[fyfy18]

Say you have 10,000 miners, once you find a hash you can start all your miners mining the next block. Can you use the time between blocks to your advantage?

If you find the hash after say 6 minutes, you could delay broadcasting the block to the network for another minute or two, and give yourself an advantage.

Yes there’s a risk another miner would find the same hash, but statistically you could estimate the optimal delay for risk vs reward.

[JeremyBanks]

More or less, yes. This is a known minor weakness in the protocol. See https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243

[mihaifm]

Interesting. Any ideas if this is indeed a realistic scenario, or if it has been addressed yet?

[Retric]

There is zero benefit in waiting. Supose you had 1/3 of the hashing power and got it in the first second. You have a 1/3 chance of getting the extra block before someone else gets the first block and published risking your block.

However, if you publish the first block you still have a 1/3 chance of getting the next block first and ending up with 2 blocks. Thus waiting provides risk but zero gain.

In theory this changes if you can do a 51% attack, but that erodes trust in the block chain.

[rjp0008]

There is more than one solution to a block, so if someone does find it before you it's probably not the same solution. Making your head start worthless.

[benchaney]

Adding to this. If two miners both discover a solution it is astronomically unlikely that it will be the same solution.

[mnw21cam]

Given that two different miners will be setting the mining fee address differently, I'd say that it is guaranteed that they will have different solutions.

[nicky0]

There is no such thing as a head start.