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I don't think there is any way to easily determine the total number of individual miners contributing to the network. Also, it doesn't use BTC's architecture. It uses a BlockDAG structure instead of a linear blockchain and the consensus mechanism is GHOSTDAG (created by Sompolinsky who is the creator of GHOST and SPECTRE w/ Aviv Zohar).
I am mystified as to who this external organisation is they refer to, though.. Bloefeld and SPECTRE ?
---PART 2--- Finality vs Confirmations "Confirmations on Kaspa are very fast (1-2s average according to the Block Explorer). But confirmations are not the same as finality." "Instant confirmation" is not instant, it is more accurately described as "as fast as the internet", which is the fastest possible. You can't confirm faster than the speed of data. If your confirmation times scale down with the network latency, you have "instant" confirmations. "GHOSTDAG doesn't allow blocks to reorg, but individual transactions that are conflicting can reorg." That's not true. Kaspa has a selected chain that can reorg exactly like in Bitcoin. This requires recomputing the ordering of all blocks that are not in the past of the latest selected chain block both sides of the fork agree on. "It's possible to turn a red block into a blue block." Not without reorging. I think you might be confusing GHOSTDAG with SPECTRE. "And it's possible for an attacker (either malicious or an honest one that has slow network connection) to send conflicting transactions simultaneously to nodes building on 2 different blocks." Both nodes will build on both blocks. "Time to finality depends on many factors. The more secure the consensus protocol, the shorter the finality time. The video mentions at 1:12:00 that Kaspa needs (k + n) confirmations for an equivalent block security to Bitcoin." k+n to be equivalent to n confirmations in Bitcoin, but that's not the exact formula, just asymptotics. The tighter formula is a bit complicated. "Around 1:12:45 in the video, Wyborski mentions roughly 50 confirmations are needed for high-value transactions and \~10 confirmations for low-value transactions. That's with 10s blocks (8 min finality). With 2s blocks, I'd expect it to be 5x that number (or maybe it's a factor of sqrt(5)). But I'm not 100% certain on this because the exact formula for k and finality are not mentioned in the video or whitepaper. The indirect formulas used to calculate k are way beyond calculus and too advanced for me to understand." I think you misunderstand the block rate. It's not ten seconds per block, it's ten blocks per second. That doesn't mean that 10 confirmations take one second though, because some of the blocks would be parallel to the block creating the transaction. However, this converges fast enough. There is a formula for k in the paper. It is not "indirect", it is how it is computed. It essentially means that k is chosen such that the probability that more than k blocks are created within a roundtrip time is smaller than the confidence parameter.
Finality vs Confirmations "Confirmations on Kaspa are very fast (1-2s average according to the Block Explorer). But confirmations are not the same as finality." "Instant confirmation" is not instant, it is more accurately described as "as fast as the internet", which is the fastest possible. You can't confirm faster than the speed of data. If your confirmation times scale down with the network latency, you have "instant" confirmations. "GHOSTDAG doesn't allow blocks to reorg, but individual transactions that are conflicting can reorg." That's not true. Kaspa has a selected chain that can reorg exactly like in Bitcoin. This requires recomputing the ordering of all blocks that are not in the past of the latest selected chain block both sides of the fork agree on. "It's possible to turn a red block into a blue block." Not without reorging. I think you might be confusing GHOSTDAG with SPECTRE. "And it's possible for an attacker (either malicious or an honest one that has slow network connection) to send conflicting transactions simultaneously to nodes building on 2 different blocks." Both nodes will build on both blocks. "Time to finality depends on many factors. The more secure the consensus protocol, the shorter the finality time. The video mentions at 1:12:00 that Kaspa needs (k + n) confirmations for an equivalent block security to Bitcoin." k+n to be equivalent to n confirmations in Bitcoin, but that's not the exact formula, just asymptotics. The tighter formula is a bit complicated. "Around 1:12:45 in the video, Wyborski mentions roughly 50 confirmations are needed for high-value transactions and \~10 confirmations for low-value transactions. That's with 10s blocks (8 min finality). With 2s blocks, I'd expect it to be 5x that number (or maybe it's a factor of sqrt(5)). But I'm not 100% certain on this because the exact formula for k and finality are not mentioned in the video or whitepaper. The indirect formulas used to calculate k are way beyond calculus and too advanced for me to understand." I think you misunderstand the block rate. It's not ten seconds per block, it's ten blocks per second. That doesn't mean that 10 confirmations take one second though, because some of the blocks would be parallel to the block creating the transaction. However, this converges fast enough. There is a formula for k in the paper. It is not "indirect", it is how it is computed. It essentially means that k is chosen such that the probability that more than k blocks are created within a roundtrip time is smaller than the confidence parameter. (continued...)