Thanks to both of you.
That makes sense.
Topic: Why 10 minutes? (Read 1223 times)
Why a block every 10 minutes?
I'm sure this was discussed extensively when the protocol was first established and on this forum more than once, but I can't find anything on the reasoning.
On the surface, it seems to me if you are trying to create a global currency, then limiting any exchange of that currency to an average of once every 10 minutes seems like an artificial restriction on trade, and with some blocks I've seen a wait of over an hour until the the next.
I'm certain that it must have something to do with trust and preventing double-spending, but I would love to have that made more explicit.
Network latency. Honestly, I heard that it was just an arbitrary number that they picked.I'm sure this was discussed extensively when the protocol was first established and on this forum more than once, but I can't find anything on the reasoning.
On the surface, it seems to me if you are trying to create a global currency, then limiting any exchange of that currency to an average of once every 10 minutes seems like an artificial restriction on trade, and with some blocks I've seen a wait of over an hour until the the next.
I'm certain that it must have something to do with trust and preventing double-spending, but I would love to have that made more explicit.
What breaks if you aim for a block a minute and give the miner that found it 5 BTC instead of 50 for finding one, on average, every 10 minutes?
Probably nothing. However, the only speeds that matter are <5 seconds and >5 seconds because that would be a reasonable amount of time for a person to wait when they are checking out at a grocery store, for example. Any longer and the speed doesn't matter as long as it's less than a day. Since the network latency for other big p2p projects are around 30 seconds, that's as low as we could go. Thus, 10 minutes provides the best trade-offs between latency, speed, bandwidth, and storage.Further reading:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=4382.msg67351#msg67351
There is a trade off between speed and wasted work from network latency. If you have a new block every minute and it takes 10 seconds to propagate the fact of a new block then ~16.6% of work miners do will be wasted. With ten minute blocks it's more like 1.6%.
edit: another way to say is that 16.6% of blocks found would end up orphaned because they were found after another valid block.
edit: another way to say is that 16.6% of blocks found would end up orphaned because they were found after another valid block.
Why a block every 10 minutes?
I'm sure this was discussed extensively when the protocol was first established and on this forum more than once, but I can't find anything on the reasoning.
On the surface, it seems to me if you are trying to create a global currency, then limiting any exchange of that currency to an average of once every 10 minutes seems like an artificial restriction on trade, and with some blocks I've seen a wait of over an hour until the the next.
I'm certain that it must have something to do with trust and preventing double-spending, but I would love to have that made more explicit.
What breaks if you aim for a block a minute and give the miner that found it 5 BTC instead of 50 for finding one, on average, every 10 minutes?
I'm sure this was discussed extensively when the protocol was first established and on this forum more than once, but I can't find anything on the reasoning.
On the surface, it seems to me if you are trying to create a global currency, then limiting any exchange of that currency to an average of once every 10 minutes seems like an artificial restriction on trade, and with some blocks I've seen a wait of over an hour until the the next.
I'm certain that it must have something to do with trust and preventing double-spending, but I would love to have that made more explicit.
What breaks if you aim for a block a minute and give the miner that found it 5 BTC instead of 50 for finding one, on average, every 10 minutes?
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