Author: Adán Sánchez de Pedro Crespo 2017-10-19 13:41:51
Published on: 2017-10-19T13:41:51+00:00
Blockchains that produce blocks quickly tend to suffer from reduced security due to high stale rate. The propagation time of a block through the network may cause miner A's block to be wasted if miner B mines another block before miner A's block reaches B, thus affecting network security. Also, if miner A is a mining pool with 30% hash power and B has 10%, A will have a higher risk of producing a stale block compared to B. Consequently, blockchains that produce blocks quickly are likely to lead to one mining pool having a large percentage of the network hash power. Reducing the average block time may also require reducing the block size accordingly in order to prevent the blockchain from growing at twice the rate or to avoid transaction fees going down, making it easier for spammers to bloat UTXO sets. There have been numerous proposals to overcome the downsides of faster blocks, such as the "Greedy Heaviest Observed Subtree" (GHOST) protocol.The author personally sees no benefit for Bitcoin from faster blocks and asks for valid points on why 10 minutes is the optimal rate, other than "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Adán Sánchez de Pedro Crespo is the CTO of Stampery Inc., based in San Francisco and Madrid.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T21:44:26.037476+00:00