Duration
-
I think it would be more useful to use an actual unit of time instead of "blocks".
Since the global hash rate is jumping up and down you never know how long the duration actually will be.
Especially for short durations.
-
@Schleicher said:
Since the global hash rate is jumping up and down you never know how long the duration actually will be.
Well, therein lies the problem. We can't claim "your file will be available for X days" because the hashrate is variable. At best we could include something like
(approx. 2 weeks)next to the number of blocks.
-
Making the duration dependent on the number of blocks was a bad design choice.
When Sia gets more popular the average user will not know what a block is and how that translates into hours or days.
-
When hash rate stabilizes (mining pool?), block intervals should become more regular and time predictions more reliable.
-
The average user has the time automatically converted to something more readable anyway. As we iterate on the frontend, the block counts will disappear.
Because of the retargeting algorithm, 1 block = 10 minutes is a good assumption for the long term (anything more than about 2000 blocks), even when some weeks are much faster or slower than others. It all balances out correctly.
