Quote from: GuiltySpark343 on June 12, 2013, 03:04:46 AM

This is never gonna happen, but interesting to think about: if I understand correctly, the bitcoin network difficulty adjusts every 2000 or so blocks, in order to keep blocks being generated once every 10 minutes.

Now at current network hash rate of 130 TH/s (well, more like 150 TH/s recently), the difficulty is 15,605,633. What if suddenly the network hash rate drops by 90%? Although the difficulty will adjust downwards to compensate, that difficulty will take 2000 blocks to "readjust" since it doesn't happen instantaneously.

But if the network hash rate is reduced by 90%, it'll take a looooooong time to generate 2000 blocks before the network difficulty compensates. Is it feasible that a sudden, extended drop in hash rate will lead to a long, dry spell due to the lag time before the difficulty drops in response?

While it's doubtful it would ever happen (ASICs have no reason to turn off and they make up roughly half the network now), I'm reminded of when that happened to namecoin. Before merged mining, people would hop between BTC and NMC based on profitability. At one point, NMC was hugely ramped up in difficulty, and then it became so unprofitable there was virtually no hashing done, and nearly killing namecoin. It's the reason merged mining was created, to bootstrap a blockchain to another's hashrate and ensure such massive swings wouldn't happen again.