well one of the reason as stated above is in the old version we had to walk a mile ~ hour+ to get to the coins less combat, but now we are so close together, combat comes into play more often, so its now more noticeable, also not having a giant like f2pool to mine 99% of our blocks just adds even more randomness to the mix.

What could help things might be change to difficulty re targeting time (again like btc) ever 2100 blocks (i think) instead of ever block?

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