Dramatically Faster Bitcoin Confirmations! (without any negatives)

[Bit_Happy]

Please extinguish your flame throwers and help solve one of BTC's biggest problems:
Bitcoin needs faster confirmations. Even if you do not agree this is important, many others know that 15, 20, 40, even 65 minutes for a single block often does not work in the real world.

Here is one solution:
Slash the average block time to ~2 minutes, BUT only the first out of every 5 blocks rewards new BTC (all blocks reward current transaction fees)

All of these "sacred and unchangeable" things remain the same:
No change in the total number of coins,
number of coins per "reward" block, or
average blocks per hour w/ new coins.

Everything considered vital is unaffected and transactions are much faster.
If you strongly object, then please try to solve the challenge another way, since Bitcoin certainly does need faster confirmation times.

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[Akka]

1. Transactions are not faster. Confirmations are.

2. We wait for confirmations as a measure of security. 1 Block is the agreement of the average Hashingpower of 1 minutes. If you would reduce the blocktime to 2 minutes you would also reduce the security of a block to 1/5th. Therefore for the same level of security you now gain with 6 confirmations you would need to wait for 30 confirmations. Nothing would be gained.

Confirmations are not a counter that just goes to 6 and than it's safe. I can't believe you are a Hero Member and don't know this. But then, you are probably an altcoiner, which often happily ignore this fact.

[Kazimir]

Please extinguish your flame throwers and help solve one of BTC's biggest problems:
Bitcoin needs faster confirmations. Even if you do not agree this is important, many others know that 15, 20, 40, even 65 minutes for a single block often does not work in the real world.

Exactly what's the problem with the 10 minute confirmation time?

Aren't you confusing confirmation time (10 minutes) with transaction time (1-2 seconds)?

Do you also consider it a problem for credit card payments that their confirmation time is 6-12 MONTHS?

You seem to think that in the "real world", people are actually waiting for blocks. They're not. Bitcoin payments in shops, restaurants, etc. can be safely accepted without confirmations, in fact they already are in every day practice. This has lead to exactly zero problems in the past 6 years.

Similarly, when people pay with credit card, shop owners don't keep their customers waiting for 6 months at the cash register until their chargeback period expires. Even though this actually DOES leas to problems (chargebacks occur quite often).

Here is one solution:
Slash the average block time to ~2 minutes, BUT only the first out of every 5 blocks rewards new BTC (all blocks reward current transaction fees)

This is an EXTREMELY bad idea. This would cause many miners to pause their hardware for 4 blocks (as there's hardly any reward for them) and only turn it on every 5th block. So, this would result in very unstable block times.

All of these "sacred and unchangeable" things remain the same:
No change in the total number of coins,
number of coins per "reward" block, or
average blocks per hour w/ new coins.

Everything considered vital is unaffected and transactions are much faster.
If you strongly object, then please try to solve the challenge another way, since Bitcoin certainly does need faster confirmation times.

Why not just slashing the block time to 2 minutes (1/5th of what is is now), and simply slashing the reward to 2.5 BTC as well (also 1/5th of what it is now). Same result, without the ridiculous disadvantages. And as a bonus, without chanhing the 1 MB per block limit we have now quintupled the number of transactions we can process.

[Kazimir]

Confirmations are not a counter that just goes to 6 and than it's safe. I can't believe you are a Hero Member and don't know this. But then, you are probably an altcoiner, which often happily ignore this fact.

Yep. Probably one of those ignorant folks saying "Litecoin confirmations (or even "transactions") are four times faster, because their block time is 2.5 minutes!" 

Educate yourselves, oh ye of small faith.

[fildza]

So you think people do that for what? Of course there have reason. Many negative effect if you cut it

[deepestfear]

Won't side chains solve this problem. Use an alt chain with faster confirmation times and synch to btc blockchain as needed?

[e1ghtSpace]

Miners will just turn off their ASICs when the block they are mining isn't going to pay them.


UNLESS we make it so that according to the last block of the 5, it decides which block that was found gets the Bitcoins.

[Blazr]

The problem is this could cause an increase in the number of orphaned blocks if a block takes longer than 2 minutes to propagate the network. Even at the current size of the network 2 minutes to propagate is pretty likely to occur for slower/poorly connected nodes, and it will happen very frequently if the network grows. Also you are increasing the number of blocks generated per day, each block has a blocksizelimit which is an anti-spam measure that keeps full node bandwidth/resources limited, you would essentially be increasing this by 5, the people who support the 1MB blocksizelimit would not like this change.

