Re: Bitcoin block times

[TheGambler]

Last blocks:


sometimes it can take over an hour.

[moreia]

Also waiting on the next confirmations, getting a bit outrageous.
I got excited when the latest block came up then realised my transaction wasn't one out of the 1,400 confirmed.

[shorena]

-snip-
Why have the past few months processed 6 blocks rapidly then had a massive gap between the next one? What happened to average 10 mins per block? Looking at this, 120 minutes between six blocks is 20 minutes per block average, which is double the expected time.

Its the average of the last* 2016 blocks that count. Should that average result in 20 minutes the difficulty will be lowered.

*correction, its not actually checked every new block, so "the last 2016" is not correct.

[Meuh6879]

No problem ... check graph here : http://btc.blockr.io/charts
the Avg seconds between blocks graph... min = 500 seconds - max = 640 seconds

[Anduck]

There are some solutions being developed... People could help the process by testing the code. So if you want to help, one way is to start testing and reporting. Check out https://bitcoin.org/en/development

[shorena]

-snip-
Why have the past few months processed 6 blocks rapidly then had a massive gap between the next one? What happened to average 10 mins per block? Looking at this, 120 minutes between six blocks is 20 minutes per block average, which is double the expected time.

Its the average of the last* 2016 blocks that count. Should that average result in 20 minutes the difficulty will be lowered.

*correction, its not actually checked every new block, so "the last 2016" is not correct.

what do 2016 blocks have to do with current confirmation times...and if the average is 20 minutes and the difficulty is lowered wouldn't it be EASIER to mine blocks?

Yes

sort of contradicts it self doesn't it?

No, because that would also make it easier to find a new block, thus it will happen more often. Did you buy that account or did you just not pay attention the last 6 month?

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

-snip-
Why have the past few months processed 6 blocks rapidly then had a massive gap between the next one? What happened to average 10 mins per block? Looking at this, 120 minutes between six blocks is 20 minutes per block average, which is double the expected time.

Its the average of the last* 2016 blocks that count. Should that average result in 20 minutes the difficulty will be lowered.

*correction, its not actually checked every new block, so "the last 2016" is not correct.

what do 2016 blocks have to do with current confirmation times...and if the average is 20 minutes and the difficulty is lowered wouldn't it be EASIER to mine blocks?

Yes

sort of contradicts it self doesn't it?

No, because that would also make it easier to find a new block, thus it will happen more often. Did you buy that account or did you just not pay attention the last 6 month?

It's called variance, you can't beat it. This is why block times are so irregular at times.

[shorena]

-snip-
It's called variance, you can't beat it. This is why block times are so irregular at times.

Indeed, yet I feel OP has never heard of such a thing. I wonder how one can be active here over 6 month and not know about that.

[bluefirecorp]

How can bitcoin POSSIBLY survive in the real world if retail is basically put to a halt waiting for confirmation times....or in saying that what about ATM's or buying/selling BTC?

How can the USD possibly survive in the real world if you have to wait an entire week to transfer money from one side of the country to the other side!?

[franky1]

It's called variance, you can't beat it. This is why block times are so irregular at times.

atleast this guy gets it

i laugh that the OP cries that 313799 took soooo long. but did not shout out with excitement that 313798 only took 3 minutes or that 313796 only took 7 minutes.

doesnt he realise that before the last difficulty change, the average was way below 10 minutes. So this fortnight the difficulty has been ramped up soo high to make the average above 10 minutes, so that the average balances out to stay as close to 10 minutes as possible. but even with such a high difficulty, some blocks are still happening in under 10 minutes.

even as i write this, block 313806 took only 1 minute! 313808 took only 3 minutes

[lyth0s]

How can bitcoin POSSIBLY survive in the real world if retail is basically put to a halt waiting for confirmation times....or in saying that what about ATM's or buying/selling BTC?

How can the USD possibly survive in the real world if you have to wait an entire week to transfer money from one side of the country to the other side!?

Not to mention the 10%+ transaction fees of fiat. 23 minute confirmation times to send money anywhere in the world? Well.....back to fiat I go!

