How much time it takes for single block confirmation?

[Bureau]

I read that it takes on an average 10 minutes, when I I observed mempool for more than 10 minutes it doesn't looks like that. When confirmation takes an average of 10 minutes. Is there any calculation to support this theory.

I have checked multiple forums, i never found an answer as to why the 10 minutes calculation exists after a decade of Bitcoin existence..

Don't you think this is a myth? Considering it has been more than a decade that we are using the same bench mark.

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[ImThour]

Currently, the Avg. time between blocks is 9 minutes 13 seconds. Each block has multiple transactions.
In the last 24 hours, the Bitcoin blockchain has processed 524,241 Transactions.

Data Source: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin

[Oceat]

It depends but try to look at this.

https://mempool.space/

If the market is flooded it will take some time and usually when there's a pump in the market it's expected to be longer though 1 - 10 minutes would be enough depending on how much fee you put.

[Charles-Tim]

Transaction confirmation and next block mining can take just 1 minutes, it can take 2 minutes, it can take any minute, it can be 15 minutes or more. But on average, it is 10 minutes. Every 2016 blocks, the confirmation should be approximately 10 minutes, but if mining hashrates suddenly increases, expect less than 10 minute confirmations. If mining hashrates suddenly decrease before the difficulty adjustment, expect more than 10 minute confirmations.

[JeromeTash]

If the market is flooded it will take some time and usually when there's a pump in the market it's expected to be longer though 1 - 10 minutes would be enough depending on how much fee you put.

He is talking about single block confirmation, so the state of the mempool doesn't matter

Block confirmation time is pretty random, like the person above said, sometimes it can happen within one minute of the previous confirmed block other times it can even take over an hour

The expected average is 10 minutes so every 2016 blocks, the difficulty is adjusted so that the block confirmation time is with in or at least close to the expected average.

Look at the most recent previously confirmed blocks... We have intervals of 2 mins, 6 mins, 25 mins, 4 mins, 17 mins. As you can see, it's random.

[Zaguru12]

I read that it takes on an average 10 minutes, when I I observed mempool for more than 10 minutes it doesn't looks like that. When confirmation takes an average of 10 minutes. Is there any calculation to support this theory.

I have checked multiple forums, i never found an answer as to why the 10 minutes calculation exists after a decade of Bitcoin existence..

Don't you think this is a myth? Considering it has been more than a decade that we are using the same bench mark.

It’s not a myth. Just like what Charles Tim said it is usually more or less than 10 minutes, the difficulty is adjusted by each node to fit the new time taken to confirm the block. And this adjustment is followed for the next 2016 blocks before another difficult is calculated again. The formula is actually time / expected time. You can look at it up here https://learnmeabitcoin.com/beginners/difficulty.

As of yesterday this was the difficult epoch according to O_e_l_e_o

the current average block time for this difficulty epoch is around 10 minutes and 12 seconds. This is the difference between 144 blocks a day and 141 blocks a day. This is a difference of 3 blocks and therefore 3 MvB at most, and not nearly enough to explain the >100 MvB of unconfirmed transactions we currently have.

[tranthidung]

In average, it is about 10 minutes between two blocks. In specific, it can be any time from 1 second to 10 minutes or more than 10 minutes.

BTC empty blocks (2009 - 5 May 2020): miners, size, daily, monthly, yearly stats.

It is my thread with some charts and statistics for empty blocks and one block before those, time gaps between those blocks. You can see how different time gaps are. It is similar for non empty blocks and one-block before or after them.

Time gap:

Code:

    variable |         N      mean        sd       p50       p25       p75       min       max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    emptygap |      76.0     348.4     497.9      69.5      26.0     505.5       1.0    2421.0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Yamane_Keto]

It's not 10 minutes, but the blockchain tries to maintain an average value of 10 minutes, and the difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks to reach that average.
The time can be reduced by a hard fork to less than 10 minutes (as happens in many altcoins) but then one confirmation will mean nothing.


In BitcoinSV you need 1000 confirmation to set your deposit as accepted deposit.

If you deposit to exchange, most of them will accept 1 confirmation of deposit and 3 confirmations of withdrawal, which is the lowest number of required blocks compared to most cryptocurrencies.

Ten minutes was specifically chosen by Satoshi as a tradeoff between first confirmation time and the amount of work wasted due to chain splits. After a block is mined, it takes time for other miners to find out about it, and until then they are actually competing against the new block instead of adding to it. If someone mines another new block based on the old block chain, the network can only accept one of the two, and all the work that went into the other block gets wasted. For example, if it takes miners 1 minute on average to learn about new blocks, and new blocks come every 10 minutes, then the overall network is wasting about 10% of its work. Lengthening the time between blocks reduces this waste.

