And the inconsistent gaps between blocks aren't a flaw or negative, they're absolutely fundamental to the consensus process converging at all. To illustrate, here is a toy example: lets imagine that instead Socolive 10 Net worked such that a miner always finds a block exactly 20 minutes after the last one they found.   Imagine there are two miners and their finds are well spaced so the network is finding blocks every 10 minutes and it all seems fine.   But then there is a disruption and one miner goes offline for a bit,  and after that they're both finding blocks just 10 milliseconds apart. But the network delay between the two parties is 80ms, so they always see their own block first.  This system will never converge again! both miners split into their own chains. The fact that mining is a possion process is what makes mining eventually converge.  Miners might happen to find blocks very close togeather in time, faster than their propagation and processing time, such that they're tied.  It might even happen that they're 'tied' for multiple blocks.  But eventually someone gets very lucky relative to someone else, the tie is broken, and one chain wins out. Another issue with the kind of issue with the idea in this thread, -- far less substantial than the fact that the whole thing doesn't work and would just allow a total network takeover-- is that the miner's who _can't_ mine next can't honestly participate and so their economically best move may be to just go try to mine another fork of the chain back from a prior point where they could participate. Imagine that their power is very cheap or free and their costs are mostly centered in their now-idle mining hardware.  They're going to want to put it to use somehow, and if they can't use it honestly some may attack.  Not a good incentive!
And the inconsistent gaps between blocks aren't a flaw or negative, they're absolutely fundamental to the consensus process converging at all. To illustrate, here is a toy example: lets imagine that instead Socolive 10 Net worked such that a miner always finds a block exactly 20 minutes after the last one they found.   Imagine there are two miners and their finds are well spaced so the network is finding blocks every 10 minutes and it all seems fine.   But then there is a disruption and one miner goes offline for a bit,  and after that they're both finding blocks just 10 milliseconds apart. But the network delay between the two parties is 80ms, so they always see their own block first.  This system will never converge again! both miners split into their own chains. The fact that mining is a possion process is what makes mining eventually converge.  Miners might happen to find blocks very close togeather in time, faster than their propagation and processing time, such that they're tied.  It might even happen that they're 'tied' for multiple blocks.  But eventually someone gets very lucky relative to someone else, the tie is broken, and one chain wins out. Another issue with the kind of issue with the idea in this thread, -- far less substantial than the fact that the whole thing doesn't work and would just allow a total network takeover-- is that the miner's who _can't_ mine next can't honestly participate and so their economically best move may be to just go try to mine another fork of the chain back from a prior point where they could participate. Imagine that their power is very cheap or free and their costs are mostly centered in their now-idle mining hardware.  They're going to want to put it to use somehow, and if they can't use it honestly some may attack.  Not a good incentive!

And the inconsistent gaps between blocks aren't a flaw or negative, they're absolutely fundamental to the consensus process converging at all. To illustrate, here is a toy example: lets imagine that instead Socolive 10 Net worked such that a miner always finds a block exactly 20 minutes after the last one they found.   Imagine there are two miners and their finds are well spaced so the network is finding blocks every 10 minutes and it all seems fine.   But then there is a disruption and one miner goes offline for a bit,  and after that they're both finding blocks just 10 milliseconds apart. But the network delay between the two parties is 80ms, so they always see their own block first.  This system will never converge again! both miners split into their own chains. The fact that mining is a possion process is what makes mining eventually converge.  Miners might happen to find blocks very close togeather in time, faster than their propagation and processing time, such that they're tied.  It might even happen that they're 'tied' for multiple blocks.  But eventually someone gets very lucky relative to someone else, the tie is broken, and one chain wins out. Another issue with the kind of issue with the idea in this thread, -- far less substantial than the fact that the whole thing doesn't work and would just allow a total network takeover-- is that the miner's who _can't_ mine next can't honestly participate and so their economically best move may be to just go try to mine another fork of the chain back from a prior point where they could participate. Imagine that their power is very cheap or free and their costs are mostly centered in their now-idle mining hardware.  They're going to want to put it to use somehow, and if they can't use it honestly some may attack.  Not a good incentive!

And the inconsistent gaps between blocks aren't a flaw or negative, they're absolutely fundamental to the consensus process converging at all. To illustrate, here is a toy example: lets imagine that instead Socolive 10 Net worked such that a miner always finds a block exactly 20 minutes after the last one they found.   Imagine there are two miners and their finds are well spaced so the network is finding blocks every 10 minutes and it all seems fine.   But then there is a disruption and one miner goes offline for a bit,  and after that they're both finding blocks just 10 milliseconds apart. But the network delay between the two parties is 80ms, so they always see their own block first.  This system will never converge again! both miners split into their own chains. The fact that mining is a possion process is what makes mining eventually converge.  Miners might happen to find blocks very close togeather in time, faster than their propagation and processing time, such that they're tied.  It might even happen that they're 'tied' for multiple blocks.  But eventually someone gets very lucky relative to someone else, the tie is broken, and one chain wins out. Another issue with the kind of issue with the idea in this thread, -- far less substantial than the fact that the whole thing doesn't work and would just allow a total network takeover-- is that the miner's who _can't_ mine next can't honestly participate and so their economically best move may be to just go try to mine another fork of the chain back from a prior point where they could participate. Imagine that their power is very cheap or free and their costs are mostly centered in their now-idle mining hardware.  They're going to want to put it to use somehow, and if they can't use it honestly some may attack.  Not a good incentive!