[RETRACTED] On an emergent block time
0. This entry was originally posted on 22.01.2025, and retracted on 8.3.2025, though I still leave these up. The Issue with the first design is that hash difficulty is exponential to the number of leading zeroes, so scoring chains by total count of leading zeroes would simply incentivize one-zero hashes. You can rescue this by scoring a chain as the sum of exp(K) over all blocks, with k being each block's count of leading zeroes for a hopefully time-neutral score. But then we're simply tracking the hashing time invested in any chain, so roughly the same (without controlling for computing power) as thew VDF count system, at which point the critical issue with both designs emerges: they offer no protection again deep reorganizations. Nothing would stop a miner from accumulating VDF cycles on a stale block and potentially have this chain become equal to or even surpass the main one in terms of total cycles, at a catastrophic loss of information. Indeed, whoever runs their machine ...