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.
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.
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.
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.
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.