<blockquote>
  <p>What role does the time play in the bitcoin header?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>nTime is primarily used for calculating the difficulty at the next difficulty retarget.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Is it ok to set it to 1 sec after the last block and never change it while calculating?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Yes, but this will cause the difficulty to increase in a manner that is undesirable. Furthermore, if the time of the block is too far from real time, nodes may reject that block.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>If 2 people get the correct block ( reach the traget ) who will win? Does the time decide?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>The "winner" is decided by the blocks mined afterwards. The time is completely unrelated to this.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-14T21:57:54.457Z
2018-06-14T21:57:54.457Z
Ava Chow
<p>the time feature really doesn't play a role in the broadcasting of two simultaneously mined blocks. Those are just handled through broadcasting effect, forking and subsequent blocks mined. Time is started from the moment the miner began hashing to solve the POW. Its used to know how long it took in comparison with recent blocks found for the difficulty re-targeting calculation. It also serves as a record to know when a block was mined.  </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-05-13T19:28:40.707Z
I believe OP is asking about the `nTime` field in the block header, which is an absolute timestamp, not the time since the miner started hashing.
Pieter Wuille
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-02-08T17:24:39.247Z
2018-02-08T17:24:39.247Z
Sean Byrne
<p>What role does the time play in the bitcoin header? Is it ok to set it to 1 sec after the last block and never change it while calculating? Will the block be rejected when the gap is to large?</p>

<p>If 2 people get the correct block ( reach the traget ) who will win? Does the time decide?</p>

<p>Information about the header is taken form here:
<a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm</a></p>

<hash><timestamp>
What roles has the TIME information play in the bitcoin header?
Fritz
# What roles has the TIME information play in the bitcoin header?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-02-08)

What role does the time play in the bitcoin header? Is it ok to set it to 1 sec after the last block and never change it while calculating? Will the block be rejected when the gap is to large?

If 2 people get the correct block ( reach the traget ) who will win? Does the time decide?

Information about the header is taken form here:
<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm>

**Tags:** hash, timestamp


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-06-14. Score: 0 | Accepted answer

> What role does the time play in the bitcoin header?

nTime is primarily used for calculating the difficulty at the next difficulty retarget.

> Is it ok to set it to 1 sec after the last block and never change it while calculating?

Yes, but this will cause the difficulty to increase in a manner that is undesirable. Furthermore, if the time of the block is too far from real time, nodes may reject that block.

> If 2 people get the correct block ( reach the traget ) who will win? Does the time decide?

The "winner" is decided by the blocks mined afterwards. The time is completely unrelated to this.


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### Answer by username_2 on 2018-02-08. Score: 0

the time feature really doesn't play a role in the broadcasting of two simultaneously mined blocks. Those are just handled through broadcasting effect, forking and subsequent blocks mined. Time is started from the moment the miner began hashing to solve the POW. Its used to know how long it took in comparison with recent blocks found for the difficulty re-targeting calculation. It also serves as a record to know when a block was mined.

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: I believe OP is asking about the `nTime` field in the block header, which is an absolute timestamp, not the time since the miner started hashing.  

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