202 sats \ 7 replies \ @Fabs 1 Mar \ on: Explaining Bitcoin Mining To My Girlfriend bitcoin
Mining is essentially nothing more than a more complex version of "guess-and-check". I'll try to keep it compact:
A miner constructs a candidate block (a block which has not yet been verified and validated by other participants in the Bitcoin network, thus only existing with the miner's node) and essentially keeps changing an arbitrary input contained within the candidate block's block header's "Nonce" field, which is short for Number used once.
The Nonce is an arbitrary input which the miner in question changes as often as necessary until the SHA-256 hashing algorithm spits out a result (hash) that undercuts the currently specified Target, as specified in the block header's "Target" field.
Once that's achieved, the miner includes the hash into his candidate block, and propagates it along to other participant's nodes, which verify the block's contents against the consensus rules, after which they propagate the respective block further along, and add it to their local copy of the Blockchain.
Simplified: Miners construct a box containing transactions and other necessary data, and start throwing dice.
Once they achieve a specific throw that undercuts a target set in advance, they are granted a "seal" which they use to "seal" the box, and send it along to other participants for verification.
The other participants set out to thoroughly verify that seal against a specific set of rules. Once it turns out that the seal adheres to said rules, approval is granted and the box is send along to other participants, which verify the seal on their turn, and so on.
Others are free fix any faults or unclarities.
The dice metaphor is a good one, but still a little complex for her haha. Here's a little background on how difficult of a task it is to explain Bitcoin to her. For about 7 years she was a model so she spent most of her time and focus on looking pretty. She's moved up to managing other models now at a startup so she's not dumb, she's actually pretty smart. But between managing bimbos and doing photo shoots, anything that is tech related has to be super simple. Like not ELI5 but ELI3.
I wanted to start this discussion to hopefully figure out the best way to orange pill the average person. I'm definitely going to use the dice metaphor, just a little dumbed down.
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