What is the format of the target difficulty?
e.g. looking at a recent block
http://blockexplorer.com/block/0000000000009e3acd91fa2a9b330b7172ef039997b1207274553e4e3dab468eThe first 12 chars are 0, suggesting the current difficulty is first 6bytes 0 = 48 bits (maybe up to 3 more hidden in high order bits of that 9).
The block header has:
Difficulty?: 92 347.590952 ("Bits"?: 1b00b5ac)
how do I go from that difficulty value to the # of bits?
On the other hand, the nonce field is only 32 bits, so for most block headers, there is likely *no* nonce that hashes to first 48 bits zero, and the only reason a valid nonce is because something else in the header is changing to add more entropy (like added transactions changing the merkle root)
I'm hoping this is wrong, as this would be a really dumb bug and should be fixed immediately if it's the case (by making the nonce atleast the maximum difficulty ever, say 128 bits). What am I missing?
Show Posts
