Blocks are really lagging recently

[coinableS]

Last 6 blocks took 3 hours to solve, 3x longer than it's normally supposed to. Just bad luck or do you think some miners programmed to shut off at a certain price?

[Hazir]

So this 'lagging blocks' problem is partially responsible for a huge delay I observed on my transaction confirmation? Because there was really like 4 hours lagging confirmation last night... What is going on with the network?

[twister]

Don't know the reason behind it but I just send 2 payments and they both got confirmed within minutes. So maybe when this type of thing happens the others get solved much faster to make up for it.

And 352180 seems to be the only one that took longer than normal time, the rest of them seems normal.

[medicine]

It's all based on network difficulty and hashing rate.  Average should be 10 minutes, but depending on these 2 variables some blocks are found quicker and some slower.  There isn't any "making up" here.

Looks like overall hash rate dropped today so we're finding less than 6 blocks an hour at the moment.

http://bitcoincharts.com/

Peace

[Undermood]

Last 6 blocks took 3 hours to solve, 3x longer than it's normally supposed to. Just bad luck or do you think some miners programmed to shut off at a certain price?

I think there is high possibility that some miners are shutting down their mining rigs due to the declining price and high energy cost! If they cant make any profit, what is the point to continue to keep the mining rigs running?

[Amph]

this is due to the continuos difficulty retarget i think, we were at +6% now -2%(probably even more today)

you should blame the price for this

[Chicago]

Last 6 blocks took 3 hours to solve, 3x longer than it's normally supposed to. Just bad luck or do you think some miners programmed to shut off at a certain price?

I think there is high possibility that some miners are shutting down their mining rigs due to the declining price and high energy cost! If they cant make any profit, what is the point to continue to keep the mining rigs running?

Ya know... at least in North America we're hitting spring and the cold weather is leaving the Midwest. People who were mining for fun and profit as a hobby probably aren't heating their homes with their ASICs anymore as they have no need for the heat. It could just be the seasonal mining which is coming to an end in some regions.

Kind Regards,
-Chicago

[arlekyn13]

And once again I'm thinking it would be a good idea to reduce the interval between blocks to 1min average. This would also reduce difficulty adjustment period if maintaining the same number of blocks to calculate it. And, we might live to see the final bitcoin being mined!
Plus, we don't have to wait several more years to experience the true deflationary nature of BTC (price wise)

[Miracal]

And once again I'm thinking it would be a good idea to reduce the interval between blocks to 1min average. This would also reduce difficulty adjustment period if maintaining the same number of blocks to calculate it. And, we might live to see the final bitcoin being mined!
Plus, we don't have to wait several more years to experience the true deflationary nature of BTC (price wise)

Crazy idea! 1 min / block, block reward 25 BTC. In 15 min the created BTC will be increased to 375 BTC from 25 BTC, one day 36000 BTC from 2400. So many BTC are flooding to the market every day, the price will be crashed. Ppl will lose confidence to it.

[InceptionCoin]

do you think some miners programmed to shut off at a certain price?

It's quite possible.

And once again I'm thinking it would be a good idea to reduce the interval between blocks to 1min average. This would also reduce difficulty adjustment period if maintaining the same number of blocks to calculate it. And, we might live to see the final bitcoin being mined!
Plus, we don't have to wait several more years to experience the true deflationary nature of BTC (price wise)

Lol,
1) Reducing block time will reduce safety: now if your tx has 3 confirmations it means that you are guarded by approximately 30min x all-bitcoin-network-hashrate. If you reduce block time to one minute you need to wait 30 conf to get the same level of security.
2) Dream of all bitcoiners is the bitcoin as global accepted payment system. To rich this goal we need stable bitcoin now. There are a lot of unstable stuff around, i mean from one hand laws, regulation, from other price and hardware competitions, so at least basic principles should be untouched.

[unamis76]

People are just shutting down rigs. You can see many on our forums saying they cannot cover electricity costs anymore. Sometimes it seems like only China and some parts of America are mining

Also, summer is coming, and it's starting to get a bit hot on some places... So yeah there you have it

[ranochigo]

do you think some miners programmed to shut off at a certain price?

