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May 07, 2013, 08:39:02 PM |
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It's not shares the are more difficult, it's blocks.
Blocks are made more difficult by reducing the target value for the hash.
Miners repeatedly calculate a SHA-256 hash of the block header (modifying a piece of data in the header each time so the resulting hash will have a different value) until the value of the resulting hash is less than a target value. Increasing the number of leading zeros increases the difficulty by resulting in a lower target value.
As an analogy using base 10 numbers:
000543 is less than 473543, so when choosing a random number between 0 and 999999, it you are more likely (it is easier) to pick a number less than 473543 than to pick one less than 000543.
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