Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

Mining

Mining is a process by which new blocks are added to the blockchain. Blocks contain transactions that are validated via the mining process by mining nodes on the Bitcoin network. Blocks, once mined and verified are added to the blockchain which keeps the blockchain growing. This process is resource-intensive due to the requirements of PoW where miners compete in order to find a number which is less than the difficulty target of the network. This difficulty in finding the correct value (also called sometimes the mathematical puzzle) is there to ensure that the required resources have been spent by miners before a new proposed block can be accepted. New coins are minted by the miners by solving the PoW problem, also known as partial ...