3 ms·
Yes, but even if the block time is longer, the probability that I will "win" the block goes up. Someone has to mine the block and if half of the competition go
by udfalkso 9y ago
Yes, but even if the block time is longer, the probability that I will "win" the block goes up. Someone has to mine the block and if half of the competition goes away my chances go up. This incentive will counter the temptation to stop mining, dampening the effect you mention.
- shawabawa3 9y agoMiners don't compete directly to "win" blocks. If everyone except a single miner stopped mining right now, that last miner would mine 100% of the blocks. However, they'd still make exactly the same amount of bitcoins as if everyone else was still mining - until the next difficulty adjustment
- udfalkso 9y agoI see. Thanks
- udfalkso 9y agoIs there a good reason for the difficulty adjustment period being 2016 blocks? What would be the consequences of reducing this number?
- shawabawa3 9y agoI'm not sure what the reasoning is, but to be honest I don't think it's a good system. Block time averages have been about 9m30 since bitcoin's inception, so it's clearly not good enough to properly target 10min/block When bitcoin cash forked they changed the period to 144 blocks (along with some other changes i believe?), so they have a much smoother difficulty graph.