[Bitcoin-development] Difficulty adjustment / time issues

Luke-Jr luke at dashjr.org
Wed Sep 14 15:43:20 UTC 2011


On Wednesday, September 14, 2011 10:45:36 AM Gavin Andresen wrote:
> The block timestamp rules currently give HOURS of wiggle-room for
> timestamps. We can't change those rules without risking a chain split.

And those hours of wiggle-room are not enough to cause a problem.
The problem only comes in (AFAIK) when the existing rules are *not* enforced.

> Assuming a majority of pools/miners adopt the "discourage blocks with
> stale timestamps" rule, that should squash any incentive for cartels
> to try to start playing with difficulty-- you would have to have 50+%
> power to start, or you risk producing mostly orphan blocks.

As this is against pools/miners' interests, and doesn't seem to solve any real 
problems, I'm going to discourage its adoption if it ever gets done.




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