Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Mining => Topic started by: MeSarah on July 02, 2011, 11:30:39 PM



Title: Need help understanding
Post by: MeSarah on July 02, 2011, 11:30:39 PM
I was reviewing the block stats @ bctguild and something struck me as a bit strange.

Block 134422 was found at 2011-07-02 17:13:30 and
block 134382 was found at 2011-07-02 17:20:56. Also
block 134432 was found at 2011-07-02 19:01:15 but
block 134424 was found at 2011-07-02 20:42:29.

Can someone please explain this to me. I dont understand how a lower block number can be found after a higher block number. Thank you for enlightening me.


Title: Re: Need help understanding
Post by: brunoshady on July 03, 2011, 01:03:12 AM
in my understand, blocks are chains of transactions (don't know how they are defined, but maybe X transactions)...

so, you have many transactions in a day, so you have a couple of blocks in that day, lets say, 3 blocks...


so block 1 have X transactions, block 2 and block 3 have the same X transactions...



so the miners starts trying to decrypt the cryptography from bitcoin, it's a attempt/error (don't know if this is the exact word for it) process... for example, the miner try 2x2=6, wich is an error, so it will try all possibles tries until he gets 2x3=6...

so, block 2 or 3 could be solved faster then the block 1...



did you get it? (and sorry about my english)


Title: Re: Need help understanding
Post by: casascius on July 03, 2011, 01:13:57 AM
The time stamp is part of the block and comes from the miner themselves. Their clock can be off. Clocks aren't checked for precision, they are only checked to make sure they don't vary widely from their peers (like by more than a couple hours or some figure like that). The lower numbered block was always found first.