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The difficulty is adjusted such that a block is generated every 10 minutes.
What would be the consequences to lower the difficulty such that a block is generated every 5 minutes?
What would be the consequences to lower the difficulty such that a block is generated every 5 minutes?
Answers
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The most important consequence:
It would increase the orphan rate, which gives big miners more chance to mine (because they run their own ISP, while a miner with 0.1% hashrate of the network probably doesn't), and this leads to centralization.
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1) More transactions can be handled in a shorter time.
2) The difficulty would decrease (as you said).
3) More blocks are created -> the size of the blockchain grows faster.
4) The whole 21,000,000 are available earlier because someone would get 12.5 BTC each 5 minutes instead of 10 minutes.
What about the 51% attack? – Ortomala Lokni – 2017-12-17T10:18:17.850
151% attack means that one mining company has more than 50% of the whole hashing power, but the percental hashing-power per company stays the same if you decrease the difficulty. So I don't see the danger of a 51% attack in this szenario. – ndsvw – 2017-12-17T10:28:46.370