Hello everyone! I am writing a school essay about mathematics in cryptocurrency. I would want to show the SHA-256 coding,(something familiar to this: http://www.righto.com/2014/09/mining-bitcoin-with-pencil-and-paper.html) however I am not sure about the input data. As I know I need:
*Version - which, as for now, is a constant 02000000
*Hash of the previous block in little endian
*timestamp - seconds from 1 January 1970 with accuracy to two hours (Idk which Timezone is correct)
*Current target
*nonce
*Merkle root - If I do not mine in a bitcoin client, how can I know the correct current merkle root?(I read that each client has a different merkle root)
Then, as I understand, I should divide the sum of those into 8 parts, which will be mine a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h; then 128 round of coding and I will receive my hash.
Also, theoretically, if I would get a correct hash, how can I attach it to the blockchain and receive the coins? Would the bitcoin client be needed?
Sorry for all the mistakes, I am a total newbie. So, could you tell me what parts are wrong? Thanks in advance.