Why not 5Btc every 1 minute?

[shads]

It seems to me the biggest barrier for BTC to overcome in terms of widespread adoption is POS.  And with a 10 minute delay for first confirmation this is problematic at best.  I know this problem can be solved with BTC banks or payment processors but it is still a pretty fundamental barrier.

So why is that a block is set to take 10 mins on average for a 50BTC reward?  Why not 1 minute and 5Btc or 30 sec and 2.5Btc?  I understand that as you approach 1 second network latency might start to have an impact so there is a practical limit to how short a block cycle can be but I still don't get why it has to be so long?

[1715070611]

1715070611

[fascistmuffin]

That's actually a good thought, unless we've missed something about how BTC works. Something smaller would probably make solo mining better, as more people would be able to find blocks. I wonder if this wasn't thought of because the opencl mining wasn't considered when creating BTC.

[Austinh100]

not gunna lie i like this idea, i would love not to have to rely on a pool with all its fees and garbage and just solo mine if i knew that the chance to get a block was 10x and i would get 5BTC, Great Idea!

[Gdawg]

I like this idea too. I would love to solo mine but I just don't have enough hash to do it. This would make my life easier as I wouldn't have to worry if the pool went down either.

[fascistmuffin]

Just saw this on the bitcoin wiki:

Protocol modifications, such as increasing the block award from 50 to 100 BTC, are not compatible with clients already running in the network. If the developers were to release a new client that the majority of miners perceives as corrupt, or in violation of the project’s aims, that client would simply not catch on, and the few users who do try to use it would find that their transactions get rejected by the network.

Maybe a protocol change isn't viable at this time.

[Austinh100]

it is because later on in the chain the reward will go from 50 to 25BTC and even further on it will be 12.5BTC and so on till we got the 21m or so BTC, so it is def possible for the values to change

[Alex Beckenham]

I don't know the specifics, but the 10 minute window was chosen to make it less likely that an attacker can take over the block chain (Because they'd need far more processing power to do so).

Someone else will surely be able to explain it better than me.

[shads]

it is because later on in the chain the reward will go from 50 to 25BTC and even further on it will be 12.5BTC and so on till we got the 21m or so BTC, so it is def possible for the values to change

doesn't really alter the proposition though, just divide the expected time and the expected reward by the same number.  If you divided by ten then for the miners it would have the same net effect as forming a pool with 10 identcal machines, but for the end users (who really drive bitcoin) it means 9 mins less delay to get a confirmation.

[Austinh100]

it is because later on in the chain the reward will go from 50 to 25BTC and even further on it will be 12.5BTC and so on till we got the 21m or so BTC, so it is def possible for the values to change

doesn't really alter the proposition though, just divide the expected time and the expected reward by the same number.  If you divided by ten then for the miners it would have the same net effect as forming a pool with 10 identcal machines, but for the end users (who really drive bitcoin) it means 9 mins less delay to get a confirmation.

srry i was directing that towards fascistmuffin with the protocol change post

[Austinh100]

I don't know the specifics, but the 10 minute window was chosen to make it less likely that an attacker can take over the block chain (Because they'd need far more processing power to do so).

Someone else will surely be able to explain it better than me.

the probibility for this would stay the same because the chain would be smaller so therefore the damage done if it is taken over is smaller. So if 10 small chains were taken over it would equate to 1 large 50BTC chain 

[Alex Beckenham]

I don't know the specifics, but the 10 minute window was chosen to make it less likely that an attacker can take over the block chain (Because they'd need far more processing power to do so).

Someone else will surely be able to explain it better than me.

the probibility for this would stay the same because the chain would be smaller so therefore the damage done if it is taken over is smaller. So if 10 small chains were taken over it would equate to 1 large 50BTC chain 

Now that you mention it, if we're talking about the file size of the block chain, it'd be much much bigger if we switched to a 1-minute window.

[Austinh100]

I don't know the specifics, but the 10 minute window was chosen to make it less likely that an attacker can take over the block chain (Because they'd need far more processing power to do so).

Someone else will surely be able to explain it better than me.

the probibility for this would stay the same because the chain would be smaller so therefore the damage done if it is taken over is smaller. So if 10 small chains were taken over it would equate to 1 large 50BTC chain  

Now that you mention it, if we're talking about the file size of the block chain, it'd be much much bigger if we switched to a 1-minute window.

well wouldn't it just be 10x the # of chains at /10 the size?

[Alex Beckenham]

I don't know the specifics, but the 10 minute window was chosen to make it less likely that an attacker can take over the block chain (Because they'd need far more processing power to do so).

Someone else will surely be able to explain it better than me.

the probibility for this would stay the same because the chain would be smaller so therefore the damage done if it is taken over is smaller. So if 10 small chains were taken over it would equate to 1 large 50BTC chain  

Now that you mention it, if we're talking about the file size of the block chain, it'd be much much bigger if we switched to a 1-minute window.

well wouldn't it just be 10x the # of chains at /10 the size?

Except they wouldn't be 1/10th the size.... Just look at the length of these strings as a somewhat silly example:

"Congratulations you solved a block and have now been awarded 50 BTC!"
"Congratulations you solved a block and have now been awarded 5 BTC!"

Not exactly what's written to the block chain, but you can see what I mean that it won't make each block 1/10th of the size by dropping to 5btc.

[Austinh100]

Except they wouldn't be 1/10th the size.... Just look at the length of these strings as a somewhat silly example:

"Congratulations you solved a block and have now been awarded 50 BTC!"
"Congratulations you solved a block and have now been awarded 5 BTC!"

Not exactly what's written to the block chain, but you can see what I mean that it won't make each block 1/10th of the size by dropping to 5btc.

I get what your going for but for the most part chains work by having a small header to say "hey this is me" and a very small footer to say "im done =P" then the rest is just the data to be solved, which can be any length because it's specified by the header.

Revamp of your example:
Gratz = Header
BTC! = Footer
"Gratz you account has been given the sum of 50 BTC!"
"Gratz you won 5 BTC!"

[neneko]

While you made a few mistakes on the details of the mechanics you're basically right. There would be 10 times as many blocks, the block size would stay exactly the same though.

The pool fees are so low anyway that they're negligible for anyone that need a pool to be able to mine. I don't think this idea would benefit miners at all. The upside would be a theoretically higher update time for transactions (unless I'm misunderstanding something about how the system work) but I don't think that would make up for have 10 times more blocks.

[shads]

The pool fees are so low anyway that they're negligible for anyone that need a pool to be able to mine. I don't think this idea would benefit miners at all. The upside would be a theoretically higher update time for transactions (unless I'm misunderstanding something about how the system work) but I don't think that would make up for have 10 times more blocks.

Unless I misunderstad block = header + transactions + footer. Transactions would be 1/10th the size so it wouldn't be 10 times the files size but it would be more.

With respect I think your view of what bitcoin is for is a bit topsy turvy.  If bitcoin is to succeed it will driven 99.9% by users who have no interest in mining.  If we don't have those users there's nothing to give BTCs value and therefore no reason to mine.  So benefitting miners really isn't the point.  Benefiting users is.

[Austinh100]

The pool fees are so low anyway that they're negligible for anyone that need a pool to be able to mine. I don't think this idea would benefit miners at all. The upside would be a theoretically higher update time for transactions (unless I'm misunderstanding something about how the system work) but I don't think that would make up for have 10 times more blocks.

Unless I misunderstad block = header + transactions + footer. Transactions would be 1/10th the size so it wouldn't be 10 times the files size but it would be more.

With respect I think your view of what bitcoin is for is a bit topsy turvy.  If bitcoin is to succeed it will driven 99.9% by users who have no interest in mining.  If we don't have those users there's nothing to give BTCs value and therefore no reason to mine.  So benefitting miners really isn't the point.  Benefiting users is.

The only problem i have with this logic is that even when there are no more BTC to find there will still need to be miners to verify the payments and the network will reward them with the transactions fees that will eventually be enforced

If miners = happy, users = happy (fast transactions and verifications) otherwise the system goes down the drain.

[neneko]

Each block is basically two hashes and some misc info. They would stay exactly the same size even if generated once every minute or even once every 5 seconds.

I don't understand the second part of your post. You were arguing that a block every 1 min would benefit miners and I say that the benefit would be marginal at best. The 10 times longer block chain would be a downside for the average non-mining user so if you really care about them then you'll see that this is a silly idea.

[phillipsjk]

Because 60 seconds is not enough time to tell all nodes about your purchase of a candy bar. TCP times out after 2 minutes, for example.

10 minutes is a compromise between allowing propagation delays and fact transaction times. Remember also that the blocks are not exactly 10 minutes apart. Some block may appear within 2 minutes of the previous one, and some blocks may not show up for 20 minutes.

[Austinh100]

Each block is basically two hashes and some misc info. They would stay exactly the same size even if generated once every minute or even once every 5 seconds.

I don't understand the second part of your post. You were arguing that a block every 1 min would benefit miners and I say that the benefit would be marginal at best. The 10 times longer block chain would be a downside for the average non-mining user so if you really care about them then you'll see that this is a silly idea.

Basically this is what my idea is (guesses for sizes):

50BTC (sent every 5mins): Header(100bytes) + Transaction(50 transactions, 5MB) + Footer(20bytes)

5BTC (sent every 30sec): Header(100bytes) + Transaction(5 transactions, 0.5MB) + Footer(20bytes)

so it would end up being slightly large in the long ruin but it would make up for that with increased speed and efficiency