The Golden Nonce

Overview of the Bitcoin consensus mechanism: P.O.W

The whole point of Bitcoin is security. It answers the fundamental question of how to get transactions from one address to another, with no intermediaries.

This is done through thousands of miners (ASICs/CPUs/GPUs) competing to add a block. A block which includes the hash of the previous block and so on and so on.

This competition is a race; a race to repeatedly run (Hash) the new block header’s data through SHA-256². This is done over and over and over again, each time only iterating a single variable (Nonce). An iteration of +1 for each hash. It is only once the output (hash) is under the Target Hash (ex: 20 leading 0’s) can the new bock be verified.

To fully grasp the chaotic race needed secure each block into the chain, one needs to come at this puzzle from a completely new angle. Because although this process is indeed a race, the miners are only the start. The key is the nonce. A single variable within Block Header that is iterated after every hash; Starting at 1 and going all the way to 2,521,268,330.

This ensures each rig has a fair start before the avalanche of brute force computation ensues.