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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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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What are ASIC miners actually doing?
I'm trying to understand Bitcoin mining (software-wise), and I wonder how ASIC miners are different? I'm going through this minimal Bitcoin miner Github repository.
Which part of Program.cs are ASICs ...
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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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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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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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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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Difference between coinbaseaux.flags vs. coinbasetxn.data?
After reading through most of the protocol, and trying to piece everything together, I'm still at a loss as to how some things work. For example, the difference between coinbaseaux.flags and ...
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How to hash data from 'getblocktemplate' request
I've been reading lots of articles, trying to understand how to hash the data returned from getwork; but I totally overlooked getblocktemplate.
I'm just trying to understand how all the data below is ...
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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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Purpose of unique header in block hashing algorithm
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm said this about the block header:
"Given just those fields, people would frequently generate the exact same sequence of hashes as each other and the ...
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What happens when the nonce field overflows?
The nonce field of a block header is 4 bytes, so the max nonce is: 4,294,967,295. That could be computed in a few seconds with a reasonable rig (solo mining) or much quicker on large pools. What ...
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SHA256 Implementation Gate Equivalent
I needed help in understanding how to calculate the GE for a SHA256 implementation. I need to calculate the GE of individual functions in the SHA256 hashing algorithm.
Could anyone please direct me ...
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What happens to extinct blockchains, and transactions inside of them?
While understanding the concept of block chain and proof of work, few things are confusing me. Miners always consider the longest chain(by difficulty) and work on expanding it. Now, lets say two ...
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H-not-zero errors
In developing a miner, I noted a few "unknown work" errors -- presumably because I was CPU mining and not responding to the pool in a timely enough manner. However, more disturbingly, I received a H-...
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Are ASIC miners going to be depreciated due to it overtaking much of the network power in the future?
I read somewhere the Bitcoin developers were thinking about depreciating the ASIC miners since it's overtaking the network in the future by integrating scrypt with the current encryption. Where was ...
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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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How does the block discovery rate of a mining rig relate to the overall computing power of the network?
Is it correct to say that, since the difficulty will keep the block generation rate at 6 per hour on average, that with one-sixth of the network computing power, I will get one block per hour, on ...
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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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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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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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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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Bitcoin mining algorithm
I was looking at some sample mining algorithms and also some sample code and there was something which I didnt really understand. In Simple bitcoin mining algorithm he says ,
The simplest miner would ...
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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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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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What is the difference in hashing algorithm between bitcoin and litecoin?
I am having trouble finding litecoin mining specifications. I would first of all require something like this:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm
Except for litecoins. I need to know ...
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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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Mining: GetWork, Get Nonce, ???, Submit Hash?
I make a getwork request and get back data, hash1, midstate, and target. Mining on a KC705 development FPGA board, and following the readme.md file here:
https://github.com/progranism/Open-Source-FPGA-...
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Does the nonce have to be a number?
Since we're just trying to produce a specific hash output, couldn't the nonce also include letters or otherwise random bits?
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A full/multi nonce range search or just a partial range search?
In a work, there are only two elements in the block header change between hash attempts. That is, NTime and Nonce. The miner starts the nonce search to get a valid share, and there are several ...
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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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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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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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What mining parameters are not modifiable with ASIC miners?
When ASIC mining devices ship, what parameters of mining become hardcoded? How would these ASIC mining devices respond to any changes to mining procedure / algorithms?
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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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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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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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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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What is the extraNonce?
This question helps identify the various components of the getwork "data" field, but I'm curious where the extraNonce comes from. My hunch is it's the first four bytes of the second half of the data, ...
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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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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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Miner speed conversion
What is the exact ratio one would use to convert Miner speed from Hashes per second to Shares per second, assuming Difficulty 1 shares?
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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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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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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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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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