Blockchain Difficulty Level and Growth Rate

This section describes the blockchain difficulty level and the growth rate.

How it long will take the "geth" miner to finish mining a new block? The answer depends on 3 factors:

Here are log entries that show how long it took for my "geth" miner to finish mining each new block for the first part of my blockchain. The miner was running with 1 thread on a 2.30 GHz computer and blockchain difficult level is 10000000:

[12:42:09] Commit new mining work          number=1 txs=0 uncles=0 
[12:43:18] Successfully sealed new block   number=1 hash=1e73ae…5d5163
[12:43:18] mined potential block           number=1 hash=1e73ae…5d5163

[12:43:18] Commit new mining work          number=2 txs=0 uncles=0 
[12:48:23] Successfully sealed new block   number=2 hash=56ced2…2c1765
[12:48:23] mined potential block           number=2 hash=56ced2…2c1765

[12:48:23] Commit new mining work          number=3 txs=0 uncles=0 
[12:48:39] Successfully sealed new block   number=3 hash=1295dc…d9f0cb
[12:48:39] mined potential block           number=3 hash=1295dc…d9f0cb

[12:48:39] Commit new mining work          number=4 txs=0 uncles=0 
[12:50:15] Successfully sealed new block   number=4 hash=a1aa74…079064
[12:50:15] mined potential block           number=4 hash=a1aa74…079064

[12:50:15] Commit new mining work          number=5 txs=0 uncles=0 
[12:50:36] Successfully sealed new block   number=5 hash=755861…c45492
[12:50:36] mined potential block           number=5 hash=755861…c45492

[12:50:36] Commit new mining work          number=6 txs=0 uncles=0 
[12:55:30] Successfully sealed new block   number=6 hash=7e09c7…b63bed
[12:55:30] block reached canonical chain   number=1 hash=1e73ae…5d5163
[12:55:30] mined potential block           number=6 hash=7e09c7…b63bed

[12:55:30] Commit new mining work          number=7 txs=0 uncles=0 
[12:58:51] Successfully sealed new block   number=7 hash=ab8263…a0533c
[12:58:51] block reached canonical chain   number=2 hash=56ced2…2c1765
[12:58:51] mined potential block           number=7 hash=ab8263…a0533c
...

So 7 blocks were mined within 17 minutes. The average time to finish mining a new block is about 2.4 minutes.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Introduction of Ethereum

 Ethereum Blockchain

 Ethereum Mist Wallet

 geth - Go Ethereum

 Testnet - Ropsten network

 Private Ethereum Network

 64-Bit "geth" for Private Ethereum Network

Private Network with Custom Genesis Block

 Transferring Funds between Ether Accounts

 MetaMask - Browser Based Ethereum Wallet

 Managing Ethereum Account

 Mining Ether with Your Computer

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB