Given that not all miners can afford the high cost of purchasing computational power to own a node in the bitcoin network, which gives them an advantage over other nodes, are they still miners who only focus on approving transactions rather than solving the puzzle to be rewarded in bitcoin for their effort of being the first person to solve the puzzle? Since it is difficult to maintain and manage a node, won't they still earn plenty money by just confirming transactions on the bitcoin network only?
I get the idea that you've separating the "
puzzle" part from the "
approving" part of mining...
If so, no. It is done as a whole.
Basically it goes like this:
Get a candidate block filled with unconfirmed transaction that are verified to be valid including the reward.
Generate a 'block header' containing the merkle root hash computed from those transactions and other data (
more info: en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm)
Then that block header is hashed with
SHA256 twice, and the result should be lower than the target to be "
mined".
The last part is the computably expensive part which requires the expensive mining devices,
without doing that, the miner's candidate block is nothing but a candidate and they wont get the reward in it.
Note: I've asked a Mod to move this to "
Beginners and Help" board where the question and answers might help a lot of beginners.
