Average Block Time

Proof-of-work networks aim at a target interval by periodically adjusting mining difficulty, so Bitcoin averages roughly ten minutes per block regardless of how much hardware competes. Proof-of-stake networks such as Ethereum after the 2022 Merge instead run fixed time slots, and the observed interval only lengthens when a proposer misses its slot. The figure is reported in seconds.

Comment c'est calculé

total elapsed seconds over the sample window / number of blocks produced in that window

Où cela induit en erreur

Target and realized block time are different things, and providers report both under the same label. Proof-of-work block discovery is a memoryless random process, so short samples routinely show intervals far from the target, and a sharp change in hash rate skews the realized average until the next difficulty adjustment corrects it. On fixed-slot proof-of-stake chains the number is nearly constant and therefore carries almost no information beyond missed-slot rates. Most importantly, block time is not settlement time: a fast interval says nothing about how long until a transaction is practically irreversible, which depends on confirmation depth on a probabilistic chain or on an explicit finality rule elsewhere.

Interpréter une valeur haute ou basse

A shorter interval means blocks arrive more frequently and a longer interval means less frequently. Frequency of block production is separate from how long a transaction takes to become difficult to reverse.