Yes - which means that either the Bitcoin network has some kind of internal timepiece or it references an external clock in order to know how long ten minutes is, or else the difficulty adjustment wouldn't be possible. That's where I'm hung up.
Seems like referencing an external timepiece is the opposite of antifragile but I haven't found a good answer yet for how this precisely works.
ah, i understand your question better now. how does it anchor to an external clock? i think it’s by consensus of everyone choosing their own clock, but i don’t know a ton of detail about it. i found this
“For reasons of stability and low latency in transactions, the network tries to produce one block every 10 minutes. Every 2016 blocks (which should take two weeks if this goal is kept perfectly), every Bitcoin client compares the actual time it took to generate these blocks with the two week goal and modifies the target by the percentage difference.”
This is excellent, thank your for finding that. And it makes sense. I'll see if I can find more reading on this as well, this is super interesting as a solution to a problem.
Always happy to understand this stuff even 1% better 🤝
i’d love to learn more as you find it. i didn’t research this bit until you thought to ask it! 🤙
nostr:npub160ed0rgndfqggfnn2vmqwjuvxan6h6d6dul2x6arq2f3p0qwnvfqqnc04e you might find this relevant as well
I found this article by nostr:npub1dergggklka99wwrs92yz8wdjs952h2ux2ha2ed598ngwu9w7a6fsh9xzpc
I'm still trying to process it, it's a lot to take in, but it answers the question and then some.
this seems like the highlight
“The timestamp has to be greater than the median timestamp of the previous 11 blocks.
The timestamp has to be less than the network-adjusted time plus two hours. (The “network-adjusted time” is simply the median of the timestamps returned by all nodes connected to you.)”
Thanks! I have read that a few times before and it’s always a good time to re-read 🤙
