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LegendaryActivity: 1008Merit: 1000 Towards more consistent block times September 03, 2015, 04:33:57 PM #1 What if blocks contained a set of N hashes which must be found where the difficulty of finding each one is the full difficulty / N?



That way, the law of averages should come into play leading to more consistent block times overall.

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ModeratorLegendaryActivity: 3178Merit: 4301 Re: Towards more consistent block times September 04, 2015, 12:30:18 AM

Last edit: September 04, 2015, 12:52:28 AM by gmaxwell #2 Yes, low variance hashcash is a well known thing. But this is undesirable for Bitcoin (also a pereneial proposal).



Blocktime variance is a desirable and necessary element of the system!



Imagine a system where miners always produced blocks in X minutes, zero variance. Then one day a conneivity burp happens and two blocks are formed. Then each is extended precisely in X minutes. The network will be forever split and never rejoin!



So Bitcoin uses the variance to achieve convergence with increasing probablity over time. If the variance is too low relative to the network topology the system will expirence longer and longer reorgs and eventually fail to reach consensus at all.



If some variance N fold reduced would be acceptable for converenge, one could just use blocks closer togeather to get the same variance... but then also have lower latency at the same time.





Seperately, the obvious way to construct what you're describing result in a system which isn't progress free, which would mean that larger miners would have an unfair advantage, which is also undesirable as it would be an additional centeralization pressure.

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LegendaryActivity: 1008Merit: 1000 Re: Towards more consistent block times September 04, 2015, 09:29:11 AM #3 Quote from: gmaxwell on September 04, 2015, 12:30:18 AM Yes, low variance hashcash is a well known thing. But this is undesirable for Bitcoin (also a pereneial proposal).



Blocktime variance is a desirable and necessary element of the system!



Imagine a system where miners always produced blocks in X minutes, zero variance. Then one day a conneivity burp happens and two blocks are formed. Then each is extended precisely in X minutes. The network will be forever split and never rejoin!



So Bitcoin uses the variance to achieve convergence with increasing probablity over time. If the variance is too low relative to the network topology the system will expirence longer and longer reorgs and eventually fail to reach consensus at all.



If some variance N fold reduced would be acceptable for converenge, one could just use blocks closer togeather to get the same variance... but then also have lower latency at the same time.





Seperately, the obvious way to construct what you're describing result in a system which isn't progress free, which would mean that larger miners would have an unfair advantage, which is also undesirable as it would be an additional centeralization pressure.



Interesting, I had never considered that. So, what is the obvious way to achieve the same result? Tying difficulty and block reward together and having miners chose it? Interesting, I had never considered that. So, what is the obvious way to achieve the same result? Tying difficulty and block reward together and having miners chose it?