[jrrsparkles]

To my knowledge the shortest time taken between one block to be mined and other is 2 minute whereas the longest is 40 minutes which I personally witnessed not speaking based on any stats or anything. So average time taken doesn't represent anything it's just the average value of combined mined blocks meanwhile if we take note on every block it will be completely random and you can't do anything about it.

[Uruhara]

Even though so far when I send bitcoin to reach 1 confirmation it takes an average of 10 minutes. but a few days ago I felt my bitcoin transaction getting slower to reach 1 confirmation. it even takes 24 hours. but I use the lowest transaction fee at that time. is that the cause? because the highest network costs will come first and the lowest network costs will be behind.

[Falconer]

Even though so far when I send bitcoin to reach 1 confirmation it takes an average of 10 minutes. but a few days ago I felt my bitcoin transaction getting slower to reach 1 confirmation. it even takes 24 hours. but I use the lowest transaction fee at that time. is that the cause? because the highest network costs will come first and the lowest network costs will be behind.

Miners will include transactions that have high fees earlier in a block than transactions with low fees. If someone is willing to pay more than you, then someone else will get confirmation first than you.

Bitcoin transaction fees fluctuate, you need to monitor fee recommendations before transactions. You can work around this by trying to broadcast transactions that have low fees, but only if you're not rushing for confirmation. Use wallet that supports RBF, it will help you to increase transaction fees when you need your transactions to get confirmation faster.

[Jating]

Even though so far when I send bitcoin to reach 1 confirmation it takes an average of 10 minutes. but a few days ago I felt my bitcoin transaction getting slower to reach 1 confirmation. it even takes 24 hours. but I use the lowest transaction fee at that time. is that the cause? because the highest network costs will come first and the lowest network costs will be behind.

It's because the mempool is being clogged right now with this Ordinals spamming the network. I can't believed currently, the highest priority is ~165 sat/vb or $6.81 as per mempool, that's crazy numbers and it will sure affect those who are doing small transactions (not LN transactions).

As for the question of the OP, currently the average time is

~11.9 minutes
Average block time

https://mempool.space/

[decodx]

To my knowledge the shortest time taken between one block to be mined and other is 2 minute whereas the longest is 40 minutes which I personally witnessed not speaking based on any stats or anything. So average time taken doesn't represent anything it's just the average value of combined mined blocks meanwhile if we take note on every block it will be completely random and you can't do anything about it.

Actually, that's not entirely right. It is possible for a Bitcoin block to be mined in as little as a few seconds or as long as several hours, however it is quite rare for blocks to take less than a minute or more than an hour to be mined.

The Bitcoin protocol is designed to adjust the difficulty of mining blocks approximately every two weeks, in order to maintain an average block time of 10 minutes. However, due to the random nature of the mining algorithm, there can be significant variation in the actual time it takes to mine a block.

[Obari]

Well I also discovered  of recent that the amount of transaction fee also determines  how ongoing the transaction will be on the block chain and I discovered this last Saturday  and I'm enjoying the forum because there is a clear  evidence  that learning  never ends.
I also discovered  that the transactions can be boosted with more fees if the transaction  seems to take more time on the block chain and this features keep making me love bitcoin and cryptocurrency  at large.

[Xxmodded]

Regarding with your fees transaction setting, why many people take longer time when sending bitcoin? many of them as efficiency with lower fess sending and need waiting more than one until two hours. If you want faster for block confirmation for sending Bitcoin use higher fees sending and under 10 minutes transaction will complete, but if lower fees your transaction delay and take longer time for compliting.

Actually need one block confirmation have been enough for success Bitcoin sending, but in Binance you can withdrawing yet if transaction not completed confirmation but available with trading or convert to other balance.

[nc50lc]

I read that it takes on an average 10 minutes, when I I observed mempool for more than 10 minutes it doesn't looks like that.

Because 10 minutes is not hard-coded to the network but an average based on chance.
You shouldn't be looking at the mempools but learn how mining works instead.

Bitcoin has a "difficulty" mechanism that ensures that the "target" is difficult enough for the network's total hashrate to mine a block at 10 minutes average.

To mine a block, miners are basically looking for a SHA256d hash that's lower than the target; but the number of miners are always changing as well as their hashrate,
so the target needs to be readjusted periodically to be less or more difficult based on the networks total hash rate.
Additionally, that hashing algorithm's result is unpredictable, so there's even a chance that the next block could be mined within the next second or the next hour.
(it happened quite a few times already)

I have checked multiple forums, i never found an answer as to why the 10 minutes calculation exists after a decade of Bitcoin existence..

Here's the answer that you're looking for: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/target