Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

The mining algorithm

The mining algorithm consists of the following steps.

1. The previous block's header is retrieved from the bitcoin network.
2. Assemble a set of transactions broadcasted on the network into a block to be proposed.
3. Compute the double hash of the previous block's header combined with a nonce and the newly proposed block using the SHA-256 algorithm.
4. Check if the resultant hash is lower than the current difficulty level (target) then PoW is solved. As a result of successful PoW the discovered block is broadcasted to the network and miners fetch the reward.
5. If the resultant hash is not less than the current difficulty level (target), then repeat the process after incrementing the nonce.

As the hash rate of the bitcoin network ...