I have a question for Rofo or any other knowledgeable developers in the crypto community:
Does the 1 block difficulty retarget have any detriments? I think it is the most fair and balanced system for mining difficulty, so I was wondering why don't other major cryptos do this? Is there some sort of risk or detriment to having it retarget every block?
Answers would be greatly appreciated.
well, i am not a developer, just an observer, but you have stumbled onto a topic that i have noticed, many developers try to avoid.
i do have a couple of theories though.
the 1 block difficulty change acts ( in a way) like the kimoto gravity well ( which i have seen other coins use as a gimmick to gain exposure). which as you pointed out is immensely advantageous in regards of discouraging multipools from popping the difficulty up and then leaving all of us to deal with it for another 300 blocks.
however i am beginning to think that that may be the very reason as to why other coins are not implementing such a method. most coins are more interested in " getting the difficulty up" in order to garner attention and thus TEMPORARY adoption. thus guaranteeing that their coin will only be a viable option for a short time while gaining as much value from the miners and exchanges as possible before bailing and taking their " winnings".
i'm sure that you too, have noticed the seemingly primary desire to get onto craptsy. and for the most part craptsy looks at total volume and DIFFICULTY of said coin, when considering as to add said coin to the exchange ( nevermind the bribe [ 4BTC worth of said coin] that all devs pay to be added). this is because the common view is, if the difficulty is up then so is the value. while not taking into account TEMPORARY jumps in network hash rate, which can be manipulated, that increases the difficulty level of said coin.
so in short, of a number of theories that i have regarding the matter, this one seems to be the most profitable for the development team. especially since an number of shitcoins developers have been discovered to have built huge rigs for this very reason. ( to jack up difficulty and network hash rate) in order to gain attention and access to the PUMP AND DUMP exchanges.
and for reasons such as this ( there are more) i personally loath the idea of calling Noble a coin, it is a currency with an amazing dev team and an equally amazing community behind it.
Thats a valid hypothesis.. i would like to add my own speculation as well..
for the most part coins are clones of other successful coins. So in quite a few cases.. adjusting difficulty is not something within a dev's ability.
I believe its because the ALT coin market.. is still young and as such is constantly evolving.. it was fine at the start for say bitcoin,litecoin to have a large block retarget setting because those were pretty much your options but we have a constant wave of new coins which means everyone tends to split their mining constantly looking to increase their portfolio.. but if you look at the coinwarz you will notice very few coins with high difficulty.. even WDC was around a 50 range difficulty at most...
the combination of btc hitting $1200 and Doge with its 1 million block reward basically shattered the system... everyone wants to get rich so they get in and mine a new coin at start.. to get the early adopters bonus.. i have observed that the coins which get hampered the most with high difficulty are usually coins which offer million coin block rewards.. the reason being everyone wants to own a few million... just in case it increases in value.. the whole numbers game of having a million coins down the line could make a huge difference in your portfolio. look at meow.. it traded at 1 satoshi since mid-december till it got pumped recently and hit a high of 115 on coinedup... buying 0.1 btc or 10M Meow would have netted you 10 btc selling at 100... in a period of 1.5 months.
Another issue is the case of multipools... with more and more choices coming to the market every week.. People are getting tired of trying to vet a new coin.. instead.. they send their hashrates to a multipool and leave the decision of most profitable coin to mine to others.. sure you pay 4% but at least you wont get stuck on a lousy investment..
The sad part is... one common factor is Laziness... Everyone wants maximum rewards for minimal effort... Dev is too lazy to implement 1 block retarget ( i specifically hate a coin which announces a bounty for first working Windows/MacOsX/Linux wallet).. Investors are too lazy to spend the time to research factors such as... the block rewards and its relationship to price and difficulty, community support, etc.. I keep seeing new players who immediately come in with their first post declaring... Coin is dead. Doge brought a lot of outside attention but it also bought in a lot of players looking for a quick payoff.. in other words.. if they dont turnover 1 btc on a 0.01 investment in 2-3 days.. it means.. the coin failed..