Quote from: lightenup on May 22, 2013, 06:31:08 PM

Here the data up until about 2 days ago:
https://github.com/bfroemel/smallchange/blob/master/data/20130520/blockstat.dat?raw=true
It includes extinct blocks -- at least the ones I could obtain.

and some visualizations:

https://github.com/bfroemel/smallchange/blob/master/data/20130520/hashratevsdiff.pdf?raw=true

https://github.com/bfroemel/smallchange/blob/master/data/20130520/blockrate.pdf?raw=true

For both plots, I use the block height as 'time' and not real time. Blockrate is only up until block 90 000 (before the switch to the new network magic).

Most interesting are the startup phase (16 000 to 40 0000) and the network fragmentation caused by the network collision (starting at around 92 000) until it is resolved by the switch to the new network magic number (~ 104 000).

As can seen in the blockrate plot, difficulty adjustment has room for some optimization. Each time difficulty went down, people threw their hashing power in and mined as long as difficulty remained low.. causing the diff oscillation of about 72 hours - that's about 2 times the time that is considered for the current difficulty adjustment algorithm.
Interestingly (not visible in the graphs, but the raw data), the extinct/stale block rate (blocks that divert from the main chain) is rather low - even during the times where several blocks were found within the same second/timestamp. That rate peaked during the network collision period.

Quote from: defaced

Also did you change the max blocksize at all, and if so, what is one of the major things you have noticed?

see my argument here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=182430.msg2040013#msg2040013
which basically is: max blocksize remained unchanged, because it only restricts the number of transactions per block. Smallchange pursued the goal to be a microtransaction currency and that means we'd need to support lots of tps.

Overall, the network hash rate has peaked during the period where block rewards started (about 30 MHashes/sec). We are currently at block 136 436 and the current estimated network hashing power has stagnated to 0.25 MHashes/sec which means that this little experiment is basically at its end Wink

-> It's been fun, I've learned a lot - thanks for all. I might work on difficulty adjustment in the midterm future - if anyone wants to try out things with what I started, I am always happy to review/comment on them or take code contributions.

\edit: small error in the blockrate plot: it's not blocks per second, but diff time between two blocks -> should have applied f(x)=1/x .

Thanks a lot for the feedback

In your opinion, the oscillations are due to a too small hashing network (thus varying a lot when people join or quit it), or are inherent to such a very short block confirmation target, or something else?