Timeline for Why would a miner mine with a difficulty other than 'the' difficulty?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
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| Apr 8, 2018 at 9:42 | comment | added | Meni Rosenfeld | @kuchi: Max Target is a constant of the Bitcoin protocol, equal to (2^16 - 1) * 2^208. Difficulty is the ratio between Max Target and Target. Originally pools used shares with a target equal to the max target, that is, difficulty 1. As mining hardware became stronger, pools started using more difficult shares, with a target lower than max target. The pool chooses which target to accept; if it wants, it can allow the users to choose their own target. The value of each share is always scaled proportionally to the difficulty. | |
| Apr 7, 2018 at 7:02 | comment | added | kuchi | Sorry if my question is becoming out of the topic here. I just want to understand how it works since most of articles I find is too technical for me. So who sets the max target is it the pool? what does "and in some deployments even below an even lower target" | |
| Mar 25, 2018 at 21:45 | comment | added | Meni Rosenfeld | @kuchi: Some shares are valid blocks (that's the idea, whenever a miner finds a share there's a chance it will be a block, so is rewarded for it). Some invalid blocks are invalid because they contain something illegal unrelated to the difficulty, and are not shares. But yes, most shares are like blocks, except that they are not valid because the hash is not below the target (but it is below the max target, and in some deployments even below an even lower target). | |
| Mar 25, 2018 at 20:08 | comment | added | kuchi | So is a share an invalid block? | |
| Jul 11, 2013 at 10:47 | comment | added | Meni Rosenfeld | @KinnardHockenhull: Besides, miners won't do any work at all if they're not rewarded for it, and the pool will not reward them if it doesn't know that they have indeed been working. | |
| Jul 11, 2013 at 10:46 | comment | added | Meni Rosenfeld | @KinnardHockenhull: It's exactly the same work. The miner is trying to find a valid block; he finds shares along the way, and these prove that it has been working. | |
| Jul 11, 2013 at 7:54 | comment | added | Kinnard Hockenhull | If a miner solves a block that does not satisfy the real network difficulty then he hasn't solved a block, correct? Wouldn't the miner and the pool be better off spending all its effort trying to find a truly valid block rather than trying to prove to the pool that its been working? | |
| Jul 11, 2013 at 7:51 | history | answered | Meni Rosenfeld | CC BY-SA 3.0 |