This is because as time since last block increases, fees in mempool increase. So it becomes more profitable to mine the larger the mempool gets
By the time 60 or 90 minutes has gone by since the last block, the mempool would be so large with fees that 100% of hashpower should be online trying to get themConversely, after a block is mined the mempool should be empty and without a subsidy it may not be profitable to mine until mempool reaches a certain size.So there will be pressure for low hash rate before 10 minutes and high hash rate after 10 minutes, giving a much more consistent 10 minute block time.
Are you thinking hash power would be diverted from other places (eg BTC) to find a block with many fees?
No, this is assuming a single chain
then the hash power would have been in idle reserve?
Yes. If there were no subsidy and the mempool was empty, there wouldn't be a fee for the miner to get
This assumes the cost of mining hardware is negligible compared to the electricity cost of mining. I'm not so sure that's a good assumption.
Even if someone gave you mining hardware for free, without a subsidy and with an empty mempool it wouldn't be profitable for anyone to mine
Yes... My point was: if hardware is expensive and electricity is cheap, you wouldn't want the hardware to sit idle. You'd mine all the time, even when the rewards are low.
Sunk cost fallacy. Once you have mining hardware all you care about is variable costs. Mining hardware costs only affect whether you buy more hardware.
But is it profitable to buy hardware, knowing that it will only run some of the time, when the mempool gets extra full? Maybe. Depends on both the hardware cost and the variable costs.In any case, I agree it will be more profitable to mine when the mempool is bigger, but the *degree* to which miners will smooth over block-time variability depends on their costs.
It does seem inefficient for miners to turn on and off so frequently
Even fees on BTC aren't high enough to make a considerable difference in profitability, the block reward holds the majority of the value, and mining is still profitable in many areas
The thread was about when the fees become much larger than the subsidy
is there any good discussion about why blockchain has no minimum time interval ?
1-minute block intervals should be precluded by design but guessing there is justification ?
What you are referring to would be a new consensus rule then. Interesting idea, but I'd think at least 5 min before another block would be better. Could be unintended consequences.
Truth:
This is exquisitely difficult to believe that there is no visible discussion about this.
There must have been some discusion about this
somewhere, somewhen, by someone.
Shorter block intervals means higher orphan risk, also, you would need to wait more confirms for the same level of certainty.
What I refer to are all the very fast blocks that occur when hash goes up.
There should be a hard limit mechanism to enforce a 10minute minimum time between blocks.
or Why not ?
Why not: Disincentivizes competition, could just result in miners shutting off their equipment for ~9m after every new block or easier attack vectors
That is what the automatic difficulty changes aim to achieve.
Fails "to achieve".
A simple automated block rejection
based upon timestamps less than 600seconds from the previous block.
Instead we pay for empty blocks in diarrhetic spurts.
