AdamWhite suggests that a single bitcoin confirmation takes about ten minutes, and that since the likelihood of a blockchain reorg is so low, for all practical purposes bitcoin transactions take only ten minutes to confirm.
I accept that. But I'm pretty sure that four seconds beats ten minutes any day of the week. Cheers AdamWhite!
And don't forget this 10 minutes are
average! You can be unlucky and have to wait 30-60 mins for
one confirmation.
Well have a look at the blocks
74637 ->
74638 even ~7 hours are possible.
Also no surprise "pille" didn't mention you can be lucky instead and wait 1 or 2 minutes
I accept that too.
1% chance of my Bitcoin transaction confirming in 1-2 minutes.
100% chance of my Dash transaction confirming in 4 seconds.
Which one do I choose? Hmm...
There's something everyone missing. When a ReOrg happens in the blockchain and it enables a double-spend to overwrite a unconfirmed/confirmed transaction, it's because an attack happened. There's 2 types of attacks:
1.) Unconfirmed Double-spend : Propagate two transactions at once from separate edges of the graph. In this case, you need to wait for much more than 1 confirmation to know which transaction the network is going to take.
2.) Confirmed Transaction Double-spend : Get some mining equipment, then mine a transaction with input X to pay yourself. When you solve a block, initiate the payment you want to make on the network also using input X, but paying some victim merchant. After they accept your transaction and it's also accepted into a block, release your block and cause a fork. Which way is the network going to go? Who knows.
Both of these are intentional, there isn't a probability involved at all. When the attacker does it, there's a situation where you don't know what's going to happen in the future. This is what IX solves, the uncertainty. Both also have something is common, Bitcoin is vulnerable to them and IX is not. Digital currency should work like cash. Once you transfer value, it shouldn't be able to be undone. It takes about 60 minutes for something to be considered solid and not reversible on the Bitcoin network. That's why 6-confirmations is a standard on their network and ours gets the same amount of security in 1-4 seconds.
I hope they will add InstantX deposits soon. 