Subject: [bitcoin-dev] Improving Scalability via Block Time Decrease

From: Jonathan Sterling <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2017 14:52:48 +0800

The current ten-minute block time was chosen by Satoshi as a tradeoff
between confirmation time and the amount of work wasted due to chain
splits. Is there not room for optimization in this number from:

A. Advances in technology in the last 8-9 years
B. A lack of any rigorous formula being used to determine what's the
optimal rate
C. The existence of similar chains that work at a much lower block times

Whilst I think we can all agree that 10 second block times would result in
a lot of chain splits due to Bitcoins 12-13 second propagation time (to 95%
of nodes), I think we'll find that we can go lower than 10 minutes without
much issue. Is this something that should be looked at or am I an idiot who
needs to read more? If I'm an idiot, I apologize; kindly point me in the
right direction.

Things I've read on the subject:
https://medium.facilelogin.com/the-mystery-behind-block-time-63351e35603a
(section header "Why Bitcoin Block Time Is 10 Minutes ?")
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=176108.0
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1863/why-was-the-target-block-time-chosen-to-be-10-minutes

Kind Regards,

Jonathan Sterling