Network is only relevant to the pool when there's a Diff Change.
Of course the network causes the Diff Change.
But that's once every 2016 blocks (or about once every 2 weeks) - and was the main case in this particular question.
Otherwise, the hash rate of other pools and the network, between diff changes, has no expected effect on us.
Yes, I get that. Our hashes are dependent on difficulty. However, difficulty is adjusted to maintain block time. What is sole variable in block time? Hashes. So while that only happens every two weeks, you are still competing against the rest of the network to find a block faster.
Otherwise, what you are saying is that if every other pool in the world could close up shop for 2 weeks right after difficulty change, then we would not find any more blocks during that time than we would have expected to prior to the 2 week shutoff.
That's what would happen - yes - we wouldn't expect to find blocks any faster, until the next diff change - if every pool on the planet closed but us.
In that case it would also be even worse: the next diff change would be MUCH slower than 2 week - it's not based on time, it's based on 2016 blocks.
So it would have to wait until we found ... 2016 more blocks ... at the expected rate we find blocks - currently one every 2.12 days.
Ouch that would take a LONG time to get to the next diff change if we were the only ones mining Bitcoin ... ~4274 days to the next diff change
Thank you for still trying to explain but I'm still not following......When I was on slush for a short time, you could see along the chart how much work we had completed for every block. There were many blocks where we were very close to hitting but then someone else did. Had the other pool not existed, then it seems to me, that sooner rather than later, we would have cracked it with a little more hashpower thrown at it.
The misunderstanding is probably: "we were very close to hitting"
You are never close to hitting a block, you either find one or you don't find one, with every hash you do.
There is of course an expected number of hashes to find a block - the N = network difficulty * 2^32
But that doesn't mean you will find one every N hashes - that's just the expected average.
It's easy to follow if you consider hashing blocks the same as rolling a dice - since they are the same in basic understanding.
When you roll a dice, trying to get a "5 or a 6", you are never "close" to getting a "5 or a 6", you either get a "5 or a 6" or you don't.
There's no in-between yes and no.
Bitcoin hashing is exactly the same - but there's a very large number of "yes" values and an even WAY larger number of "no" values.
Question...would my model of thinking be correct say if difficulty adjusted every block? like LCC?
"Yes" and "I don't know"
"Yes" I think so if difficulty adjusted every block, and "I don't know" (nor do I want to know) anything about LCC
