Author

Topic: Question about block generation (Read 1137 times)

legendary
Activity: 938
Merit: 1001
bitcoin - the aerogel of money
April 22, 2011, 07:29:49 AM
#3
A Paypal transaction takes 6 months to confirm.

That I call extremely inconvenient.
full member
Activity: 238
Merit: 100
April 22, 2011, 03:35:45 AM
#2
It is arbitrary but it is a reasonable tradeoff between confirmation time and network consistency. If the blocks were created every minute or so, there will be a lot of "collisions", situations where blocks are created at almost the same time that result in the chain fork. Now, the chain forks are rare.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
I have always been afraid of banks.
April 22, 2011, 03:07:38 AM
#1
I am wondering why blocks are generated only once every 10 or so minutes.  Why not halve or quarter the time it takes to generate a block and lower the reward by the same amount so that transactions can be confirmed faster?  I feel like the confirmation of transactions is currently the weakest part of bitcoins, and that it makes them extremely inconvenient if they ever become a currency used in real life transactions.
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