To my understanding after researching on the infrastructure of Bitcoin, the block chain maintains transaction records between two parties represented by their public keys. At the same time, the Bitcoin system needs miners to verify the blocks in order to maintain the system. Then my questions go as following:
How are miners identified for a given block? And, how is this piece of information in the block chain?
Is "coinbase transaction" stored as part of a block, and thus records the gross reward for mining such block? Or, what element/record within a block is recording the amount of "reward"?
In addition to this part of "reward" issued by the system, miners can also collect transactions fees (light reference). Please correct me if I am wrong: transaction fees are free-floating voluntary residuals from normal transactions, to be collected solely by the miner who consolidated the block. Then, how are transaction fees "paid" to the miner? It seems that there needs to be another entry of record nested within in the block denoting the amount the miner has declared. How may I identify this record?