Re: Will a shorter block time be helpful or harmful to Bitcoin and its future?
Can someone who thinks they have an adequate understanding of how the entire confirmation system works with security explain how it works? I feel as though some people here are slightly misguided.
I also don't think the value of time is directly related to security. NOTE: I may not understand confirmations correctly. However, a 10 minute block's 1 confirmation compared to needing 10 1 minute block confirmations isn't correct. The correlation here is just time. 10 minutes goes by in each block time example. If time is how some of you are describing security, I doubt that is correct. I think 1 confirmation in a 10 minute block is as secure as 1 confirmation in a 5 minute block. However, I still need to understand how confirmation security really works.
I also don't think the value of time is directly related to security. NOTE: I may not understand confirmations correctly. However, a 10 minute block's 1 confirmation compared to needing 10 1 minute block confirmations isn't correct. The correlation here is just time. 10 minutes goes by in each block time example. If time is how some of you are describing security, I doubt that is correct. I think 1 confirmation in a 10 minute block is as secure as 1 confirmation in a 5 minute block. However, I still need to understand how confirmation security really works.
Confirmation eta is based on the target difficulty the bitcoin software determines. The higher the difficulty, the longer the time between confirmations (on average). So by making confirmations happen twice as often (every 5 minutes or so, ideally), the security granted by that confirmation represents half the work to secure your money (because the confirmation is easier to get, and thus an attacker could potentially "luck out" and get a block that much easier.
Perhaps if you don't know how the system works, you shouldn't propose changes to the fundamentals of bitcoin
