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Topic: Bitcoin Block time (Read 549 times)

newbie
Activity: 150
Merit: 0
August 29, 2018, 05:10:45 AM
#32
Complexity of network bitcoin is built so that the average block is generated every 10 minutes. The reward for the block is reduced by 2 times every 210000 blocks
legendary
Activity: 2870
Merit: 7490
Crypto Swap Exchange
August 23, 2018, 01:23:08 AM
#30
The reason I do this discussion is that people dont want to hear about other crypto for payment. I dont understand

Then you, merchant, payment processor or payment gateway should consider use/accept zero-confirmation, it's not too risky if it's for small payment and any explorer/nodes don't detect double-spend attempt (with sufficient fee obviously).
CPFP also help if you want to use your bitcoin immediately.

Someone with good statics knowlege could calculate how average the block time is really. So normally it should be a Gauss normal distribution with the maximum at 10 mins. But it is not, cause e.g. miners are activated or deactivated and difficulty can not react. Look how many blocks are found exactly 10 mins after the last one or even 11 or 9 min.
There is no maximum on the time between blocks, so there is no maximum at 10 minutes. The distribution time between blocks is not a normal distribution. Rather it is poisson with the true mean at ~9.7 minutes. The difficulty adjusts to make it 10 minutes, but new hardware coming online pulls the time down. Since it is poisson, the time can vary a lot, from 0 minutes to several hours, there is no maximum at 10 minutes.
The true mean for bitcoin since genesis block up to now, is ~9.4 minutes last time I calculated this divergence. How did you get 9.7?

AFAIK that was mean in few years ago. My rough calculation also show 9.4 minutes mean time.
legendary
Activity: 1456
Merit: 1175
Always remember the cause!
August 22, 2018, 05:15:31 PM
#29
Someone with good statics knowlege could calculate how average the block time is really. So normally it should be a Gauss normal distribution with the maximum at 10 mins. But it is not, cause e.g. miners are activated or deactivated and difficulty can not react. Look how many blocks are found exactly 10 mins after the last one or even 11 or 9 min.
There is no maximum on the time between blocks, so there is no maximum at 10 minutes. The distribution time between blocks is not a normal distribution. Rather it is poisson with the true mean at ~9.7 minutes. The difficulty adjusts to make it 10 minutes, but new hardware coming online pulls the time down. Since it is poisson, the time can vary a lot, from 0 minutes to several hours, there is no maximum at 10 minutes.
The true mean for bitcoin since genesis block up to now, is ~9.4 minutes last time I calculated this divergence. How did you get 9.7?
staff
Activity: 3458
Merit: 6793
Just writing some code
August 22, 2018, 04:34:03 PM
#28
Someone with good statics knowlege could calculate how average the block time is really. So normally it should be a Gauss normal distribution with the maximum at 10 mins. But it is not, cause e.g. miners are activated or deactivated and difficulty can not react. Look how many blocks are found exactly 10 mins after the last one or even 11 or 9 min.
There is no maximum on the time between blocks, so there is no maximum at 10 minutes. The distribution time between blocks is not a normal distribution. Rather it is poisson with the true mean at ~9.7 minutes. The difficulty adjusts to make it 10 minutes, but new hardware coming online pulls the time down. Since it is poisson, the time can vary a lot, from 0 minutes to several hours, there is no maximum at 10 minutes.
member
Activity: 637
Merit: 11
August 22, 2018, 07:02:16 AM
#27
As I mentioned before it is never a 10 min average. It is NOT a Gauss normal function.

The reason I do this discussion is that people dont want to hear about other crypto for payment. I dont understand
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 2481
August 22, 2018, 05:51:26 AM
#26
As you say, bitcoin haven't fix this issue yet, 

Who said it is an issue ?
This isn't an issue at all. It is necessary.

The adjustment each 2016 blocks is to keep a 10 minute average.



and this was one of the fork reasons, bitcoin cash brings a solution where the difficulty changes each block. 

Changing difficulty each block is a horrible approach.
Mining a block is based on luck. And in a period with 2 or 3 blocks being mined successively the algorithm would adjust the difficulty to a level which practically wouldn't be mineable anymore.
Not to mention what kind of potential for abuse this offers.

