The point of that is so that if there is a fork or some such, pools have 2 hours to coordinate and fix problems before payouts will be sent out. It's just a good thing to have done now, for future forks rather than to wait til later to implement. It is a bit inconvenient though
alright, so as soon as the most (or many) coins are distributed and this thing is big and healthy (in terms of network hashrate) we will see a "normal" confirmation time?
maybe should be mentioned in the OP