Hacker News Reader

One would expect a timechain to not only target a fixed block time, but also to tie its emission to time. That is most simply achieved by 1 minute blocks with a fixed 60 coin reward. Then the coin supply simply equals the chain age in seconds.

One coin per second forever...

View on HN

The issue lies in the fact that we cannot establish a deterministic time interval between blocks, as miners must compete with their hashing power to discover each block. Implementing a fixed interval would compromise security. Moreover, setting a very short time frame between blocks could lead to a bunch of orphan blocks and other issues because of relay time, bandwidth, and others.

The idea is interesting, but the implementation poses challenges.

While highly variable, the blocktime average over hundreds of blocks can be held very close to its target (and with a trivial one line difficulty adjustment to boot). The orphan rate doesn't get pronounced until blocktimes are made significantly shorter than 1 minute.

So, I think we can agree that Bitcoin is far from a timechain in the way it works today, at least tecnically :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com