21 votes

How does AsicBoost work?

Introduction AsicBoost speeds up Bitcoin mining in general (for ASICs and CPUs alike) by reducing the frequency of computing one part of the SHA-256 calculation. A Bitcoin block header is 80 bytes ...
Nayuki's user avatar
  • 882
11 votes

Probablity Distribution of mining

The expected time (mean) for a new block is of course 10 minutes, assuming constant hashrate, and no block propagation time. The tricky part is that there is no such thing as a point in time. You can ...
Felix Weis's user avatar
8 votes
Accepted

How will mining work after 2140?

There’s no such thing as a block without a coinbase transaction. Even if the block reward plus fees is zero, it is still a mandatory transaction at the start of every block, it just pays nothing.
Claris's user avatar
  • 15.4k
7 votes

How does AsicBoost work?

I'm reproducing figures 2 and 3 from the paper below to provide an alternative interpretation. Fig 2: Fig 3: Historically, mining is composed of an inner loop (red) and an outer loop (green). Each ...
Ponkadoodle's user avatar
5 votes

How are eth transaction faster than btc?

Most simple and foreseen reason: Bitcoin's blocktime is set at 10 minutes, while Ethereum has a block every 10-20 seconds, making it much faster. See Ghost protocol, https://www.cryptocompare.com/...
Rutger Versteegden's user avatar
4 votes

How do Bitcoin clients/miners verify balances quickly?

Balances Bitcoin doesn't care about balances. Miners also don't. Your wallet may keep track of your balance but it doesn't need to know about anyone else's. No one else cares about your balance. It is ...
RedGrittyBrick's user avatar
3 votes

Could a miner set a maximium transaction fee rate?

Yes, miners can choose exactly what transactions to include in their candidate blocks, including the choice to not include anything at all. Of course, if a high fee paying transaction is available, ...
Pieter Wuille's user avatar
2 votes
Accepted

Where can I find the structure and layout of what exactly gets hashed by miners?

The data that's hashed is the block header. You can find a description of the format and layout at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm
Nate Eldredge's user avatar
2 votes

Bitcoin Mining using an iPhone?

Is it possible to start Bitcoin mining using an iPhone with 4G internet connection? Yes. It is theoretically possible to start mining with an iPhone. Your internet connection is almost completely ...
hardfork's user avatar
  • 2,117
2 votes

Do Miners have to get below the Target or the Bits value?

Below the target value that corresponds to the bits field in the block.
Pieter Wuille's user avatar
1 vote

Sorry newbie, I dont get the PoS block creation, to much contradiction

POS distributes valid block rewards proportionally to stakers. However, majority stakers cannot be unseated if they do not wish to trade their stake. A 51% staker can control/censor the system ...
James C.'s user avatar
  • 2,501
1 vote
Accepted

Debug Bitcoin Core Mining

If you mean the generate function, which creates blocks on demand, it is only available for the Regtest mode. Use the -regtest option to run in Regtest mode. If you mean the setgenerate mining ...
FedFranz's user avatar
  • 652
1 vote

How are eth transaction faster than btc?

BTC transaction confirmation can be "slow" because of a combination of factors, including: Maximum block size is limited (the NYA was an attempt to rectify that), thereby limiting the number of ...
Hannah Vernon's user avatar
  • 1,569
1 vote
Accepted

Bitcoin mining algorithm - target - Java

The difficulty is a part of the block header called "bits". It is the 72nd to 75th bytes of the block header and looks like this in hex: bits = 0x76270618 Remember this is little-endian! Actual big-...
Jimmy Song's user avatar
  • 7,749
1 vote

Probablity Distribution of mining

For the impatient What is the probability distribution of solving a block, given the same difficulty. It is not clear if you mean the probability distribution of the time it takes to mine a block or ...
Lagrang3's user avatar

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