How do block explorers know who just mined a block?

[calkob]

Just out of interest i was wondering how the likes of Blockchain.info and Blocktrail.com know who mined a block? 

[LordCoder]

The mining pools usually use the same address for receiving the Bitcoins, meaning that it could be easily targeted. As you can see, there are other addresses which couldn't be located to a pool.

[calkob]

Cheers, i was thinking it was something a little more technical than that....lol

[KenR]

The fact is,the block explorers don't cover all the blocks in the network.There is a possibility that a particular transaction is not found in one network in a block but might exists in another network which could be covered up by other explorer.Although this is slight off topic to your question ,just thought its relevant.

[~Bitcoin~]

Doesn't there any blockchain api system which can be used to pull block explorer resulted result? Or explorer code from scratch?

[FUBAR-BDHR]

The IP address of the miner/pool node that relays the block that is solved is also available and can be compared to know mining pool addresses.  If you notice when it's an unknown miner who solved the block the IP is listed instead of the pool name.  

[achow101]

Cheers, i was thinking it was something a little more technical than that....lol

It is. In every transaction, there is a field called the scriptsig for the input. Since a coinbase transaction doesn't have an input, anything can be put in the scriptsig. Most miners will then put something in the scriptsig that identifies which miner mined that block. However, this is not guaranteed to be accurate since any miner can put any message there. It can be spoofed.

The IP address of the miner/pool node that relays the block that is solved is also available and can be compared to know mining pool addresses.  If you notice when it's an unknown miner who solved the block the IP is listed instead of the pool name. 

No. It is not possible to know the IP address from which a block or transaction originated. Blockchain.info only lists the IP address of the first node which relayed the block or transaction to it. That node is not necessarily the node that created the block or tx.

[18xk5oT2rLrAc24SL96XT14BX]

Just out of interest i was wondering how the likes of Blockchain.info and Blocktrail.com know who mined a block? 

IP address of the miner/pool node that relays the block that is solved is also available and can be compared to know mining pool addresses.

[Evildrum]

Having miner IP out there is not a bad thing? Would think they need to have extra protocol to protect from being hacked. Did not know their was such a connection for miners,interesting.

[achow101]

Just out of interest i was wondering how the likes of Blockchain.info and Blocktrail.com know who mined a block? 

IP address of the miner/pool node that relays the block that is solved is also available and can be compared to know mining pool addresses.

The IP address is not an identifier. Because Bitcoin is a p2p network, the ip that relayed a block is most likely not the ip of the miner.

Having miner IP out there is not a bad thing? Would think they need to have extra protocol to protect from being hacked. Did not know their was such a connection for miners,interesting.

ip addresses are public addresses. Unless your computer is not behind a firewall or not secure, than simply knowing an ip is not particularly useful. Every internet connection has an ip address, and that includes Bitcoin which uses the internet.