That is the reason the interval of 2 weeks (2016 blocks with a 10-minute block time) has been chosen.
To adjust fast enough to not create a death spiral and to adjust slow enough to not get affected too much from short streaks with multiple blocks caused by 'luck' or an heavily increasing hashrate.



So if you don't like bitcoin for this reason i recommend you to give a try to bch.

 Roll Eyes



And lets wait to see if bitcoin take the solutions that bch brings for this issue.   

An algorithm for difficulty adjustment should be a working feature (e.g. BTC). Not an issue or something 'necessary' which needs adjustments and optimization to somehow work stable (e.g. BCH).

legendary
Activity: 3346
Merit: 3125
August 21, 2018, 01:05:48 PM
#25
I am really wondering about BTC Block Time.

This morning only 6 Block found in 2 hours. Of course it depends on luck. But it depends also an HASH Rate. This is so enormous high and only adaped every 2 weeks.

Why does the biggest coin does not solve this difficulty problem? And why still more and more miners start so that the difficulty rises without watching the price.

In theory bitcoin have blocks each 10 minutes, that mean 6 blocks each hour, and i say in theory because as you say before, some time we see a low number of blocks in lot of time. but at the same time i have seen before 3 blocks back to back.

As you say, bitcoin haven't fix this issue yet, and this was one of the fork reasons, bitcoin cash brings a solution where the difficulty changes each block. So if you don't like bitcoin for this reason i recommend you to give a try to bch. And lets wait to see if bitcoin take the solutions that bch brings for this issue.  
member
Activity: 637
Merit: 11
August 17, 2018, 10:17:55 AM
#24
n a more simple words, Block time is the time which the networks takes to generate one extra block or the time taken from one Block to another.No one can say exactly how much Block Time will it take to mine another. The 10 minute window is just an average. There is a generation calculator that will tell you how long it might take to mine a block.

Someone with good statics knowlege could calculate how average the block time is really. So normally it should be a Gauss normal distribution with the maximum at 10 mins. But it is not, cause e.g. miners are activated or deactivated and difficulty can not react. Look how many blocks are found exactly 10 mins after the last one or even 11 or 9 min.


newbie
Activity: 28
Merit: 0
August 17, 2018, 06:15:25 AM
#23
n a more simple words, Block time is the time which the networks takes to generate one extra block or the time taken from one Block to another.No one can say exactly how much Block Time will it take to mine another. The 10 minute window is just an average. There is a generation calculator that will tell you how long it might take to mine a block.
sr. member
Activity: 742
Merit: 395
I am alive but in hibernation.
August 14, 2018, 01:02:29 PM
#22

This is completely unrelated to the post you were quoting.
A transaction with a calculated fee (the fee is just an estimation of getting a confirmation after X minutes) does not have to confirm within this timeframe. This is depending on multiple factors.
The amount of transactions inside the mempool could increase, making your fee which currently was totally fine to get a confirmation the next block now isn't enough to get it confirmed within 10 blocks.
Or no blocks are being found at the moment. The difficulty still stays the same. And so does the average block time of 10 minutes. But 2 hours without a block isn't that unusual. But 3 Blocks within 10 minutes aren't that unusual either.

All these calculations of a fee are just a estimation. If you want to better estimate the fee, take a look at https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,8h. You will be able to guess the fee to use pretty clearly.


But still,  OP  is paying more fees for a speedier transaction (might user want to payment to be processed (a single confirmation) within an hour.
User put high fees in transaction , so that it will be confirmed in the next block.
If next block is not getting mined in next 3 hours then doing payment in next 1 hour is impossible for user whatever the fees user is paying.
Actually OP is saying he want to do speedier transaction by putting more fees but block mining speed becomes a limiting factor.
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 2481
August 14, 2018, 01:18:21 AM
#21
It is a measure of how long it will take the hashing power of the network to find a solution to the block hash. The difficulty is calculated proportionally to the hashing power so that, on average, the block time is 10 minutes for Bitcoin. In reality, block times can vary. It is different for each Cryptocurrency.

