Questions tagged [mining-technical-details]
Questions concerned with the technical details of mining such as blockheader assembly, or details in the mining algorithm. Questions about the conceptual nature of mining should rather be tagged with [mining-theory].
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Intrinsically useful proof-of-work using Mersenne or Fermat numbers factorization. Could it be possible? [closed]
I was reading this question and got myself thinking - why can't a crypto-currency use as proof-of-work a difficult problem that has value outside of the network? I understand the effort to produce all ...
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Can't we use all the mining/processing power to calculate useful stuff? [duplicate]
When computers are mining now, they're actually trying to break nonsense codes. Can't all that processing power be used to do better things with like
gridrepublic etc.?
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How do transactions fit into mining? [duplicate]
One question about the inner working of the mining process:
I know there isn't such a thing as a block 30% or 99% mined, or a mine is blocked or it isn't, I get it. The thing is: how do the ...
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Is my idea of getwork protocol for bitminer right?
I am trying to understand the idea behind getwork protocol, by sniffing my communication with a bitminter miner pool.
Previously I have read the discussion here, but looking at my packets, I think ...
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What is the most lightweight proof-of-work algorithm?
I know litecoin was created back in the day using Scrypt as to make it more lightweight but also harder to build ASIC hardware from - so everyday computers could mine. Are there other algorithms one ...
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Bitcoin block hashing algorithm. nonce [closed]
Referencing the Bitcoin wiki, what is the auhoritative source for providing a hash of the previous block? Or do miners keep listening to latest blocks?
How is hash of the Merkle root generated?
Can ...
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Has anyone verified what your CPU is being used to do when it "mines" for bitcoins? [duplicate]
I understand that "mining" for bitcoins requires your computer to do work that you don't monitor, so my question is, how do you know what it is that your computer is doing? Has anyone verified what ...
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test cases for hash algorithm anywhere?
RFC4231 gives test cases for SHA256 with several different sets of gozintas and gozoutas. I'm looking for something similar for the SHA256 hash as implemented in the Bitcoin mining algorithm.
Based ...
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How soon does bitcoind incorporate locally solved blocks into its 'getwork' output?
If one sends a solved block to bitcoind server using getmemorypool or getwork, and right after that requests a new block using the same API call, what will the server respond with? Assuming the data ...
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Getwork - can the miner increment timestamp?
When requesting getwork from bitcoind or a pool, the miner is expected to be incrementing the nonce value of the block, but can it also increment the timestamp value, or would such tempering cause a ...
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Which miners support generating their own midstate?
Currently I was testing RPCMiner on my Mac running a custom pool, and it appears to crash because I can't generate a proper midstate value. Which miners support generating their own midstate (as per ...
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Bitcoin pool and getwork data validity
Bitcoin pools need to check data returned with getwork for validity (proper hashing result, etc.). Bitcoind that issues the initial getworks is also able to perform some data checking, but it might ...
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What are midstate and hash1 used for in mining?
The first answer here does a good job explaining how the SHA-256 function requires more than one input (an initial one is specified by to the SHA-256 specs). As far as I understand it, the "midstate" ...
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Find the midstate of an already mined block
I am playing around with a bitcoin miner and wanted to run some tests. Hence I wanted to find the nonce of an already mined block. Lets take http://blockchain.info/block-index/353394/...
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How much does system RAM matter for Litecoin mining?
I know your system RAM cannot be smaller than your GPU RAM for LTC mining, but other than that, is it a problem if you have like only 2GB of RAM?
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Do miners have to hold all the blocks in memory?
Running a miner node, one would have to verify transactions. This includes checking all the inputs of all the transactions.
Does this mean that a miner must hold all the block-chain in memory (...
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Has the nonce used in mining been sized?
In the mining process, everytime a block has to be confirmed, a certain hash with an incremental nonce is generated: If the nonce is a 32 bit number it can assume a value between 0 and 2^32 - 1. It ...
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Why can't just any hash be used for a block? [duplicate]
disclaimer: I'm completely new at this, basic computer skills limited to GUI point-&-click
I took a look at how difficulty was explained, that it is "increased" by requiring the SHA-256 ...
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Changing the first payout address when a reward + fees is generated
I would like all my mined coins (solo mining, testnet so far) to go to a different default account. I'm not referring to the distribution a mining pool will do to all of its miners (Pay per share, ...
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What are the internal details of GetWork() .. the foundation of Bitcoin mining?
According to this answer GetWork() sends "a chunk of data containing the block data, including the randomized bits, and the nonce (the bit which the miner changes)."
Can anyone provide details on ...
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mining with one client on multiple mining pool
Is it possible to mine on different mining pool using one client?
Ok, I know that this sounds ridiculous, but my thoughts are as follows: if I already calculated a lot of hashes for a work for one ...
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How to generate PPCoins using Proof of Stake?
PPCoins uses Proof of Stake (in addition to Proof of Work) to generate coins.
