If EVERYBODY but me would stop mining ...

[Chrithu]

... would difficulty drop down to a point where i solve a block every ten minutes? If yes would you guys consider doing it for an hour or so? I'd sure return the favor.

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[msc]

... would difficulty drop down to a point where i solve a block every ten minutes? If yes would you guys consider doing it for an hour or so? I'd sure return the favor.

Yes it would, but I guess it would take a few weeks, and no they won't. 

[jonnybravo0311]

That's an interesting thought.  Let's assume for a minute that every miner in the world but you shut down.  Isn't the difficulty level reset every 2 weeks (give or take) based upon the number of blocks solved and hash rate?  If absolutely no blocks are solved (or maybe the OP gets lucky and solves 1 at the current level), how does the network react?  Isn't the algorithm designed such that blocks should be solved on average every 10 minutes?  If suddenly no blocks are being solved, wouldn't the difficulty level be recalculated immediately such that blocks again are solved every 10 minutes or so?

[beatljuice]

I don't claim to know this for sure, but as I understand it, the difficulty only adjusts after 2016 blocks. So if all of a sudden there was only 1 THz of hashing starting today it would take thousands of years for the difficulty to change.

[FenixRD]

That's an interesting thought.  Let's assume for a minute that every miner in the world but you shut down.  Isn't the difficulty level reset every 2 weeks (give or take) based upon the number of blocks solved and hash rate?  If absolutely no blocks are solved (or maybe the OP gets lucky and solves 1 at the current level), how does the network react?  Isn't the algorithm designed such that blocks should be solved on average every 10 minutes?  If suddenly no blocks are being solved, wouldn't the difficulty level be recalculated immediately such that blocks again are solved every 10 minutes or so?

The info you need is here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Target

You should conclude that a significant and permanent decline in hashrate would disrupt the economy until two retargets have occurred — between 2016 and up to 4032 blocks must be found at the new hashrate to achieve stasis. The more blocks that need finding, the less important that second retarget is, in terms of achieving full stasis.

Thus, any highly significant permanent change in hashrate, such that the economy will be disrupted (estimating that is another question I suppose) would result in a need for a fork to permit a manual retarget. Not really that big a deal, in practice, unless the cause of the hash speed decrease was unknown to the community, which seems unlikely.

[ikativan]

Y will return the favor?     How?  

[Chrithu]

Y will return the favor?     How?  

Stop mining afterwards myself so the next in line can take advantage so to speak.

It's all just theoretical now because it won't happen after people have invested five figure sums into mining equip. But imagine the community instead of starting a race for GH/s had started to sort of organize mining back in the day in an attempt to keep difficulty relatively low and stable, thus allowing everyone that mines a pretty much equal, but significant share in premined coins and even more important avoiding the need for this expensive specialised hardware to mine coins and sustain the network by solving blocks and confirming transactions.

Sure the idea struck my mind out of the realisation that I would benefit personally from a lower difficulty right now, but taking the thought further ahead to the time when all preminable coins will be premined and the BTC from solves blocks are just transaction fees, which I expect to be only 100s of satoshis by then if the bitcoin price maintains it's upward trend: I really think that the difficulty will need to decline again by then because I doubt that mined blocks will come anywhere near the 25 BTC they get you now, so mining won't sustain the hardware cost anymore.

Coming back to the idea of maintaining stable difficulty by mining one after the other with equalish hashrate: Wouldn't such a system of many changing miners be much more in line with the idea of decentralization than the current situation of having maybe two hands full of big pools that do the confirmations? Also it would be more secure in terms of the impending harm of a 51% attack that is allways present with having big pools of combined massive hashing power.

Edit: I mean I understand that the system is designed to "spit out" BTC at a stable fixed rate, so even with low difficulty people would still share the same amount of BTC, so every miner would get less the more people mine. But organizing mining in a shift system with the target to maintain a certain hashrate and thus difficulty would have avoided the exploding cost of mining hardware and the need to aquire newer and better mining equip almost every 6 months when a newer faster ASIC is born.

[OnkelPaul]

The whole point of all the competition in mining is that no single entity one can decide what should go into a block and what should not, or roll back the transaction history.
Of course, when building a block a mischievous miner could leave out some transactions or include some bad ones, but in either case the chance is slim that this miner gets to mine the next few blocks, so it will be compensated for (either by including the transaction later, or by forking a new chain without the bad transaction).

So even if there wasn't money to be made with mining, miners who want to ensure bitcoin's stability would still continue.

Onkel Paul

[Chrithu]

The whole point of all the competition in mining is that no single entity one can decide what should go into a block and what should not, or roll back the transaction history.

Yet this is to a certain extent contradicted by the idea of mining pools in order to overcome the increasing difficulty. I mean as far as I see it the purpose of a mining pool is exactly what competition is supposed to avoid: combine hashing power in one place in order to solve as many blocks as possible in that single place so everyone that mines for the pool has a guaranteed and steady BTC input instead of the gamble that is solo mining in the light of ever increasing diff.


In all seriousness: Of course I am not proposing that we should mine one single miner after the other. But imagine a system where a set amount of miners at a set amount of combined hashrate is mining and each time a miner solves a block he is put back on hold and the next miner with comparable hashrate takes over. Ok this idea has a flaw as for low hashrate miner it could still take etremely long to get a slot because in their hashrate range the current miner could take ages to solve a block.

Maybe a system in which you would have to provide a hashing power in a certain range (speaking of a lower aswell as an upper bound here) in order to get assigned work for solving blocks, so strong miners can work alone and are guaranteed to get a mining slot at a stable rate and slow miners can come together in pools and share income as they do now only that we'd have a great many different pools.

[Shogen]

I don't claim to know this for sure, but as I understand it, the difficulty only adjusts after 2016 blocks. So if all of a sudden there was only 1 THz of hashing starting today it would take thousands of years for the difficulty to change.

Exactly.
And if 90% of the hashrate is gone, it will takes 140 days (14 days * 10) to finish the 2016 blocks.

[tzortz]

It looks that decreasing difficulty is now much more difficult than increasing it.

[Josepht]

It looks that decreasing difficulty is now much more difficult than increasing it.

No, it will not be more difficult. It will just take more time.

[tzortz]

It looks that decreasing difficulty is now much more difficult than increasing it.

No, it will not be more difficult. It will just take more time.

That is what I mean. How differently could be meant?

[Amph]

just ask directly for money, much faster and easy

[Equate]

just ask directly for money, much faster and easy

yeah true.

[uglyfatbitch]

Never going to happen, bro.

[precrime3]

If difficulty is low, and YOU are the only person mining.... thats not quite decentralized is it? Also if difficulty is low, 51% attacks be easier so if this were to ever be implemented it should only be allowed if you have like 50 th/s or more

[Bitcoin.Greece]

if everybody stops mining you will never find block and bitcoin will come to the end of time

[Lauda]

It would take you forever to get to the next difficulty adjustment alone. But yes, essentially you would mine a block every 10 minutes after that.

[STT]

Not bitcoin but other coins retarget every block by design, because they are more volatile I guess.    Theres no doubt any drastic change would mean devs take action not just leave it to hang, or it'd be replaced and exchanged to rival crypto currency is my guess.


It does raise a point though.  What is the use of all these difficulty rises.   Is it somehow helping security by open competition it constantly raises the bar beyond the reach of hackers or nefarious parties like NSA, etc