On Sat, Dec 26, 2015 at 8:23 AM, Eric Lombrozo via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> Unfortunately, this also means longer confirmation times, lower > throughput, and lower miner revenue. Note, however, that confirmations > would (on average) represent more PoW, so fewer confirmations would be > required to achieve the same level of security. > No, the re-target compensates so that the number of blocks in the last two weeks is 2016. If a soft fork forces miners to throw away 25% of their blocks, then the difficulty will drop by 75% to keep things balanced. Throwing away 75% of blocks has the same effect on difficulty as destroying 75% of mining hardware. The block interval will only increase until the next re-target. Slowly increasing the fraction of blocks which are thrown away gives the re-target algorithm time to adjust, so it is another advantage. If the rule was instantly changed so that 95% of blocks were thrown away, then there could be up to 40 weeks until the next retarget and that would give 200 minute block times until the adjustment.
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