The Target
Table of contents
The Nonce is the number that blockchain miners are solving for.Nonce
Target
- Target is a number used in mining.
- Target must be below than block hash.
- The Target adjusts every 2016 blocks to ensure blocks are mined on an average in every 10 minutes.
Hexadecimal Numbers - The hexadecimal number system is described as a 16 digit number representation of numbers, from 0 - 9 and digits from A - F. That means there are only 16 symbols, there are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F.Where A, B, C, D, E and F are single bit representations of decimal value 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 respectively. e.g 5819E961F9967B4E 7D0067F555E8A6B 90A46C53D37E74FB
- Each character is of 4bits. in total it has 64*4 bits i.e 256bits.
- smallest number is 00000000000......................................................0.
- largest number is ffffffffffffffff...............................................................f.
How Mining Works
A block contains of data, block no,nonce,hash, previous hash etc, Miners can reach through the target from the all Possible Hashes. All Possible Hashes acts as a set, where all hexadecimal numbers from smallest to largest are store.
A target is set in this All possible Hashes, when hash will generate it should be below the targets not above. suppose target is 00000 than the hash value must starts from 00000. hash value cannot be 11111 or 22222 or aaaaa etc. if the hash value is below the target value then it will reach the target and block will be mined.
suppose if the hash value is above the target value then it will not reach the target, miner have to change the nonce until it reaches the target value. in the below the hash is not hitting the target it is above so it will not mined it has to try until target is reached.
the block will be mined when the hash value will reach the set target. till then the miner have to change the nonce and keep trying until it reaches the target. in the below case the the hash value is below the target value, so the miner were able to mined the block and get the reward.
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