[Justin00]

I think OP means you can't wait an 60+ minutes for your payment to confim when you buy coffee, or shoes.... or anything were you stand in line at the counter.

[ranochigo]

-snip-
Why have the past few months processed 6 blocks rapidly then had a massive gap between the next one? What happened to average 10 mins per block? Looking at this, 120 minutes between six blocks is 20 minutes per block average, which is double the expected time.

Its the average of the last* 2016 blocks that count. Should that average result in 20 minutes the difficulty will be lowered.

*correction, its not actually checked every new block, so "the last 2016" is not correct.

what do 2016 blocks have to do with current confirmation times...and if the average is 20 minutes and the difficulty is lowered wouldn't it be EASIER to mine blocks? sort of contradicts it self doesn't it?

Bitcoin retargets by the average timing of the last 2016 blocks. If the average is more than 10 minutes, the difficulty will be lowered if the average is less than 10 minutes, the difficulty will rise. It does not seem to be going to decrease however, look at https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty. They estimate the difficulty increase. Variance happens frequently so that is something we cannot avoid. At times, it can be faster and at times it can be slower.

[franky1]

How can bitcoin POSSIBLY survive in the real world if retail is basically put to a halt waiting for confirmation times....or in saying that what about ATM's or buying/selling BTC?

How can the USD possibly survive in the real world if you have to wait an entire week to transfer money from one side of the country to the other side!?

Not to mention the 10%+ transaction fees of fiat. 23 minute confirmation times to send money anywhere in the world? Well.....back to fiat I go!

if wire transfers of fiat take upto 3 business days just to appear in your account. and then upto 3 minutes to be confirmed against chargebacks.

bitcoin instantly appears in your wallet and takes an average of 10 minutes-an hour to b confirmed against chargebacks.

[lyth0s]

I think OP means you can't wait an 60+ minutes for your payment to confim when you buy coffee, or shoes.... or anything were you stand in line at the counter.

I think most transactions will take place as soon as the blockchain receives the transaction, and then merchants will process the payment as "complete" prior to waiting for 1 confirmation. Otherwise transactions could be "insured" in that there could be 3rd parties that you store bitcoins with to use for fast transactions. These parties will have known private keys from which they send bitcoins from. You will then login to the 3rd parties website, send the bitcoins from your account, which goes through their known public address to the merchant. The merchant then "trusts" the known public key/company, so if for whatever reason the transaction doesnt become confirmed, the merchant knows that the 3rd party will take care of the issue and resend the coins etc.

I think that will be the place of business for companies like visa/chase/mastercard etc in the future. Acting as 3rd parties to speed up transactions that are fast paced (store shopping, fast food etc).

[franky1]

I think OP means you can't wait an 60+ minutes for your payment to confim when you buy coffee, or shoes.... or anything were you stand in line at the counter.

this is where starbucks/PepsiCo will invent a webwallet for people to put in small junk change into (small daily spend) and do offchain transactions on. much like how visa works to solve the wire transfer delay.

so chill out guys when starbucks wants to accept bitcoin, the solution exists

[Bitcoin Magazine]

What if we reduce block generation to 30 seconds

[bigasic]

you are still going to get variance, plus the coins will be released 20x faster or so. But, maybe they could make it so a block is found every minute, but only paid the 25btc every 10 minutes, that would keep things on track. But, when I checked out the average block being found, it was just under 9 minutes, so that means that the difficulty should rise  about 10 percent next time.

[Anders]

Variance? Sounds suspicious. Like the search space isn't uniformly distributed enough. An average of 10 minutes can mean little variance or huge variance. Too much variance and it becomes difficult to rely on transaction times. If a transaction can take an hour sometimes, then that sucks.

[Anders]

I found this:

"In practice there is a sizeable randomness in how long it takes to validate a block – sometimes a new block is validated in just a minute or two, other times it may take 20 minutes or even longer. It’s straightforward to modify the Bitcoin protocol so that the time to validation is much more sharply peaked around ten minutes. Instead of solving a single puzzle, we can require that multiple puzzles be solved; with some careful design it is possible to considerably reduce the variance in the time to validate a block of transactions." -- http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/