Mmmmh thats nothing new. My problem is when the core client suggest a fee I use it. And when I use the fee for 20 min and it takes 3 hours with twice double the fee, it is lets say difficult for payment

This is completely unrelated to the post you were quoting.
A transaction with a calculated fee (the fee is just an estimation of getting a confirmation after X minutes) does not have to confirm within this timeframe. This is depending on multiple factors.
The amount of transactions inside the mempool could increase, making your fee which currently was totally fine to get a confirmation the next block now isn't enough to get it confirmed within 10 blocks.
Or no blocks are being found at the moment. The difficulty still stays the same. And so does the average block time of 10 minutes. But 2 hours without a block isn't that unusual. But 3 Blocks within 10 minutes aren't that unusual either.

All these calculations of a fee are just a estimation. If you want to better estimate the fee, take a look at https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,8h. You will be able to guess the fee to use pretty clearly.
member
Activity: 637
Merit: 11
August 13, 2018, 09:53:32 AM
#20
It is a measure of how long it will take the hashing power of the network to find a solution to the block hash. The difficulty is calculated proportionally to the hashing power so that, on average, the block time is 10 minutes for Bitcoin. In reality, block times can vary. It is different for each Cryptocurrency.

Mmmmh thats nothing new. My problem is when the core client suggest a fee I use it. And when I use the fee for 20 min and it takes 3 hours with twice double the fee, it is lets say difficult for payment

By the way one of my post was deleted. So as I said crypto community should not see BTC as the holy cow.
sr. member
Activity: 742
Merit: 395
I am alive but in hibernation.
August 12, 2018, 04:54:17 PM
#19
@OP.
Few days back I checked the hash rate graph and I found that difficulty always  increased with each passing month and it never dipped so I do not think that we ever encountered any such situation where re target might happened after more than 2 weeks.

This simply isn't true, hashrate (thus difficulty) has decreased many times in the past.

I know, I was quoting the general trend , even if it dipped it made up for the dip.


I understand , my comment "it never dipped" was wrong , but in my mind I was seeing a linear line that is going up almost every month.
staff
Activity: 4284
Merit: 8808
August 10, 2018, 09:40:56 AM
#18
@OP.
Few days back I checked the hash rate graph and I found that difficulty always  increased with each passing month and it never dipped so I do not think that we ever encountered any such situation where re target might happened after more than 2 weeks.

This simply isn't true, hashrate (thus difficulty) has decreased many times in the past.
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 2481
August 10, 2018, 07:46:55 AM
#17
So you tell something now in beta is the future of payment.

Every thing has been in beta once. The LN is still in development stage. Did you expect the LN would be built within a few weeks ?



Otherwise you say something about prooved and secure.

This is right. The bitcoin blockchain is the most secured one.
Not a single attack on bitcoin could really damage its network.
And since it has the most hashrate (and the most 'work' being used to mine) it is the crypto which needs the highest 'investment' to get attacked.



And also a 51% attack of BTC is possible. 2 pools more then 50% of hash rate.

Everything is possible.
But both pools would effectively go bankrupt if they would decide to perform 51% attacks.
They would be left with worthless hardware and coins without any value anymore.

These pools actually are the most ambicious one letting bitcoin NOT get attacked. Thats how they make their money.

sr. member
Activity: 742
Merit: 395
I am alive but in hibernation.
August 09, 2018, 10:21:31 PM
#16

The network behaves as it was initially designed. Every 2016 blocks there is a retarget, the difficulty gets adjusted upwards or downwards so the AVERAGE time between two blocks is ~10 minutes.
You are correct tough, if the networks hashrate would drop to 50% in the first 10 minutes after a retarget, it would take about 4 weeks untill the next retarget, at which point the time between two blocks would once again be ~10 minutes. This is still "working as designed" tough, theoretically, there is no problem... Sure, blocks would probably be completely full for the next 4 weeks, a fee war could start, it would take a longer time to get a confirmation,.... But everything would sort itself out, without technical problems.

