Bitcoin Cash Difficulty Adjustment

Shire Cryptocurrency Community
#1

Things are better, but not perfect, in Bitcoin Cash land. Sure, it’s up again (and the Core trolls are calling it a Pump ‘n’ Dump again, even though it ended up higher last time than it started) and it’s more profitable to mine, but the Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm that was going to be so great ain’t so great. They keep telling us the block rate will stabilize (it’s supposed to approximate 6 blocks per hour) but it’s been the better part of a week and hasn’t happened. I’m gonna go ahead and say maybe they did rush it out.

Damping algorithms, which I think you could call this, are very tricky and probably need robust testing. I hope they know what’s wrong with it, because I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s not right.

https://cash.coin.dance/blocks#blockDetails

I find this disappointing, because now that Core has “won” the “2x debate,” I’m not looking for any change in that camp, and I want to see excellence out of the Bitcoin Cash camp. It will take another hard fork to fix this. Of course, Dash and some other altcoins are still worth following, and I do have some Dash.

#2

I don’t think it’s even been a week. Bitcoin Cash has the most profitability over the last two days. Of course more miners are going to get in and speed up the block finding until the next adjustment, the next day. This seems much better to me than the old system which caused crazy spikes.

It’s too early to say, IMO.

#3

It’s been “the better part of a week”—just short of five days. I’m not expecting it to be perfect yet. I’m just expecting it to be better. It’s spent that time sloshing back and forth between one or two blocks an hour and 15-20 an hour. It will only be better if that doesn’t happen, because before, it was only triggered if it lost mining support.

I’m not saying there isn’t a good algorithm. I’m saying they don’t appear to have found it. Those familiar with damping algorithms know that it doesn’t take 50 to 100 cycles to damp an oscillation. A good algorithm takes something like 2 or 3. Now, before you tell me to write a better one, I don’t write that stuff, but it doesn’t take a cook to know if the cooking is good.

Finally, I hope it DOES settle down. I’m just very concerned, and if there IS a lot of disturbance in the balance of miners, this could happen frequently, and better damping will be required.