Bitcoin Forum

.. solving the same block as a pool? Do they carry on solving the puzzle or does everyone move on to the next block?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178432.0

First one to solve it gets the prize, and the game starts again :)

I understand that part... The higher probability being for the pool, so does that mean the solo miner is still hashing? How does the solo miner know when a block has been solved before them?

Also does a miner that has 1Gh/s mine each hash at the same rate as someone that has 100?

~Foyz

This link was very helpful at giving me more of an understanding of how the process works.. very complicated to say the least!

Thank you :)

~Foyz

100 times slower. Or am I missing the point of your question?

Missing my point :D I know the difference is a miner with 1Gh/s will be solving 100 times less hashes. My question is, if they were to solve the same single hash together, would it be at the same speed. :)

~Foyz

You already have the miners' speeds given, 1Gh/s and 100Gh/s, so I think you are asking about something else then speed.

If you are asking about the time it would take miner A and B to solve a single hash I think there are two possibilities:

1) Miner B will solve it 100 times quicker

2) Miner A and B will solve it in the same time, but miner B will be able to accept 99 more hashes during that time (parallel processing).

My guess is that it is a mix of both leaning more towards (2).

Here is a similar question. Bitminter pool the other day had a block that lasted a day and half. This block was not orphaned. Since it had the same transaction of all blocks during that time, do all the other block that were solved up until then get orphaned? Or do all those transactions in the other blocks get another confirmation, and the bitminter lengthy block just go through as the next block?

Don't do it.

Pools (and solo miners) run a full Bitcoin node, so they receive blocks from the network as they are found. When a block is found, the current block that the pool / solo-miner was working on is abandoned and the mining process is restarted for the new block.

Each block contains the hash of the header of the previous block, so blocks can only be found in sequence, forming something you might call a... block chain.

You were not working on one block during the whole time. The block you worked on changed. The expectation is to find one block every $network_difficulty shares - it's a stochastic process. The block(-data) itself changes every time a new transaction is added or if another block is found (previous hash in the header changes). Changing the block(-data) you are working on does not "reset" of your probability to find a block. Every calculation is either "win" or "lose". You don't make any progress towards finding are block while you are mining. It's just more likely that you will find a block the more hashes you computed (with $network_difficulty being the expectation value). You may as well find a block after calculating a single hash (some ppl found blocks with their solo-mining backup), or don't find a block even after having calculated 10*$network_difficulty shares.

I didn't ask for the miners speed though, I already knew that and understand that part, what I was asking is if there is any difference in hash solving speed between miners, pool or otherwise, and you have answered that question for me. Personally I don't think it is a mix of both 1 and 2 in fact I don't think option 1 comes in to it at all.

I think you are right that the equipment works as a parallel process.

Leading on to my next question, will there be ASICs that can actually process hashes even faster? I assume that this would be a hybrid CPU\ASIC architecture perhaps?

~Foyz

Yes.

CPU : 4MH/s (120w)
GPU : 50MH/s (460w)
USB BE : 333MH/s (5w)
BFL Jala-something : 12000MH/s (35w)


.... so yes, ASIC work faster (and better).

Very interesting! Thanks!

People still seem to be missing the point.

ASICs do not solve faster, they just have the ability to solve more at the same time.

My point is, with the puzzle difficulty getting higher and higher, wouldn't we need equipment that actually solves a single hash faster? Or is that not a factor?

~Foyz

solo mining = if you do get a block, u will be :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

What matters is the GH/s display in your miner software. Nobody cares if that is achieved by massive parallelisation or massive increase in clock speed (which means solving a single hash faster). Over the long run, both will happen.

ASICs do "solve" hashes faster.  It takes about 71MH/s for a share (dif 1) per minute.  A 7970 with 700MH/s, for example, was submitting about 10 shares per minute.  The KNC Jupiter does about 10,000 shares/minute.

I think the problem you're complaining about is that blocks are not solved faster.  Well that's why the difficulty keeps going up - to accomodate the fact that these faster ASICs are being added to the network and solving blocks faster than 6 per hour on average.  If blocks were solved even faster then the rest of of the 21million BTC would have been mined with the introduction of ASICs.

Right, the time-to-hash for any single hash attempt doesn't matter that much. Everyone is in a race to find a nonce that solves the criteria for the difficulty of the current block, and everyone is attempting different nonces. If everyone counted from "0" and incremented from there, and there was a fixed integer that solved the "puzzle", then the fastest hasher would always win. But that's not how it works. The nonce that will solve the puzzle depends a lot on the header of the block you're solving, which is different for each node, plus I suspect each node starts at a random nonce position in an attempt to not duplicate work with other nodes.

So in simple terms, assuming I understand this correctly (which I admit may not be the case... :)) is that the node with 1 GHs versus the node with 100 GHs is like a guy buying one lottery ticket versus a guy buying 100 lottery tickets?

...per second/minute/whatever. yes.

It wasn't really a complaint, more of an observation, but your (and others) explanations has helped me in somewhat solidifying my understanding of the whole process!

~Foyz

Yep, it can be very confusing at first. But yes, that's the gist. Faster hashing = more lottery tickets.