66 minutes between blocks?

[worldofcoins]

Today is "El Salvador day," so there's lots of news and lots of trading.

According to blockchain.info, block 699509 was timestamped 17:00 UTC and 699510 was timestamped 18:06 UTC -- a 66-minute interval. Isn't that quite unusual? If so, what might have been the cause?

Well, the max time between blocks that I've witnessed is around 55 minutes so I wouldn't be surprised is a 66-minute time interval since it's 11 more minutes that may happen.

My transactions typically get one confirmation in at least 5 minutes and at most 15, but it is usually around 10 that it happens.  Should the hashrate increase or decrease substantially before the difficulty adjustment, block times change together with it.

I can't say for certain but I've seen a pattern where there will be 3-4 transactions that will get confirm within 15 minutes and then there will be 1 transaction that will take at least 40 minutes to get confirmed, I've seen this pattern many times. I don't think it makes sense but you can check it out yourself.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Oh, use LN. What if you don't have enough funds in LN? You need...to...wait for the next block! Admit it's funny!

The lightning network is, essentially, a time deposit. If you're left with some cents in your bank account, you'll have to deposit, which takes time. Same thing happens here; you deposit bitcoins onto your lightning “account”. So, I'd say that unless you find the bank deposit funny, the need to increase your funds in LN isn't funny.

I can't say for certain but I've seen a pattern where there will be 3-4 transactions that will get confirm within 15 minutes and then there will be 1 transaction that will take at least 40 minutes to get confirmed, I've seen this pattern many times.

It isn't a pattern. If the transaction that takes at least 40 minutes to get confirmed is less profitable to be included into a block compared with the other 3-4, then they'll obviously be confirmed sooner.

[stompix]

Oh, use LN. What if you don't have enough funds in LN? You need...to...wait for the next block! Admit it's funny!

The lightning network is, essentially, a time deposit. If you're left with some cents in your bank account, you'll have to deposit, which takes time. Same thing happens here; you deposit bitcoins onto your lightning “account”. So, I'd say that unless you find the bank deposit funny, the need to increase your funds in LN isn't funny.

Nope, wrong analogy. Bitcoin on chain (bank account) - LN (visa).
I can transfer money from my main account to any of my cards in a matter of seconds, so, no it's not like that. If you think of funding your bank account from an external source like cash deposits, it's the same with bitcoin, you still need those extra steps. And before you say you can do it faster at converting cash to bitcoin at BATM you can do the same at an ATM for a debit card or bank account.
Bitcoin can only rival international transfer, for national ones those days are gone.

Besides, since we're speaking of time and having LN funds available, how long it will take for the entire population of Salvador to open one channel?  . Even if they don't close one and there won't be any kind of other traffic, about a month?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Nope, wrong analogy. Bitcoin on chain (bank account) - LN (visa).

And how's that a better analogy? What will you do once you run out of money in your bank account? Won't you deposit? Fiat & Bitcoin are the currencies; bank & LN are related, leave visa out. It looks more like the comfort provided by the blue wallet's LN implementation which works custodially.

The LN is more like a trustless bank. You still need a third party, but that happens non-custodially.

And before you say you can do it faster at converting cash to bitcoin at BATM you can do the same at an ATM for a debit card or bank account.

I wasn't planning to use this as an argument.

Besides, since we're speaking of time and having LN funds available, how long it will take for the entire population of Salvador to open one channel?

For each person? It's practically impossible. I'd rather see a smarter way of paying lightning-ly; maybe having one channel for each family or by using a fully custodial service. Yeah, I said it. If they don't care about that, which they mostly don't, we aren't going to force them be responsible for their own money.

But, someone who demands it should have that right, agreed?

[stompix]

Nope, wrong analogy. Bitcoin on chain (bank account) - LN (visa).

And how's that a better analogy? What will you do once you run out of money in your bank account?

Probably stop for a moment and start to think about my life choices.
Might sound incredible to you but in my circle of friends/workers/relatives, 90% at least of the money is already in the bank, so if I would count out Bitcoin funds I would have close to zero to deposit into my bank account from whatever cash reserves I have.
Actually, I don't know anyone around me who is still paid in cash, and the number of people who withdraw all their money from their card on payday has dwindled a lot even before the covid scare and the things this has bought.

