Quote from: Spjuth on March 06, 2015, 01:50:26 PM

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My question is about average waiting time for a block. Is the average time until a new block is found always 10 min no matter how long I have waited, or does the average waiting time decrease the more time has passed since the last block?

Edit: I'm waiting for a confirmation right now, that's why I'm asking Wink

There is no relevant decreasing of the search space.

If the difficulty has recently been adjusted (it is adjusted every 2016 blocks, which is approximately every 2 weeks), then the average time until a block is solved is 10 minutes. It doesn't matter if its been 3 hours since the last block, or if 10 blocks were all just solved in the past 15 seconds. The average time until the current block will be solved is 10 minutes.

Note that if hash power has been added to the network since the last difficulty adjustment (new miners joining, or existing miners upgrading their hardware), then the average time is decreased. If the hash power is steadily increasing, then the average time until the current block is solved decreases in direct proportion to the increase in hash power since the last difficulty adjustment (imagine your hypothetical dice roller rolling the dice faster, or rolling more dice at once). Then when difficulty is adjusted again, the average time is re-adjusted back to 10 minutes (imagine increasing the number of sides on the hypothetical die from 6 to 10, or 20, or 100, or whatever is necessary to get the appropriate target time of 10 minutes between successful rolls).