3 ms·
Inaccurate title. The network still sets the difficulty every 2016 blocks ( i.e. 2 weeks) so that it takes 10 minutes on average to create a block. Right now,
by anologwintermut 13y ago
Inaccurate title. The network still sets the difficulty every 2016 blocks ( i.e. 2 weeks) so that it takes 10 minutes on average to create a block.
Right now, however, people are adding so much computational power in that intervening two weeks, that by the end of those two weeks it takes 6 minutes to create a block, not 10.
This is presumably due to custom hardware mining rigs coming online since they just shipped.
- cgi_man 13y agoThe title was accurate. Blocks are being found at a rate of 1 every 5 minutes. There's no way the next difficulty jump will be enough to bring the speed to 10 minutes since it takes the average time over the last 2016 blocks. It's likely in a couple weeks the time to find blocks will be even lower than it is now if the growth rate continues like this.
- nwh 13y agoThere's also a ceiling on the percentage increase and decrease possible.
- sneak 13y agoIt only averages to 10 minutes if growth is flat. Growth isn't flat. This means that lots of ASICs are out there in the wild. This is a good thing for bitcoin and the bitcoin network.
- beefxq 13y agoThe only thing this mean is that the ASIC companies are making a killing off of this.