VietMX Staff asked 3 years ago
As with mining, what are miners really solving? I read they are solving hashes, but what does that really mean.
Miners try to find a random nonce (a little random data) that goes into a block and makes the block have a (SHA256) hash that (in binary) starts with a certain amount of 0’s. The more zeroes the more rare hash is. A good hash’ outcome is not predictable, and so you have to try a lot of times to find a good nonce.
Basically is a description of the global, statistical gamble which is played every 10 or so minutes. The interval of the game is controlled by the difficulty which says how many “hashes” are needed per interval. In other words, the difficulty and target define the “odds of the house” against your chance of getting a winning SHA hash. The nonce is the “scratch-off” area.
So at the end of the day, all a miner does is:
- Take a block header as input
- Change the Nonce
- Test if the Block Header hash is less than the Target. If it is, you win.
- Go to step 2 (or go to step 1 if someone else won the block)
