⛏️ The Mining Race: Finding the Golden Nonce

Learn how miners compete to solve cryptographic puzzles

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🔄 The Mining Process

Mining is a step-by-step process where computers race to find a valid nonce. Let's break down exactly what happens.

Click through each step to understand the complete mining cycle:

Collect Transactions

Gather pending transactions from the mempool

Create Block Header

Set Initial Nonce

Calculate Hash

Check Difficulty

Increment Nonce

Broadcast Block

Try different nonces and see how the hash changes. Notice how even tiny nonce changes completely alter the hash:

Nonce Value:

Enter a nonce value to see the resulting hash

"Nonce" stands for "number used once". It's a counter that miners increment with each hash attempt.

Try: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...

Until valid hash found

Modern ASIC miners can compute trillions of hashes per second, trying billions of nonces every moment.

100 TH/s = 100 trillion/sec

1. Create Block Template

Bundle transactions, add metadata, include previous block's hash

2. Brute Force Search

Test billions of nonces per second, computing hash for each

3. Find Valid Nonce

When hash meets difficulty target, broadcast block immediately

4. Collect Reward

Receive block reward (6.25 BTC) + transaction fees

Costs

Revenue

Profit