Bitcoin Forum

Hi there

I'm still getting my head around the workings of this concept. But from what I've been able to comprehend so far there's a lot of game changing concepts that have kept me hooked.

I'm guessing this is part of the process:
As a node attempting to create a block, I would pick the last block from the longest valid chain. I'd then gather up all the information needed for the new block and start sweeping through the nonces until I get my leading zero hashes and I'd announce the block and collect my 50.

I had a few concerns about the process (probably because I haven't figured the whole process out):
If new transactions got announced while I'm solving my block, I'd have to gather information about these transactions and start sweeping again from the beginning. Doesn't this make it favourable for a miner to ignore transactions so that they have a better chance of solving the block? (I assume that there is a solution available for every node, only at different sweeps?)

How exactly do all the nodes agree on the difficulty of the solution? ( I assume the number of leading zeros is the difficulty. Wouldn't this make the difficulty double or half rather than a more granular step?)

On a separate topic, I read about MTGox rolling back??? Is this their own data rather than the bitcoin network? Did MTGox acquire some bitcoins at a cheap price to facilitate this rollback?

Sorry if they are dumb questions. Atleast I posted in the newbies section :)

K

The MTGox thing is just rolling back their own data - they can't touch the block chain.

Don't quite know the answer to solving the block. However, I think you have to generate the private key for the public key for the next block. Since these are unique, I don't think you can simply continue generating hashes for the old block without starting again. Also if your new block (with solution) doesn't agree with other peers in the network, it'll be rejected.. hence you have to start again. I'm sure someone will correct me - I'd like to know the answers anyway :)

The difficulty does double for every increase afaik.. so I think you're right there.. I'm sure a lot of the answers are on the wiki - lots of reading to be done ;)