What's so special about six blocks for confirming transactions?

What's so special about six blocks for confirming transactions?

I read that when your transaction is part of a block that has five other blocks on top of it, you can feel safe that your transaction is not in danger of being orphaned because someone else would come along and confirm a series of blocks longer than the one of which your transaction belongs. My question is what's so special about six? It seems like an arbitrary number. Why not five or seven?

http://ift.tt/2E7ys52

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

bitcoin node: what is the difference between simnet and regtest?

bitcoin node: what is the difference between simnet and regtest? btcd, and presumably other bitcoin node implementations, seem to have 4 network options: mainnet testnet regtest simnet. I get that mainnet and testnet both are "public" in that your node will communicate with other nodes and that both have an existing blockchain and genesis block. However, from what I can tell, both simenet and regtest both create a local only blockchain, and both will create a new genesis block. I this case, what is the difference, and which is better (easier) for developing bitcoin applications? This is what the documentation has to say: --regtest Use the regression test network --simnet Use the simulation test network https://ift.tt/2TAMkwe
Read more

How to check if Electrum is masking my IP with the Tor proxy?

How to check if Electrum is masking my IP with the Tor proxy? When i start Electrum from the command line i see this mensage: (python3:7069): dbind-WARNING **: 14:09:58.452: Couldn't register with accessibility bus: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken What does it mean? I just installed Electrum following this tutorial: http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/tor.html I followed the instructions from this topic " Option 2: Multiple servers but Tor Main ". I installed Electrum using the command line on Ubuntu, check the " Installation from Python sources " on this link https://electrum.org/#download if you want to see the codes. And i used this code bellow to download the Signatue keys: $ gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys 2BD5824B7F9470E6 I checked the both checkbox: 1)...
Read more

When mining with 2 computers, do I need to use 2 separate wallets addresses?

When mining with 2 computers, do I need to use 2 separate wallets addresses? I understand that each miner is working on a different block. Correct me if I'm wrong but this is because the first transaction in a block basically contains my wallet address so I can receive the bonus of solving the block. Obviously everyone wants to receive the bonus so that first transaction will be pointing to everyone's separate wallet addresses. Assume that I have two computers solo mining with both pointing to my wallet address, wouldn't this mean my computers are solving the same block? Continuing with this train of thought, wouldn't that mean that my slower computer is basically useless because it would be generating the same hashes as my faster computer? Now how does this apply to pooled mining? In a pooled community, is everyone solving the same block which has the first transaction pointing to the pool owner who then distributes the coins? http://bit.ly/2SZOBAI
Read more