Can we stop fretting about timestamps?!?!?!
The blockchain does not give a stuff about the timestamps of a block... zip, zilch, zero, nada, nothing... because the blocks have to be in mathematical order and thus are in chronological order regardless of the timestamps.
You could completely remove the timestamps from the blocks and it would make no difference to the order of the blocks or blockchain. Timestamps are only part of the block header for human convenience and calculating difficulty. So stop concerning yourselves with timestamps... the following blocks are in correct order as mathematically hashed(or whatever the technical term is) regardless of the timestamp.
Never said the block numbers became unsorted. Never said the blockchain was damaged.
It was about the part above that I marked bold.
So yes... out-of-order timestamps can cause the diff algo to freak out, but do not determine the order of the blocks, block order is a function of irreversable mathematics and hashing.
I know, the order of the blocks is NOT determined by the timestamps.
See the part marked in bold again? So you got what I was talking about.
Instead of only seeing them once in a while with many blocks/hours in between,
we have far more now.
Mid of October we had an average of 1 per 143 blocks.
How does it look now? From 2 ranges I checked:
Block 185115 - 185195: 5!
Block 186074 - 186190: 8!
Often 2 or 3 within a few blocks.
Like Fuse said earlier: Single bad timestamps are giving single spikes in diff, leveling out after a few blocks.
I don't want to see the diff algo 'freak out' because the out-of-order timestamps become too many.
Hope you understand my concern now.
