Is there a way to predict how long a block will take or is it just waiting and see when it's done?
Well there's a table of CDF values I posted last week.
That tells you what to expect in history (that we've done better than expected in history)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789369.msg12461942#msg12461942However, the
expected average time to the next block depends on the pool hash rate.
2PHs would expect, on average, to find a block roughly about every 1.5 days
So using the CDF table you can get a rough idea of the % there vs the number of days to get to that % - 2PH means multiply the % roughly by 1.5
So if we stayed around 2PH and the current block total took 200% Diff, then that would take about 3days.
100% Diff, about 1.5 days
300% Diff, about 4.5 days
50% Diff, about 0.75 days
etc
I have a web site I wrote years ago to work out the 100% expected averages:
http://tradebtc.net/bitcalc.phpOf course the expected block finding statistics are the same for all pools, the differences are of course
a) the hash rate, which does affects how often payouts occur on all pools that don't use true PPS, but does not affect how much BTC you average over time
b) and how often they lose blocks (that you don't know about)
Blocks are lost a few ways:
1) The obvious network orphans - fewer means a better connected pool
2) The hidden pool orphans when the bitcoind test says it got a network block, but the pool got it's block just after that, but before the pool software knew about the network block change (these show up on our pool - our 2nd orphan was like that - but most pools don't show these)
3) The lost stale blocks due to processing of work by the pool being too slow after a network block came in - due to slow pool processing
4) The lost stale blocks due to the miner getting the block to the pool after the pool knows about the next network block - due to a slow miner network, a slow pool network or slow pool processing
