Sorry if this is extremely noobie, but I recently bought some NXT to test with and have had my client open for about two days to see how the forging process works..it is now showing "You can generate the next block in 6092 days....." !!
Is this because I only have a few hundred NXT? Will I see ANY new NXT in my account before then?
In Bitcoin/PoW mining, the likelyhood of mining a block is proportional to how many hashes/sec. your miner can do. The more powerful your miner, the more likely you'll generate a block. The difficulty in generating a Bitcoin block is very high, and a miner going alone has a very small chance of generating a block.
Instead, most Bitcoin miners choose to join a mining pool. They all pool their hashing power so it is more likely for someone in that group to generate a block vs. someone going alone. In return, everyone in the pool gets some income from finding a block together.
Think of each NXT as a PoW miner simulator with each NXT having the same PoW power.
There are NXT forging/mining pools forming now.
At the moment you have to send actual NXT to a forging pool in order to participate, and that's currently a bit like having to send your Bitcoin rig to someone else in order to mine blocks.
Soon it will be possible to safely lease your forging power to a pool without having to send any NXT.
It is up to you if you wish to join a forging pool now, or to wait a bit until you can lease your forging power.
Thanks very much for the reply! So I guess what you're saying is that if you have a small balance the chance of making any NXT from solo forging is pretty slim right?