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I am trying to wrap my head around n in Section 4 of the IOTA Whitepaper. I get that W is weight, but n does not seem to be defined. Can anyone please help me understand it?

Section 4 n

Bill Bisco
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Here W^{(n)} denotes the time it takes to complete a Proof-Of-Work of difficulty n, where n is a positive integer (of acceptable size, cf. first paragraph of Section 2).

Phil-ZXX
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  • Thank you. Just out of curiousity what is n actually at this point in time? I assume that IOTA wants to have a quick proof of work now and in the future? In seconds not minutes? – Bill Bisco Jan 15 '18 at 17:56
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    @BillBisco MWM on mainnet is 14 and on testnet is 9. So you need 14 trits (9 respectively on testnet) to be zero of a Curl hash with 81 rounds. MWM used to be 15 initially but at that time Curl hash with 27 rounds was used. – mihi Jan 15 '18 at 20:53