So I wonder why people haven't been asking the core team to change the confirm time on the next hard fork? This is a perfect time to do it considering we're very likely going to be doing a hard fork any way to increase the block size from 1 mb.
It takes about 1 hour to make sure the confirmation is solid due to orphan blocks or some kind of attacks. 6 confirmation of 10 minute block takes 1 hour. If you reduce the block time to 1 min, then it will take 60 confirmation to avoid double spend.
Right, so we might as well have shorter confirms since no one is going to be rewriting blocks on the Bitcoin chain for any transaction that's worth less than the cost to do so. And for the ones that are, we wait an hour. Sounds pretty good to me.
Over 30 minutes for a single confirmation does not (and will not ever) work in the real world.
(Almost) Every time I start to believe that BTC is "going mainstream", I have a delay waiting for a 30+ minute block....
(Almost) Every time I start to believe that BTC is "going mainstream", I have a delay waiting for a 30+ minute block....
solution:
if your paying for a coffee or a mars bar, dont wait. if your buying a house wait 30 minutes
solution:
if your paying for a coffee or a mars bar, use LTC or DOGE. if your buying a house wait 30 minutes
Not disagreeing with you , but isnt LTC fairly secure?
If you want to do an apple to apples comparison of network security the LTC network has a difficulty of ~36.5 thousands now, compared to 35 million for bitcoin. Granted BTC and LTC miners are not interchangeable but I think this gives a pretty good comparison as to how easy it would be to attack either network.
The thing is that one confirmation is more secure than zero confirmations as it prevents a whole category of zero confirmation double spend attacks. So that confirmation comparison you're making is only accurate for a comparison of attacks where a rogue miner is actually publishing blocks. And the amount of time you need to wait for the same amount of security is the same so they're actually equivalent. Like I said up thread, the only disadvantage to shorter block times seems to be more orphans, but since it's something that benefits the end user I would think most people who aren't miners would actually be behind such a change. And the smart ones who are miners will see that despite the fact that they will be wasting some hash in some cases, the potential gains in demand and positive perception due to people not having to wait around 30 minutes for a confirmation often enough should make up for it in the long run. That's just conjecture of course, but considering the amount of complaints we hear about Bitcoin's slow block targets I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
It's not just more secure, it's infinitely more secure.
Fast-confirm coins absolutely have a niche, in my opinion.
The problem with this is that shorter confirmation blockchains also give miners more of an incentive to mine on shorter blockchains to prevent their chain from being orphaned. This will result in more orphaned chains and longer chains, ones that will potentially exceed the equivalent of a 10 minute confirmation
But it is possible to double spend unconfirmed transactions if you know how to do it correctly(not saying it's easy). Which is why the 1 confirmation is better, since that whole category of double spend attacks that are possible are protected against with one confirm.
I think at this point it's pretty clear that Bitcoin could upgrade to 2 minute blocks on the next hard fork and people would be happy with the change. One confirmation, even if it's 1/5th as secure as a one 10 minute confirm is still very secure on the Bitcoin network. I think it would beneficial for Bitcoin to make this change.
Here's Peter Todd's take on unconfirmed transactions: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/239bj1/doublespending_unconfirmed_transactions_is_a_lot/
Note: I'm not saying that unconfirmed transactions aren't fine for microtransactions and such.