Bitcoin Forum

Can someone please explain to me what 'Work Solved' means. I understand that when a SHA1 sum has been generated that is less than the difficulty then it becomes the block, so why aren't there new blocks every time my miner is submits solutions (I assume the definition of solution is an nonce value that gives a sum that's less than difficulty), or more to the fact, why isn't there a new block every second because of the sheer number of miners submitting solutions?

The solutions your miner sends are "shares", or proof that you're doing some work.

If (simplified) you need to hit 0x0000CCCC to win the block, and you send in 0x000FFFFF the pool has a pretty good idea that you are working to solve the block. I don't know what exact measure counts as a share though, it must be some minimum amount compared to the target value.

There isn't a new block every second because the target value adjusts over time to account for how much hashing power is in the network based on how quickly blocks were found over the last 2016 blocks. If the target is 0x0000CCCC, that is what it takes for 10THash/s to find a block every 10 minutes, on average.

That makes sense, so the difficulty required to make a proof of work (or 'work solved') is higher than the network's difficulty. And obviously because the higher network difficulty subset of answers is included within the proof of work difficulty subset, you're still looking for an answer to the final problem. Thanks!