i dont know, blocktime shouldn't have to be re set all the time because of more hashrate, ethereum is proof of this. keeps a 15s blocktime average regardless if its 130 th/s or 170 th/s so why shouldn't soil? instantly as hashrate goes up, blocktime goes down,
http://178.62.133.174:9001/#/chain/ is what i use, right now its been a very low hashrate and therefore blocktime is around 53s last 10 blocks, which is ridicules. but instantly as hashrate goes up, blocktime goes down and difficulty up. but i dont see this as pool sided.
what i see is a Treshold that the developer wants there to be a certain amount of hashrate on the network before giving out all the coins as promised, this will keep single miners with 1-2 gh/s from scooping up all the coins if there is low hashrate, which isn't really fair in any sort of way.
i've watched expanse, ellaism, all go from 200 gh/s to 990 GH/s and blocktime is always the same average, it doesn't change based on pool and not the hashrate, for soil all i see is a treshold, once we surpass it again there will be 15s blocktime average, but right now its too low.
Yes, as far as I understand it* you are exactly right : the difficulty is the only thing that should be changing relative to the network and
is based on the network looking at the previous blocktime found. (Blocktime going down - raise diff. Blocktime going up - lower diff). But 'gsoil' also has those hardfork variables laid in once certain block heights are achieved..
Example (Ethereum) of block time calc and diff adjustment as needed:
block_time=current_block_timestamp parent_block_timestamp
current_block_difficulty = parent_block_difficulty + (parent_block_difficulty // 2048) * max(1 (block_time// 10), -99) + int(2**((current_block_number // 100000) 2))
Anyway, as you said, the set blocktime -should- be maintained (via difficulty).
The approximate network hashrate is just a by product of this - and as it says: it's an approximation.
From what I've seen over last few months block time was 30+ secs (?) on soilcoin and has been going up since (?) (What I remember..) Now around 53 secs last I looked. So, not sure what's going on with it - seems to drift up. It's still mine-able, though, which I guess is main concern (for now..)
( My pool:
https://soil.holylinux.net - yes my blocktime variable is updated. LOL. Is at 53 secs right now. Though, now I see
https://whattomine.com/coins/189-soil-ethash has increased to 55secs (was 53 other day)..)
* Ethereum: "
The difficulty dynamically adjusts so that on average one block is produced by the entire network every 12 seconds (ie., 12 s block time). This heartbeat basically punctuates the synchronisation of system state and guarantees that maintaining a fork (to allow double spend) or rewriting history is impossible unless the attacker possesses more than half of the network mining power (so called 51% attack)." ( From:
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Mining )
Also:
https://medium.facilelogin.com/the-mystery-behind-block-time-63351e35603a is a good read.