40 minute BTC block time - No big deal

[Marlo Stanfield]

The orphan cost is just an estimate and some other people (pool operators) have put the estimate at 50% to 90% less.   The protocol currently is rather inefficient.  For well connected nodes it would be possible to reduce the block message to just TxId which on average would reduce the orphan cost another ~95%.  If you reallllllly needed to reduce it more you could use reduced length hashes in the block message to reduce it 99.5% or more.  When you consider the cost of marginal bandwidth is continually dropping that means the orphan cost will also drop.   The orphan cost is also related to the subsidy and as the subsidy declines the orphan cost all declines.

So 3.3 mBTC is one estimate.  Other estimates are as low as 0.5 mBTC.  Lets look forward two years where available bandwidth has doubled, subsidy is halved and the protocol is using reduced length hashes in blocks (probably not necessary but since you seem worried).  That would be ~0.5 mBTC * 1/2 * 1/2 * 3/600 = 0.000625 mBTC per KB or ~6 satoshis.

So it's going to get better as the protocol evolves? That's good. Hopefully the dev team has time to work on major changes such as this.

Is ping a large factor? When two pools each solve a block is it often a matter of who has better ping as to who actually gets the reward? I don't mine so I'm not intimately familiar with these things.

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[APSJEX.com]

Each user is free to determine at which point a transaction has been confirmed

[ALToids]

Well we really haven't come back to the issue of how much to pass through in each block since the fork last year.  Since we appear to be slowing down on growth the blocks are going to be carrying more txns.

[davejh]

Was there not just a 1 hour and 15 minute block a couple hours ago?

I've been doing quite a lot of analysis of hashing behaviour over the last couple of months and I've looked at a lot of the probabilities for various hashing events (the whole series is at http://hashingit.com)

75 minutes between blocks will happen more often that most people expect. Seeing no blocks in an hour should happen about once every 16.8 days (http://hashingit.com/analysis/27-hash-rate-headaches)

[CEG5952]

35 minutes and counting now. I swear, it seem like every time I send a bitcoin payment, I'm one of the people stuck waiting an hour for a single confirmation. C'est la vie....

[wasserman99]

35 minutes and counting now. I swear, it seem like every time I send a bitcoin payment, I'm one of the people stuck waiting an hour for a single confirmation. C'est la vie....

48 minute block time there, I was waiting for that one too. THEN the next block contains only ~500 transactions, not including mine. Now another 26 minutes and counting. Damn you, bitcorn!

[Bit_Happy]

40 minute BTC block time - No big deal

Actually, it is a really big deal (depending on your transaction/verifications), but this has been discussed thousands of times before:
Transactions are instant (usually even faster than credit cards), full verification/final posting takes ~1 hour, which is also much faster than credit cards.

[CEG5952]

35 minutes and counting now. I swear, it seem like every time I send a bitcoin payment, I'm one of the people stuck waiting an hour for a single confirmation. C'est la vie....

48 minute block time there, I was waiting for that one too. THEN the next block contains only ~500 transactions, not including mine. Now another 26 minutes and counting. Damn you, bitcorn!

Yep, mine missed that block as well. Now waiting 35 minutes.

Just need one confirmation for my payment to Foodler, been waiting over an hour now. Like I said, every time, I'm one of these unlucky people.

[DannyElfman]

35 minutes and counting now. I swear, it seem like every time I send a bitcoin payment, I'm one of the people stuck waiting an hour for a single confirmation. C'est la vie....

48 minute block time there, I was waiting for that one too. THEN the next block contains only ~500 transactions, not including mine. Now another 26 minutes and counting. Damn you, bitcorn!

As long as your transaction has been propitiated throughout the network and it includes a proper TX fee it will eventually be confirmed by the network

[CEG5952]

35 minutes and counting now. I swear, it seem like every time I send a bitcoin payment, I'm one of the people stuck waiting an hour for a single confirmation. C'est la vie....

48 minute block time there, I was waiting for that one too. THEN the next block contains only ~500 transactions, not including mine. Now another 26 minutes and counting. Damn you, bitcorn!

As long as your transaction has been propitiated throughout the network and it includes a proper TX fee it will eventually be confirmed by the network

(propogated?)

