Post
Topic
Board Archival
Re: delete
by
bansal
on 31/08/2011, 03:48:05 UTC
* Far too fast block timing - after all you still have to wait ~1 hour to be sure, no matter if it takes 6 10 minute blocks or 60 1 minute blocks, they are equivalent from a security point of view

Not exactly an accurate statement and a common misconception, while you may need some more transactions to be "fool proof" the real key here is with network propogation, and solidcoin does propogate transactions through the network faster than bitcoin, which does help it become more secure essentially giving the potential attacker less time to initiate a double spend that *MAY* be able to overtake the first.
Why would solidcoin block propagate faster if they are built the same as bitcoin blocks? With similar size they will even be a tiny bit slower, as there are more headers per hour... Generating 60 1-minute blocks is still as hard as generating 6 10-minute blocks. To be as secure as 6 Bitcoin confirmations you still need as many confirmations as the *scamcoin generates per hour on average.

With high block frequency you run into more forks, more scalability issues (propagation really is the key here - and already on Bitcoin with just a few thousand nodes it can take a few seconds until a block has propagated) and SC still doesn't solve the issue that transaction relaying is not rewarded/encouraged in any way.
The amount of time is irrelevant, it is the amount of blocks you know have made it onto the block chain that gives you confidence.  Six confirmations is six confirmations, weather it took an hour or fifteen minutes.  After six confirmations there is very little risk that your transaction is going to end up on an orphan block, and as long as difficulty is in balance you are not going to have blocks solved every few seconds.