The fact that at this moment, the time between the last 6 blocks was ~20 minutes (i didn't verify this): no problem, it's completely possible... That's why the difficulty is adjusted so the AVERAGE time between two blocks is ~10minutes, and that's also why we don't retarget every 10 or 20 blocks (if we would retarget to often, the difficulty would jump up and down quite a bit, since the number of samples would be to low).

Solving a block requires the miners to increment a nonce in the block header, then create a sha256d hash of this new header and check if the result in under the current target. It's possible that after a miner receives a new block and start working on the next block, he finds a header whose sha256d hash is under the target in less than a second, it's also possible he'll never find a valid block...

Thanks for clearing the misconception of 2 weeks. so it is exactly 2016 block (14 days *24 hours * 6 block in an hour).

@OP.
Few days back I checked the hash rate graph and I found that difficulty always  increased with each passing month and it never dipped so I do not think that we ever encountered any such situation where re target might happened after more than 2 weeks.
member
Activity: 637
Merit: 11
August 09, 2018, 11:21:20 AM
#15
So the fee was 6000 sat per kB. I think that is ok.

That's 6 sat/B. 10 would have been needed for an instant confirmation today. Can be seen here.



I tried to use Lightning network, all wallets even the offcial one I used were "not compaible" to the test I made (this picture you can paint for 1 sat per pixel)

The lightning network still is in beta.
And most of the wallets available currently do only work with the testnet (except if you make changes to the configuration, then it is possible to use them on the main net).
So if you didn't explicitly configure them to work on the mainnet, they were configured for the testnet.



What is the real difference. Some special nodes confirm the transaction faster like instant send in Dash?? Thats it, nothing really special 

No. Thats not how it works.
At least use 3 minutes of your precious time to check the link i have posted (to have at least a bit of knowledge regarding LN):

If you instead don't want to spend 15 minutes of your life, you might look at the wikipedia article instead.
So you tell something now in beta is the future of payment. Otherwise you say something about prooved and secure.

Bitcoin was the first crypto that is ok. But dont treat it all like al holy cow. There have been some optimising with fork and thats ok too.
And also a 51% attack of BTC is possible. 2 pools more then 50% of hash rate. Now it is not useful but think of the future
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 2481
August 09, 2018, 10:22:01 AM
#14
Eclair has a pretty stable mainnet version for android which I've been using for several weeks without a hitch. Lnd and c-lightning can also be run on the mainnet without having to reconfigure them

I was under the impression that most wallets were for 'testnet only'. And that you could configure them to run on mainnet, but it was recommended not to do so.
It may have been like that a few months ago. But unfortunately i don't remember, i could also be wrong.
legendary
Activity: 3584
Merit: 5243
https://merel.mobi => buy facemasks with BTC/LTC
August 09, 2018, 10:11:22 AM
#13
--snip
The lightning network still is in beta.
And most of the wallets available currently do only work with the testnet (except if you make changes to the configuration, then it is possible to use them on the main net).
So if you didn't explicitly configure them to work on the mainnet, they were configured for the testnet.
--snip--

Not necessarily true.. Eclair has a pretty stable mainnet version for android which I've been using for several weeks without a hitch. Lnd and c-lightning can also be run on the mainnet without having to reconfigure them (although you need a synced node for both)
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 2481
August 09, 2018, 09:59:04 AM
#12
So the fee was 6000 sat per kB. I think that is ok.

That's 6 sat/B. 10 would have been needed for an instant confirmation today. Can be seen here.



I tried to use Lightning network, all wallets even the offcial one I used were "not compaible" to the test I made (this picture you can paint for 1 sat per pixel)

The lightning network still is in beta.
And most of the wallets available currently do only work with the testnet (except if you make changes to the configuration, then it is possible to use them on the main net).
So if you didn't explicitly configure them to work on the mainnet, they were configured for the testnet.



What is the real difference. Some special nodes confirm the transaction faster like instant send in Dash?? Thats it, nothing really special 

No. Thats not how it works.
At least use 3 minutes of your precious time to check the link i have posted (to have at least a bit of knowledge regarding LN):

If you instead don't want to spend 15 minutes of your life, you might look at the wikipedia article instead.
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