decentralization.
2). Let say if we don't have to worry about the trust issue, in theory we only need one, or perhaps two confirmations right ? So for the remaining 51% confirmations is essentially to ensure that there's no cheating could happen. I got that so far...
Yes. In practice you can very well accept small transactions with just one confirmation. If it weren't for a full mempool, even zero confirmations would be fine for some cases.
3). But what if we could accomplish item#1 and #2 in 5 minutes, 3 minutes or even 30 seconds - shouldn't that be a good thing ? Why make it more difficult, delay until 10 minutes and empowering expensive equipment ? That seems to feed into the endless cycles of who's got bigger and faster mining capability? Understand that it seems to justify the rise in bitcoin price...
Hashrate will always be a reflection of Bitcoin's price and the size of its block rewards / transaction fees. As long as its profitable to squeeze some more miners in, that's exactly what's going to happen. Block intervals have little to do with mining profitability and reducing block intervals would not cause a decrease in hashrate.
All things equal, the only way to reduce electricity spent on Bitcoin is by reducing the block reward. Which is exactly what is happening every ~4 years. It's just that Bitcoin's price and thus mining profitability has always managed to keep up with the decline of mining profitability caused by the halvings -- and then some.
4). What about making the 51st % node (with the longest chain) to be a lucky lottery winner and avoid increasing the difficulty level and eliminate the need for fancy equipment and energy burning all together -wouldn't that be more fair and efficient ways to utilize energy and resources ? At the same time avoiding the centralization of miners all together ??
I don't understand what you are trying to suggest. What, according to your definition, would be the 51st % node? Every node follows the longest chain. Every miner that creates a new block by definition has prolonged the longest chain and thus created the longest chain.
Yeah, this would be nice, but everything has it's drawbacks. Satoshi considered all of this, but this was the best solution he could think of.
More you wait, the bigger security, there is just no surpassing that.
1) 10 minutes was thought to be enough to make Bitcoin very fast. Decreasing the average time between blocks increases the risks of orphan blocks. You need to understand that 10 minutes are an average time between blocks, some are closer together.
2 and 3) It isn't about confirmations, it isn't that simple. If you decrease the confirmation time then you decrease the security of that one confirmation and need to have multiple to reach the same security level. And as I said above, that has big drawbacks. There is a reason that 6 confirmations are recommended. Orphan blocks have to happen every now and then, that is just up to chance. The longest orphan chain was 4 blocks long, as far as I know.
4) That would just mean that security of Bitcoin isn't present at all times. Every now and then an attacker would get control of the whole Bitcoin network and during that time Bitcoin would be insecure. A financial system that is secure sometime isn't worth anything.
More you wait, the bigger security, there is just no surpassing that.
1) 10 minutes was thought to be enough to make Bitcoin very fast. Decreasing the average time between blocks increases the risks of orphan blocks. You need to understand that 10 minutes are an average time between blocks, some are closer together.
2 and 3) It isn't about confirmations, it isn't that simple. If you decrease the confirmation time then you decrease the security of that one confirmation and need to have multiple to reach the same security level. And as I said above, that has big drawbacks. There is a reason that 6 confirmations are recommended. Orphan blocks have to happen every now and then, that is just up to chance. The longest orphan chain was 4 blocks long, as far as I know.
4) That would just mean that security of Bitcoin isn't present at all times. Every now and then an attacker would get control of the whole Bitcoin network and during that time Bitcoin would be insecure. A financial system that is secure sometime isn't worth anything.
I apologize if I ask the following obvious questions and perhaps risk wasting everyone's time. But, I have these nagging questions for a while now:
1). As I understand it, the 10 minutes delay is to create a new block that there's enough/ sufficient time to fill and confirm the transactions (globally). But isn't it quite wasteful to keep adjusting the difficulty level to maintain the 10 minutes delay ? What is so special about the 10 minutes delay? Has there been any study to quantify more accurately the amount of time to reach the nodes globally ?
2). Let say if we don't have to worry about the trust issue, in theory we only need one, or perhaps two confirmations right ? So for the remaining 51% confirmations is essentially to ensure that there's no cheating could happen. I got that so far...
3). But what if we could accomplish item#1 and #2 in 5 minutes, 3 minutes or even 30 seconds - shouldn't that be a good thing ? Why make it more difficult, delay until 10 minutes and empowering expensive equipment ? That seems to feed into the endless cycles of who's got bigger and faster mining capability? Understand that it seems to justify the rise in bitcoin price...
4). What about making the 51st % node (with the longest chain) to be a lucky lottery winner and avoid increasing the difficulty level and eliminate the need for fancy equipment and energy burning all together -wouldn't that be more fair and efficient ways to utilize energy and resources ? At the same time avoiding the centralization of miners all together ??
I am guessing that this is too simple and too good to be true - but I have to ask...
Thank you in advance for your reply/ input !
1). As I understand it, the 10 minutes delay is to create a new block that there's enough/ sufficient time to fill and confirm the transactions (globally). But isn't it quite wasteful to keep adjusting the difficulty level to maintain the 10 minutes delay ? What is so special about the 10 minutes delay? Has there been any study to quantify more accurately the amount of time to reach the nodes globally ?
2). Let say if we don't have to worry about the trust issue, in theory we only need one, or perhaps two confirmations right ? So for the remaining 51% confirmations is essentially to ensure that there's no cheating could happen. I got that so far...
3). But what if we could accomplish item#1 and #2 in 5 minutes, 3 minutes or even 30 seconds - shouldn't that be a good thing ? Why make it more difficult, delay until 10 minutes and empowering expensive equipment ? That seems to feed into the endless cycles of who's got bigger and faster mining capability? Understand that it seems to justify the rise in bitcoin price...
4). What about making the 51st % node (with the longest chain) to be a lucky lottery winner and avoid increasing the difficulty level and eliminate the need for fancy equipment and energy burning all together -wouldn't that be more fair and efficient ways to utilize energy and resources ? At the same time avoiding the centralization of miners all together ??
I am guessing that this is too simple and too good to be true - but I have to ask...
Thank you in advance for your reply/ input !
Jump to: