Coins with very short block times demonstrate incompetence

[centenary]

For all cryptocurrencies based off the Bitcoin protocol, the block time needs to be chosen carefully in order to guarantee that nearly every node in the distributed network maintains the same view of the blockchain.  The block time needs to be, at the very least, several times larger than the maximum end-to-end propagation delay across the distributed network.

Choosing a very short block time demonstrates a lack of understanding of this requirement.  If you make block times very short, then nodes will generate blocks faster than it would take for notifications to reach nodes on the opposite end of the distributed network.  This will cause nodes within the distributed network to have inconsistent views of the blockchain.

What does this mean?  1) Lots of orphans.  2) Very long orphan blockchains.  3) Significantly reduced security for the network.

Earlier today, one of the WorldCoin mining pools (http://wdc.dontmine.me) was on an orphan blockchain for more than 300 blocks.  That would never happen for any competently designed coin.

Altcoins with very short block times have no real future.  Once they reach a certain critical mass, they will inherently self-destruct due to the large percentage of inconsistency within the distributed network.  Imagine the blockchain accidentally forking into two separate blockchains.  With very short block times, that's a real possibility.  Or imagine having a transaction confirmed, only to realize hours later that the transaction was confirmed in an orphan blockchain and needs to be rolled back and reconfirmed.  No one would realistically support such an altcoin.

If you're going to release an altcoin, do the community a favor and at least release something that appears competently designed.

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[ecliptic]

coins with very short block times demonstrate the ability to take almost 100% of the rewards with enough hashrate to orphan everyone else trying to mine

This is almost certainly intended behavior by their creators.  It allows them to premine while maintaining the illusion of "fairness".

Yes, even with smaller block rewards for early mining.

It is literally a race of seconds for the first person to throw several dozen Megahash at the network.

once you have it, you control it.  Everyone else will be orphaned.

[ecliptic]

coins with very short block times demonstrate the ability to take almost 100% of the rewards with enough hashrate to orphan everyone else trying to mine

This is almost certainly intended behavior by their creators.  It allows them to premine while maintaining the illusion of "fairness".

Yes, even with smaller block rewards for early mining.

It is literally a race of seconds for the first person to throw several dozen Megahash at the network.

once you have it, you control it.  Everyone else will be orphaned.

I'm not sure.
I was buying lots of Worldcoin from several different users maybe an hour or so after launch.
But I see what you are saying in theory.

sockpuppets are common, anyone who isn't an idiot at this will use them

nobody is going to touch a coin that someone premined a massive % of coins.  There's literally 5,6 maybe even SEVEN figures of profit on the line, the people premining need to keep the illusion that it's a coin "of the people" before they dump.

[centenary]

coins with very short block times demonstrate the ability to take almost 100% of the rewards with enough hashrate to orphan everyone else trying to mine

This is almost certainly intended behavior by their creators.  It allows them to premine while maintaining the illusion of "fairness".

Yes, even with smaller block rewards for early mining.

It is literally a race of seconds for the first person to throw several dozen Megahash at the network.

once you have it, you control it.  Everyone else will be orphaned.

This is absolutely a valid argument.  For anyone who thinks this can't happen, it happened with GameCoin.  Someone (presumably the developer) was able to override the mined blockchain with an even longer blockchain, giving all of the rewards to that one person.

[Hazard]

coins with very short block times demonstrate the ability to take almost 100% of the rewards with enough hashrate to orphan everyone else trying to mine

This is almost certainly intended behavior by their creators.  It allows them to premine while maintaining the illusion of "fairness".

Yes, even with smaller block rewards for early mining.

It is literally a race of seconds for the first person to throw several dozen Megahash at the network.

once you have it, you control it.  Everyone else will be orphaned.

This is absolutely a valid argument.  For anyone who thinks this can't happen, it happened with GameCoin.  Someone (presumably the developer) was able to override the mined blockchain with an even longer blockchain, giving all of the rewards to that one person.

No, gamecoin just used the exact same genesis block as feathercoin, and didn't bother to add new checkpoints. Someone just copy pasted the feathercoin block chain and it began propogating across the network.

[centenary]

coins with very short block times demonstrate the ability to take almost 100% of the rewards with enough hashrate to orphan everyone else trying to mine

This is almost certainly intended behavior by their creators.  It allows them to premine while maintaining the illusion of "fairness".

Yes, even with smaller block rewards for early mining.

It is literally a race of seconds for the first person to throw several dozen Megahash at the network.

once you have it, you control it.  Everyone else will be orphaned.

This is absolutely a valid argument.  For anyone who thinks this can't happen, it happened with GameCoin.  Someone (presumably the developer) was able to override the mined blockchain with an even longer blockchain, giving all of the rewards to that one person.

No, gamecoin just used the exact same genesis block as feathercoin, and didn't bother to add new checkpoints. Someone just copy pasted the feathercoin block chain and it began propogating across the network.

Wow, that's a new level of incompetence that I wasn't prepared for

[Tobius]

For all cryptocurrencies based off the Bitcoin protocol, the block time needs to be chosen carefully in order to guarantee that nearly every node in the distributed network maintains the same view of the blockchain.  The block time needs to be, at the very least, several times larger than the maximum end-to-end propagation delay across the distributed network.

Choosing a very short block time demonstrates a lack of understanding of this requirement.  If you make block times very short, then nodes will generate blocks faster than it would take for notifications to reach nodes on the opposite end of the distributed network.  This will cause nodes within the distributed network to have inconsistent views of the blockchain.

What does this mean?  1) Lots of orphans.  2) Very long orphan blockchains.  3) Significantly reduced security for the network.

Earlier today, one of the WorldCoin mining pools (http://wdc.dontmine.me) was on an orphan blockchain for more than 300 blocks.  That would never happen for any competently designed coin.

Altcoins with very short block times have no real future.  Once they reach a certain critical mass, they will inherently self-destruct due to the large percentage of inconsistency within the distributed network.  Imagine the blockchain accidentally forking into two separate blockchains.  With very short block times, that's a real possibility.  Or imagine having a transaction confirmed, only to realize hours later that the transaction was confirmed in an orphan blockchain and needs to be rolled back and reconfirmed.  No one would realistically support such an altcoin.

If you're going to release an altcoin, do the community a favor and at least release something that appears competently designed.

One small issue, BTC/LTC are too slow. As long as that remains a reality, we're going to have to at least experiment with lower block times :\

[centenary]

For all cryptocurrencies based off the Bitcoin protocol, the block time needs to be chosen carefully in order to guarantee that nearly every node in the distributed network maintains the same view of the blockchain.  The block time needs to be, at the very least, several times larger than the maximum end-to-end propagation delay across the distributed network.

Choosing a very short block time demonstrates a lack of understanding of this requirement.  If you make block times very short, then nodes will generate blocks faster than it would take for notifications to reach nodes on the opposite end of the distributed network.  This will cause nodes within the distributed network to have inconsistent views of the blockchain.

What does this mean?  1) Lots of orphans.  2) Very long orphan blockchains.  3) Significantly reduced security for the network.

Earlier today, one of the WorldCoin mining pools (http://wdc.dontmine.me) was on an orphan blockchain for more than 300 blocks.  That would never happen for any competently designed coin.

Altcoins with very short block times have no real future.  Once they reach a certain critical mass, they will inherently self-destruct due to the large percentage of inconsistency within the distributed network.  Imagine the blockchain accidentally forking into two separate blockchains.  With very short block times, that's a real possibility.  Or imagine having a transaction confirmed, only to realize hours later that the transaction was confirmed in an orphan blockchain and needs to be rolled back and reconfirmed.  No one would realistically support such an altcoin.

If you're going to release an altcoin, do the community a favor and at least release something that appears competently designed.

One small issue, BTC/LTC are too slow. As long as that remains a reality, we're going to have to at least experiment with lower block times :\

The only way to realistically lower the block times is to restructure the blockchain and the protocol for the distributed network.  You can't simply copy the Bitcoin protocol and paste in arbitrarily small block times, the Bitcoin protocol wasn't designed for that.

[RAMZA]

For all cryptocurrencies based off the Bitcoin protocol, the block time needs to be chosen carefully in order to guarantee that nearly every node in the distributed network maintains the same view of the blockchain.  The block time needs to be, at the very least, several times larger than the maximum end-to-end propagation delay across the distributed network.

Choosing a very short block time demonstrates a lack of understanding of this requirement.  If you make block times very short, then nodes will generate blocks faster than it would take for notifications to reach nodes on the opposite end of the distributed network.  This will cause nodes within the distributed network to have inconsistent views of the blockchain.

What does this mean?  1) Lots of orphans.  2) Very long orphan blockchains.  3) Significantly reduced security for the network.

Earlier today, one of the WorldCoin mining pools (http://wdc.dontmine.me) was on an orphan blockchain for more than 300 blocks.  That would never happen for any competently designed coin.

Altcoins with very short block times have no real future.  Once they reach a certain critical mass, they will inherently self-destruct due to the large percentage of inconsistency within the distributed network.  Imagine the blockchain accidentally forking into two separate blockchains.  With very short block times, that's a real possibility.  Or imagine having a transaction confirmed, only to realize hours later that the transaction was confirmed in an orphan blockchain and needs to be rolled back and reconfirmed.  No one would realistically support such an altcoin.

If you're going to release an altcoin, do the community a favor and at least release something that appears competently designed.

One small issue, BTC/LTC are too slow. As long as that remains a reality, we're going to have to at least experiment with lower block times :\

The only way to realistically lower the block times is to restructure the blockchain and the protocol for the distributed network.  You can't simply copy the Bitcoin protocol and paste in arbitrarily small block times, the Bitcoin protocol wasn't designed for that.

Amén!!!

[Tobius]

For all cryptocurrencies based off the Bitcoin protocol, the block time needs to be chosen carefully in order to guarantee that nearly every node in the distributed network maintains the same view of the blockchain.  The block time needs to be, at the very least, several times larger than the maximum end-to-end propagation delay across the distributed network.

Choosing a very short block time demonstrates a lack of understanding of this requirement.  If you make block times very short, then nodes will generate blocks faster than it would take for notifications to reach nodes on the opposite end of the distributed network.  This will cause nodes within the distributed network to have inconsistent views of the blockchain.

What does this mean?  1) Lots of orphans.  2) Very long orphan blockchains.  3) Significantly reduced security for the network.

Earlier today, one of the WorldCoin mining pools (http://wdc.dontmine.me) was on an orphan blockchain for more than 300 blocks.  That would never happen for any competently designed coin.

Altcoins with very short block times have no real future.  Once they reach a certain critical mass, they will inherently self-destruct due to the large percentage of inconsistency within the distributed network.  Imagine the blockchain accidentally forking into two separate blockchains.  With very short block times, that's a real possibility.  Or imagine having a transaction confirmed, only to realize hours later that the transaction was confirmed in an orphan blockchain and needs to be rolled back and reconfirmed.  No one would realistically support such an altcoin.

If you're going to release an altcoin, do the community a favor and at least release something that appears competently designed.

One small issue, BTC/LTC are too slow. As long as that remains a reality, we're going to have to at least experiment with lower block times :\

The only way to realistically lower the block times is to restructure the blockchain and the protocol for the distributed network.  You can't simply copy the Bitcoin protocol and paste in arbitrarily small block times, the Bitcoin protocol wasn't designed for that.

That I am aware of, but hey, all of these coins are technically "experiments", so there's always time and room to do just that. Gotta start somewhere

[erk]

Sounds like a load of crap to me, lets have some maths to support the claims please.

How many hops do you think represent one end of the chain to the other?

Ever heard of the 6 degrees of separation theory? The Internet is a mesh not a daisy chain.

How do you compensate for a node that has bad lag or off-line for half an hour? Well above any useful block rate.


Let me quote from section 5 of "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" by Satoshi Nakamoto


"New transaction broadcasts do not necessarily need to reach all nodes. As long as they reach
many nodes, they will get into a block before long. Block broadcasts are also tolerant of dropped
messages. If a node does not receive a block, it will request it when it receives the next block and
realizes it missed one"

I have never seen Satoshi claim that 10min was a good block rate, his only mention of 10min in that paper was in an example of how to calculate annual disk space usage of a block chain, obviously trying to make the usage no look all that much.

[daytrader420]

I agree with the OP.

These alt-coins are dying by their own hands when their block times are too short/small.

There's no long term hope for a coin with a short target block frame.

And not because of the weaker blockchain security, but rather, these coins which are more like orphan networks. Creating 10 bagillion different forks with orphans, I don't know that anything positive will come from this.

TBH I want to join some alts but I'm sticking to LTC lately, too much pump/dump coins around; I'm trying not to get sidetracked from coins which have solitude behind them.

[centenary]

Sounds like a load of crap to me, lets have some maths to support the claims please.

The fact that an entire mining pool was on an orphan blockchain for more than 300 blocks isn't enough to convince you?

How many nodes represent one end of the chain to the other?

I'm not really sure what you're asking here.  "Maximum end-to-end propagation time" is the maximum amount of time it would take for a message from any node to reach every other node.  Each node is an "end" in that each node is both a source and destination for messages.  For a given node, the "opposite" node is the node out of all nodes where sending a message to would take the longest.

Ever heard of the 6 degrees of separation theory?

Can you articulate why that theory is relevant here?  In that theory, each person can have an unlimited number of connections.  In Bitcoin distributed networks, each node has a limited number of connections (only eight by default).  So again, can you articulate why that theory is relevant here?

How do you compensate for a node that has bad lag or off-line for half an hour? Well above any useful block rate.

The network is connected enough so that there is multiple ways to route messages between each pair of nodes.  If a node dies on a route between two nodes, messages are redirected across other routes that don't involve the dead node.

[clint25n]

If vendors accept a coin with a short block time(like Worldcoin), it wouldn't matter how frustrated the miners got for overwhelming the network with a huge hash rate.
Traders would still trade, holders would still spend and vendors would still convert; regardless of the miners.
The death of a coin is going to depend on the adoption and infrastructure.

One can always see this as a way to discourage too many miners from throwing hashes at the network, and if there is a major acceptance of such a coin due to marketing, promotion, new software and speed.. then it will gain value and the miners will be the only ones with a problem, that is, only if they overwhelm the network.

[erk]

The network is connected enough so that there is multiple ways to route messages between each pair of nodes.  If a node dies on a route between two nodes, messages are redirected across other routes that don't involve the dead node.

Very good, and the same applies to nodes that can't get an update within 15sec. They are simply ignored and the updates go via other nodes.

[fenican]

Internet latency is much lower than when Bitcoin was first released (2009).  Should not be an issue on modern networks most nodes can ping each other within 250 ms some can do it in 30 ms

[fenican]

Internet latency is much lower than when Bitcoin was first released (2009).  Should not be an issue on modern networks most nodes can ping each other within 250 ms

That's a laughable statement.

[DeadEyeCool]

Well, for what its worth, I was still able to solo mine 544 coins at launch with a measly 1.2 mash. Yes there were a lot of orphans, but things seemed to work themselves out.

I honestly don't think the orphan rate is that critical of a flaw when you gain INSTANT TRANSACTIONS.

Let's join the 21st century people, everyone expects payment to be instantaneous in this day and age.

[fenican]

Let's not confuse issues.  Orphans are due to low starting difficulty not block solve time.  Once difficulty rises, often at too fast a rate, the issue becomes the opposite - coins that were designed to be fast like CNC and FTC become slow due to the fact nobody can solve a block at the current difficulty.  Until difficulty retargets, those blocks that were supposed to take 15 seconds to solve might take 4 hours.

[DeadEyeCool]

If vendors accept a coin with a short block time(like Worldcoin), it wouldn't matter how frustrated the miners got for overwhelming the network with a huge hash rate.
Traders would still trade, holders would still spend and vendors would still convert; regardless of the miners.
The death of a coin is going to depend on the adoption and infrastructure.

One can always see this as a way to discourage too many miners from throwing hashes at the network, and if there is a major acceptance of such a coin due to marketing, promotion, new software and speed.. then it will gain value and the miners will be the only ones with a problem, that is, only if they overwhelm the network.

The problem is when the orphan chain ends up being the main chain.  Now, you have real transactions taking place on the orphan chain -- someone is going to lose their coins.

There hasn't been any report of anyone 'losing coins' this way, except for mining orphans, which is to expected of any crypto. Even bitcoin has orphans.