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Title: Question about block generation Post by: Tawsix on April 22, 2011, 08:07:38 AM 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.
Title: Re: Question about block generation Post by: Raulo on April 22, 2011, 08:35:45 AM 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.
Title: Re: Question about block generation Post by: Timo Y on April 22, 2011, 12:29:49 PM A Paypal transaction takes 6 months to confirm.
That I call extremely inconvenient. |