Must the client be online for this generation to happen?
Do PPCoins stored in any web wallets / exchanges generate coins ...
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Is there an up-to-date professional analysis of different "mining shield" technologies?
E.g. Digishield, Gravity Well etc.
As a non-miner, I only hear bits and pieces about these algorithms. Is there a comprehensive resource with details on the history of these algorithsm and relative ...
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How does a miner perform hashing?
I'm trying to walk my way through the process by which a miner hashes.
Let's say the getwork request returns a data field of:
...
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How to tell who mined a bitcoin?
If the Bitcoin algorithm was broken and someone started spitting out blocks one after the other through their otherworldly space computer, could it be detected that the same miner was busting all the ...
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How Is Block Assembled?
I think I understand mining well enough, but what I don't get is how the blocks of transactions are assembled. According to this post - What exactly is Mining? - the miners assemble the blocks and ...
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Why do we need a mining speed above 4.3Ghash/s?
I believe there will be a simple flaw in my understanding somewhere.
From what I can tell for any given block you increment a nonce up to 2^32 (4294967296) per second (and the timestamp every second) ...
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Anyone successfully mining bitcoins in Testnet3?
I've been chugging away on multiple machines for days, and while I get a lot of 'unconfirmed' and 'orphaned' and 'immature' blocks, nothing lands in my wallet.
Anyone else having this problem? From ...
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Cheating on pooled mining
What is stopping me from hacking the mining software such that if I do happen to get the right hash I keep it for myself, but if not then I just submit my work done and get my share of the mined ...
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relationship between bitcoin miner and verification of transactions [closed]
Bitcoin miner mines a block, which can't be submitted to the network without proof of work. And the new block contains all of the new transactions. Hence the new block acts as a security measure, and ...
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Which coins can butterfly-labs miners mine
Can I use a butterfly-labs miner to mine any crypto-currency?
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Can a miner refuse it's reward? [duplicate]
As of 2014, miners that successfully mine a block are entitled to 25 bitcoins.
Can miners refuse to receive those 25 bitcoins, thereby reducing the total number of bitcoins that will ever be mined?
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What is SPV mining, and how did it (inadvertently) cause the fork after BIP66 was activated?
I'm curious to hear an in-depth explanation of the hard fork and how it was caused; I've heard/read a great deal but I'm lacking a cohesive explanation.
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isn't miner collusion rational?
suppose for the sake of argument that each individual miner has the same amount of hashing power of one hash per unit of time (a "tick").
the probability that a miner solves their block in the next ...
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If more than one coin did the "mini-blockchain" proposal, would that make the weaker coin vulnerable?
So, I was reading this paper as a proposal to the ever growing blockchain problem. In summary, it's security is provided without a full blockchain by having a proof chain with these fields:
Previous ...
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how exactly was the original coefficient for difficulty determined?
I'm assuming difficulty has a "target" of 10 minutes because the coefficient satoshi chose becomes multiplied by a variable to help the network remain in proportion. IE, if the network hashrate is 2x ...
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Why does an adversary have to control 50% of the computing power to double spend?
If transactions in a block are valid, in order to add that block in the block chain, a proof of work needs to be found. I have read the bitcoin paper by Satoshi.
If the difficulty of the proof of ...
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How is it that concurrent miners do not subvert each other's work?
Every time a new block is added on top of block chain, the miners have to restart their work because the next block has to have a proper reference to previous block.
Let's suppose that there is some ...
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if a coinbase reward isn't fully spent, can the coins ever be recovered? [duplicate]
If a pool mines a block and is mistakenly rewarding miners with less coins than they should be given, is it possible for others to recover those coins somehow? Or are they lost forever?
For example, ...
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What happens to a miner's work when they restart?
I am studying the bitcoin internals and especially the proof-of-work. The proof-of-work is based on the mathematical problem that we have to compute from an input that produces a hash with a certain ...
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Whats the process of Creating a Block on the BlockChain
have been mining on pools and blindly going a long for the ride of
> generating a block
Can somebody walk through the process in simple terms of the steps involved in creating a block on the ...
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When does a miner decide to stop collecting transactions and start calculating hashes to try to win?
I am confused about whether a miner chooses to wait for more transactions (more fees) or starts as soon as it receives the first transaction from the network. Once a miner has started calculating the ...
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Mining , hash and Nonce [duplicate]
I lack something in my understanding of how the mining process works.
If a miner has to loop over a block and re-calculate it's SHA256 for only 2^32 (the amount of different nonce values possible) ...
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What values are hashed in the SHA-256 algorithm, and what would be the next iteration until a possible header is found?
I've been doing a lot of reading on mining and software related to mining but I can't quite get my head wrapped around the specific nature of what is being hashed together. So far I feel like the ...
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Where can I find the structure and layout of what exactly gets hashed by miners?
I understand that a miner has a list of bitcoin transactions since the last time a a block was discovered. The first entry is the reward for who discovered the previous block. As more transactions ...
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