Ninjastic
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Board Economics
Re: Bitcoin - we have a problem.
by
old c coder
on 13/07/2013, 13:55:29 UTC
Quote from: rovchris on July 12, 2013, 10:25:48 PM
Quote from: old c coder on July 09, 2013, 10:16:52 PM
Quote from: stan.distortion on June 19, 2013, 05:29:29 PM
Quote from: botsofbitcoin on June 19, 2013, 05:20:53 PM
I see. Like when a nuclear power station goes offline rather than a couple of wind turbines.

How long does it take to adjust then?
2 weeks at 10 min per block, so it takes 30 min for each block difficulty wont be adjusted downwards for 6 weeks. It's an issue at the mo because we're in the transition from off the shelf hardware to dedicated hardware and ASICminer happens to be leading that transition. When more ASIC manufacturers have products ready for immediate sale and difficulty levels out its unlikely to be a major issue but it will be a rough ride upto that point as hardware prices will need to establish a predictable ROI time.

And as was pointed out, there is a large variation in the "time to solve", but perhaps if the 2 weeks to adjust were modified to something akin to a Kalman filter, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter
one might be able to shorten the "time to change the difficulty" to a very short window?
...
Ron

I had to google Kalman filter as I had no idea what it was - it made for some interesting reading even though it is some pretty hardcore mathematics!

What applications were you writing that you are even aware of it, I would be quite interested to know.

The change at the moment is simply done on the block count every 2016 blocks I believe.

I also totally agree about bitcoin-qt more friendly for the masses - have you looked into the "signing" of messages yet? There is absolutely no way the man on the street is ever going to get their head around that - it is far to "geek" to be completely honest.

It makes a pleasant change to actually have some interesting ideas posted that can address some of the issues.

The Kalman filter was used in a fortran program, compiled to run on a 1Mhz 16 bit minicomputer, with 4K of rom, that was the first collision avoidance computer that lived on oil tankers, about 1977. It (the filter) was used in the satellite navigation autopilot s/w that plotted the course and steered the ship. Not well I might add. Grin I just installed and serviced them.

Ron