The current ten-minute block time was chosen by Satoshi as a tradeoff between confirmation time and the amount of work wasted due to chain splits. Is there not room for optimization in this number from:
A. Advances in technology in the last 8-9 years
B. A lack of any rigorous formula being used to determine what's the optimal rate
C. The existence of similar chains that work at a much lower block times
Whilst I think we can all agree that 10 second block times would result in a lot of chain splits due to Bitcoins 12-13 second propagation time (to 95% of nodes), I think we'll find that we can go lower than 10 minutes without much issue. Is this something that should be looked at or am I an idiot who needs to read more? If I'm an idiot, I apologize; kindly point me in the right direction.
Things I've read on the subject:
Kind Regards,
Jonathan Sterling