A lot of problems with this solution...

[odolvlobo]

I'm in the no-need-for-faster-confirmations camp.

The bigger problem with 2 minute blocks is the higher orphan rate, resulting in more wasted energy.

I want to point out that paying the subsidy every 5th block won't work because nobody will mine the other 4 blocks, or more likely will be that each miner mines 5 blocks at a time to maximize their chances of getting the subsidy in the 5th block. A better idea would be to simply divide the subsidy by 5.

[chronicsky]

I'm in the no-need-for-faster-confirmations camp.

I want to point out that paying the subsidy every 5th block won't work because nobody will mine the other 4 blocks, or more likely will be that each miner mines 5 blocks at a time to maximize their chances of getting the subsidy in the 5th block. A better idea would be to simply divide the subisidy by 5.

That would mean the loss for miner's and they won't easily accept the block then.
Totally ridiculous idea to change any timing or subsidy/fee for block .

[croato]

Bitcoin is fast enough, it would be just redicoulous to reduce block time. In need of faster transactions there is allways some faster coin or offchain transaction provided by some service.

[jonald_fyookball]

isn't there a simple solution?  query other nodes' mempool via BIP035.

just hasn't been needed much I assume, so no implementations
built that I'm aware of.

[Meuh6879]

3 secondes to have the transaction from an exchange to my android wallet.
what the problem ? 3D Secure take more time than this ...  

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty (on the left ... Block Generation Time)

[Pecunia non olet]

leave bitcoin alone with your half baked ideas. Make an altcoin or use an existing one.

[neurotypical]

I dont see the problem with confirmations. In the CNN documentary, merchants were doing their transactions and no one was worried about confirmations.

[ebliever]

10 minute block time is fine for a "premium value" cryptocurrency (such as bitcoin may be over the long haul). If it does turn out that there is a strong market demand for faster confirmation times for a certain class of financial transactions, then an altcoin can fill that role.

Long term, I wouldn't be surprised if ultimately there was a "high security premium altcoin" with an even longer confirmation time, along with other security measures. The point being, we will probably have a range of major cryptocurrencies with different block times and other characteristics to optimize each for distinct financial uses (long term high security storage, day to day convenience, secure but fast transfers between financial institutions, simple zero fee ones for paying the kids chores, and so on and on.

Cryptocurrency is NOT going to be a winner-take-all situation, so I wish the Bitcoin vs. Altcoin flame warriors would give it a rest.

[R2D221]

People that want “faster confirmation times” don't understand how transactions and confirmations actually work.

It's safe to accept an unconfirmed transactions for trivial items, such as coffee, (yes, the same example as always) or groceries. If you are buying something more valuable, like, say, a TV, then waiting for 1 confirmation is reasonable, and in what kind of hurry would you need to be if you can't wait 10 minutes to watch a movie in your new enormous 4K TV?

[inBitweTrust]

2 minute block confirmations would have many negative consequences such as increasing the orphan rate with almost no benefits. The only thing that matters is a 1-2 second confirmation time for in person purchases. Anything longer than that is unacceptable and not worth even discussing.

There are already solutions for this that are being developed or existing-- here is one of them-

http://impulse.is/

It is very scary that this topic is being discussed by a hero member and I almost think that this may be a sold account.  

isn't there a simple solution?  query other nodes' mempool via BIP035.

This is what mycelium local trader does with “Transaction Confidence” bar and payment processors like bitpay do.

[RodeoX]

1. Transactions are not faster. Confirmations are.

2. We wait for confirmations as a measure of security. 1 Block is the agreement of the average Hashingpower of 1 minutes. If you would reduce the blocktime to 2 minutes you would also reduce the security of a block to 1/5th. Therefore for the same level of security you now gain with 6 confirmations you would need to wait for 30 confirmations. Nothing would be gained.
...

Gosh guys why all the hate on bit-happy?

I do think this is the answer however. And for many transactions it is not necessary to even wait for one confirmation. It would require a difficult and somewhat sophisticated attack to fake a bitcoin. It's not likely that it would be worth it to scam someone out of a $10 purchase.