Comment
Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
It’s time to start the actual mining. Remember before when we stated that in order for a miner to “win” in a PoW consensus, he has to perform complex mathematical computations? Well, the computations performed are guessing the target hash. The target hash is a numeric value that a hashed block header has to be equal to or less than in order to be valid. When a miner is successful at reaching the target hash or less, the block becomes valid and the miner is therefore rewarded. So, when you hear that mining requires a lot of computer processing, it’s because miners have to make guesses to reach the target hash. Guessing the target hash is done using something called a nonce. A nonce is short for “number only used once” and miners use it to generate as many hashes to ultimately reach the target hash. You can consider a nonce as a rolling dice. Miners generate as many nonces over and over again until one miner reaches the target hash. The first miner whose nonce generates a hash less than or equal to the target hash wins. This is basically what “complex computational puzzle” means when it comes to blockchain mining. #5. Winning Conditions (Mining Difficulty)So, what do we mean by in order for a miner to win he has to generate less than or equal to the target hash? First, all target hashes begin with a string of leading zeros. The first winning condition is that the miner’s
Add Comment