Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Development & Technical Discussion => Topic started by: Anon136 on April 09, 2013, 11:19:27 PM



Title: why not retarget dificulty more often?
Post by: Anon136 on April 09, 2013, 11:19:27 PM
Why did satoshi choose to have the difficulty re-target every 2000 blocks? why not 1000? why not 10? for that matter why not re-target every block?

it looks as if bytecoin is going to die and it seems as if this could have been prevented by allowing the difficulty to re-target more frequently. I was thinking every 8 blocks. I still think there is a lot of merit to the idea of a bitcoin clone for reasons i wont get into here, i have a thread about it. If bytecoin does die im thinking about adjusting the re-target rate and re-releasing it just looking for some feedback.

*note: im not looking for feedback on whether its a good idea to clone bitcoin, im looking for feedback on whether it is a good idea to lower the re-target rate"


Title: Re: why not retarget dificulty more often?
Post by: 2112 on April 09, 2013, 11:40:28 PM
If there are two competing blocks with two different timestamps at the end of the retarget period you end up with two sub-chains, each with different difficulty. They have to converge globally to the one longest chain.

This convergence is slower than the normal "orphan block/branch/sub-chain" convergence in the middle of the retarget period.

gmaxwell wrote several detailed posts about the issue, search his past posts for the word "convergence" and its variants.


Title: Re: why not retarget dificulty more often?
Post by: Anon136 on April 10, 2013, 12:04:49 AM
If there are two competing blocks with two different timestamps at the end of the retarget period you end up with two sub-chains, each with different difficulty. They have to converge globally to the one longest chain.

This convergence is slower than the normal "orphan block/branch/sub-chain" convergence in the middle of the retarget period.

gmaxwell wrote several detailed posts about the issue, search his past posts for the word "convergence" and its variants.


thankyou very much. I will do that search.