Yes, but the point is, it's quite frustrating when a vendor requires 1+ confirmations, and you're waiting well over an hour. I'm aware that a tx with a miner's fee will eventually be confirmed. That's not the point. (Plus, tell that to those with transactions in an orphaned block!)

[ncsupanda]

40 minute BTC block time - No big deal

Actually, it is a really big deal (depending on your transaction/verifications), but this has been discussed thousands of times before:
Transactions are instant (usually even faster than credit cards), full verification/final posting takes ~1 hour, which is also much faster than credit cards.

I've been lurking on this thread and just wanted to comment that the "No Big Deal" was meant sarcastically. I agree that it is a big deal.

[minerpumpkin]

The more we hash... the longer it's gonna take. Crazy its at 40 minutes though.

Well that's not true. It's true that in terms of when the hash rate become too high (blocks are being found more often than every 10 minutes) there'll be an adjustment. But otherwise it doesn't matter, what 'we do'

[AliceWonder]

Is this based on prioritizing the transactions by the amount of fee, or is it just that the transactions don't get put in the block in time? Or is it because the block miner is choosing to limit the amount of transactions they want to include in the block on purpose?

The miners and the pools are under no obligation to include any transactions.  They can, if they wish, and some pools and miners have n the past, just mine empty blocks.  They can cherry pick which transaction they want to include - that is their right.  They can include only transactions that have a profitable fee and drop all other transactions.  They can, if they feel like it, included a certain number of free transactions.  Luckily for "freeloaders" most of the larger pools will include a certain number of free transactions in each block they mine.

I think this is one of the flaws of Bitcoin. 

It's only a flaw because mining has become centralized.

Centralization of mining into pools where the pool operator has incredible power of the flow is a major flaw.
It needs to be fixed.

[williamj2543]

Turned off my miner. Sorry guys

[AliceWonder]

Was there not just a 1 hour and 15 minute block a couple hours ago?

This is really bad, there have been four 2+ hour blocks in the last hour alone.

[BurtW]

Was there not just a 1 hour and 15 minute block a couple hours ago?

This is really bad, there have been four 2+ hour blocks in the last hour alone.

Good one.

[mbaeichapareiko]

Anybody ever experience several hours?   Tried transferring .1 BTC from cryptsy to BTER  and still pending after many hours.  

I hope it goes through within 24 hours.    Searched the block chain and no activity with the address sent to.    Checked cryptsy and says  no confirmation,   pending.    

Hope this gets better.

(update)   canceled the withdrawal request as it was still pending after almost 6 - 8 hours or more.     Perhaps this is an issue with cryptsy.  Anybody else ever experience this?    We need to be more liquid than this.

[Sheldor333]

What could lead to such a long wait?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution

I think you gave the best answer, Poisson explains it nicely. Even though it would be better for BTC if didn't happen.

[The00Dustin]

Anybody ever experience several hours?   Tried transferring .1 BTC from cryptsy to BTER  and still pending after many hours.   

I hope it goes through within 24 hours.    Searched the block chain and no activity with the address sent to.    Checked cryptsy and says  no confirmation,   pending.   

Hope this gets better.

(update)   canceled the withdrawal request as it was still pending after almost 6 - 8 hours or more.     Perhaps this is an issue with cryptsy.  Anybody else ever experience this?    We need to be more liquid than this.

Of course it was an issue with cryptsy.  If the transaction was submitted to the network, you would see it on sites monitoring the blockchain and be unable to cancel it.  Always best to manage your own wallet and not use a service.  Even then, you can easily have a problem if you send a really low priority transaction at a really busy time for the network.  I once tried to send bitcoin somewhere and forgot the fee.  They hadn't confirmed in 24 hours, so I went through the process of removing the transaction from my wallet and trying to let the network forget it only to find that it had confirmed a few hours later while I was waiting for the network to forget it.

[minerpumpkin]

have seen a block found in 30sec and I have heard blocktimes as low as 2 seconds. It is only natural we get the other side of the norm too. There was a time I wonder whether it was possible that a block could not be found for a long long time, let's say days. The answer I got was there are so many combinations to the transactions, not ever finding a nonce for a solve is nearly impossible.

If we get more of these long blocktimes, difficultly may even drop, or not rise as much.

Yeah, but we'd get 'incredibly' small block times during the next period. That's the beauty of an adapting difficulty!