> You cannot get global, cryptographic consensus in seconds. There is a paper[1] which analyzed the security of the Bitcoin protocol in the case where block pr

> You cannot get global, cryptographic consensus in seconds. There is a paper[1] which analyzed the security of the Bitcoin protocol in the case where block propagation delays would be non-negligible compared to the time between blocks. To summarize, this leads to waste of hashing power when blocks are created in parallel and orphaned, thus reducing security. That paper also proposed the GHOST protocol to fix that problem, by allowing (non-conflicting) orphan blocks to contribute to security and even rewarding such blocks. Theoretically this would allow for 12 second block times. The ethereum devs then implemented it[2], and they have it at 17 seconds now. Of course, if you need the same amount of certainty as provided by the hashing power currently behind one bitcoin block, then you'll still need to wait for multiple fast blocks to match that. The advantage is when your need for security is somewhere between zero-conf and 1 bitcoin block; faster blocks then provide finer granularity. [1] https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf [2] https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/11/toward-a-12-second-block-time/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/11/toward-a-12-second-bloc...