Network Time of Bitcoin

0

Bitcoin uses UNIX time for timestamp. Unix Time is really accurate. I want to know why there is a "70 minutes" offset is allowed in Bitcoin network adjusted time. Is there any distribution used to get to this "70 minutes".

achu thomas

Posted 2018-07-31T10:29:37.050

Reputation: 35

Answers

1

The leeway exists mostly because timekeeping is not very synchronized, overall. Computers can easily be off by several minutes, and around daylight time changes it's not uncommon to see computers off by an hour or so.

Having stuff like NTP makes things more in-sync, but one cannot expect all participants in the network to be using services like NTP.

Counting up from the Unix epoch is very accurate, yes. The ability of various computers to maintain that accuracy is not.

Raghav Sood

Posted 2018-07-31T10:29:37.050

Reputation: 10 897

Doesn't the timestamp uses UTC time, therefore, it does not have daylight saving.achu thomas 2018-08-07T10:14:22.400

Yes, the timestamp is based on unix time, which inherently does not have DST. However, it is verified against the clock time of nodes, which can be impacted by UTC, especially when the clock time is set manually (in which case it may just be adjusted by an hour, but the timezone may not mention DST)Raghav Sood 2018-08-07T10:38:31.953