So you see, I have no extra step, I have my wage wired to my bank account, one-click deposit money to the debit (spending card).
If I would have been paid in Bitcoin, I would still need that block to reach LN.

Besides, since we're speaking of time and having LN funds available, how long it will take for the entire population of Salvador to open one channel?

For each person? It's practically impossible. I'd rather see a smarter way of paying lightning-ly; maybe having one channel for each family or by using a fully custodial service. Yeah, I said it.

Appreciating the honesty.  , I knew the answer, I love when people are saying wait for a time when fees are low, use LN, etc etc but then when I ask if 1 million would be in the same situation, not just me the only answer is centralized solutions.
Anyhow, ranting time is over as we're going too far from the main subject.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I can pay 1BTC/vbyte, if no block is mined that doesn't solve anything.

And with a 1 minute block time you can still pay 1 BTC/vbyte and be waiting upwards of 10 minutes for your first confirmation. Decreasing the block time will never be sufficient for a point of sale transaction, as by the time you decrease it enough to mean you'll never wait more than 30 seconds for a block, then it is so fast that stale blocks and double spends would be so common place that you'd have to wait 10+ minutes to have enough confirmations that you are sure they wouldn't suddenly all be overturned.

Now, If I would apply the same negativism as you, it will mean that to be safer we would need at least 1 hour blocks as even 10 minutes block time didn't prevent orphaned blocks.

No, but they are rare enough that they aren't a major issue, and a chain of more than 1 is exceedingly rare. Drop the block time to 1 minute and you'll regularly see chains of 3 or 4 being overturned. Monero initially had a block time of 1 minute and had to increase it due to the excessive number of stale blocks they were experiencing.

[stompix]

I can pay 1BTC/vbyte, if no block is mined that doesn't solve anything.

And with a 1 minute block time you can still pay 1 BTC/vbyte and be waiting upwards of 10 minutes for your first confirmation.

And even if you wear a seatbelt if you fall in a river after the accident and this gets blocked you die drowning.
Sorry, but this is how you sound now to me, you're clinging to an arbitrary time that was chosen in a day when the internet speed was 10 times lower, Satoshi didn't have a clue about pool mining or at least GPU mining, there was no segwit, there was no FIBRE and still think those are the best choices one could have made. Even car speed limits have changed a hundred times all over the world to reflect traffic and safety and in this case, we're talking about a simple case of throwing a body against a chunk of steal but no, god forbid we touch the magical number of 600 seconds despite the fact that block checking and propagation times has been cut in a thousand pieces. You have 10 pools with 96% of the hashrate linked between them at ms speeds but no, there will be a ton of orphaned blocks if we cut the time in by one minute. Seriously?

No, but they are rare enough that they aren't a major issue, and a chain of more than 1 is exceedingly rare. Drop the block time to 1 minute and you'll regularly see chains of 3 or 4 being overturned.

How often has this caused any real problems with Ethereum or Doge or Litecoin?

[o_e_l_e_o]

god forbid we touch the magical number of 600 seconds despite the fact that block checking and propagation times has been cut in a thousand pieces.

I'd be open to considering a reduction in block time should a good argument be put forward for it, but it does not solve the issue we are discussing here. No block time will ever be fast enough for reliable point of sale transactions. You will either be waiting at least a minute or two with the risk of it being 10 minutes or more for your first transaction, which is completely useless for someone paying for a coffee or a fast food, or you will get a confirmation in seconds but that confirmation will have too high a chance of being reversed to be sufficient, so you will be stuck waiting for more anyway.

Sure, propagation and block validation is faster than it was 10 years ago, but that increase has slowed and will hit a limit. We still see empty blocks being mined (because of how long it takes every miner to receive and validate each block) and stale blocks fairly regularly, so propagation and validation are obviously still not fast enough to completely remove these issues even at a 10 minute limit.

How often has this caused any real problems with Ethereum or Doge or Litecoin?

I have zero interest in any of those altcoins so I couldn't really tell you, but I know that Ethereum uses different methods for dealing with such blocks (which they call Uncle blocks) and pays miners for them, and a quick glance at a Dogecoin explorer shows that they have mined over 200 completely empty blocks in the last 24 hours alone.