What kind of math problems are they solving? Is it used for anything? Why are they doing it?
In: 919
On mobile, so bear with me…
Crypto “proof of work” mining is not actually solving mathematical problems, it’s just making guesses until someone gets the correct answer. So what’s the “correct” answer?
Imagine you have a mysterious black box. Anything you put in the box comes out as a string of numbers, and always the same amount of numbers. When you put your stuff in the box you don’t know what the string of numbers on the other side will be, but you can add things to the box to change the output. This is what the “hashing” does.
Now imagine that you need the string of numbers on the other side to start with a zero. You have to take all the stuff you’d normally put in the box and make guesses about the other stuff to add to get a zero as the first number on the other side. Now imagine you need 2 zeroes to start, then 3, then 4… this is the “increasing difficulty” of crypto mining and it requires the “miners” to make more and more guesses for what they add to the transactions (the stuff for the next block) to get the desired output hash (the string of numbers after hashing).
When someone makes a correct guess they will send that to the crypto network so other nodes (other miners on the network) can test it for accuracy. Once more than 50% agree, it becomes the next block in the chain.
Latest Answers