It's quite possible.

I don't see any reason in doing that. If they are mining on PPLNS system, they would ultimately lose out on some money due to how it works. Your shares wouldn't be counted for the block if you exit it early and the pool has bad luck.

And once again I'm thinking it would be a good idea to reduce the interval between blocks to 1min average. This would also reduce difficulty adjustment period if maintaining the same number of blocks to calculate it. And, we might live to see the final bitcoin being mined!
Plus, we don't have to wait several more years to experience the true deflationary nature of BTC (price wise)

Lol,
1) Reducing block time will reduce safety: now if your tx has 3 confirmations it means that you are guarded by approximately 30min x all-bitcoin-network-hashrate. If you reduce block time to one minute you need to wait 30 conf to get the same level of security.
2) Dream of all bitcoiners is the bitcoin as global accepted payment system. To rich this goal we need stable bitcoin now. There are a lot of unstable stuff around, i mean from one hand laws, regulation, from other price and hardware competitions, so at least basic principles should be untouched.

True. But still, you don't need 1 confirmation for most daily items that you would purchase. If you were to purchase something and it costs $5, the merchant can take several precautions and risk of double spending would be rather low. IMO, confirmations are only needed if you are purchasing online or paying for $30+ things.

[ashour]

The difficulty is adjusting frequently these days because the miners stop their machines when the price falls. This will probably be solved once the price rises a bit and miners open their mining rigs to mine bitcoin and make transactions fast as before.

[neurotypical]

So this 'lagging blocks' problem is partially responsible for a huge delay I observed on my transaction confirmation? Because there was really like 4 hours lagging confirmation last night... What is going on with the network?

I was waiting for a confirmation last night on Poloniex, and had to go to sleep before the coins arrived.

[ashour]

So this 'lagging blocks' problem is partially responsible for a huge delay I observed on my transaction confirmation? Because there was really like 4 hours lagging confirmation last night... What is going on with the network?

I was waiting for a confirmation last night on Poloniex, and had to go to sleep before the coins arrived.

Maybe try to increase the miner fees  to get the transactions confirming faster ? Depends on if you need the coins ASAP or you wait until the next day, and I think ploniex credits coins after 6 confirmations. That's why it took so long .

[Fabrizio89]

Yeah the blockchain has been slow for like a month or so...

[ashour]

Yeah the blockchain has been slow for like a month or so...

Yea the miners have hard times with the recent price droppings. I hope the price rises a bit so mining becomes profitable again and the transactions times are faster than now.

[1Referee]

Perhaps a pool that for some reason had power issues and it's hardware was turned off, or a pool simply decided to turn off their harware due to low price.

That might have caused the difficulty to drop quite a bit. It's very annoying but you can't do anything beside waiting.

[Lauda]

Well you can't really say that it is lagging due that a number of blocks had to be previously found at a quicker rate. I've seen multiple blocks go under 10 minutes. That's why it has to level out at some point.
I guess the miners are having a hard time and the hashrate isn't consistent nor growing as it used to be. Hopefully we will see the price recover a bit to stabilize things.

[odolvlobo]

The difficulty is adjusting frequently these days because the miners stop their machines when the price falls.

The difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks regardless how many miners are mining. The time it takes to mine 2016 blocks is about 2 weeks and does not depend on how many miners are mining*.

This will probably be solved once the price rises a bit and miners open their mining rigs to mine bitcoin and make transactions fast as before.

The time it takes to confirm a transaction does not depend on the number of miners or the network hash rate*. The hash rate today is 10000 times the hash rate two years ago, yet transactions are still confirmed in about 10 minutes.


* Every 2016 blocks (about 2 weeks) the average confirmation time is adjusted to 10 minutes. During a 2 week period, if mining increases, then confirmation times are shorter by the relative increase in hash rate, and if mining decreases, then the confirmation times increase by the relative decrease in hash rate. For example, a 10% change in hash rate means confirmation times change by 10%. This lasts only until the end of the 2016 block period when the average confirmation time is adjusted to be 10 minutes again.