Quote from: NCDiesel on February 05, 2018, 06:16:55 PM

Quote from: Newko on February 05, 2018, 02:40:38 PM

Quote from: rifleman74 on February 05, 2018, 02:34:30 PM

Quote from: wavelengthsf on February 05, 2018, 02:08:46 PM

Quote from: Newko on February 05, 2018, 01:52:56 PM

I could be completely wrong here, but my understanding is that each miner is given work to do and while that work is independent of everyone else's work, everyone is contributing to finding the solution. That means, even a low hash rate worker has a chance of solving the block. I have always assumed that solving the block was a "brute force" method, so the pool just hands out work to everyone (Here, try this. Now, try this., etc.) The reason larger hash rate miners crack many (most?) of the the blocks is because they can try so many more attempts than a low hash rate miner. However, the attempts that a small miner makes (even if they fail) are still helping the pool because those are attempts that the other miners don't have to make because Everyone gets unique work. Pretty sure Kano can explain this much more accurately.

Edit: To cut to the chase, assuming two pools are run exactly the same (e.g Kano S3 pool and Kano S9 pool) a 100PH pool made up of nothing but miners running S3 rigs, will be just as successful at cracking blocks as the 100PH pool made up of nothing but S9 rigs. (Not talking efficiency here, just block solving capability). Total pool hash rate is what counts, not how you got there.

Your understanding is correct. It is the total hash rate that matters, and workers are given their own space that will pretty much never overlap with the space of other miners.

We're all brute forcing a double SHA256 hash with slightly different parameters (nonce, time, extraNonce) and some of the same (merkle root, previous block, version) and each miner has effectively an infinite search space with those variables.

The other thing to remember is that while people talk about "cracking this block" its actually been hundreds of blocks on the network, we just didn't brute force it before someone else on the network did.

But we're still on "this block", so in essence...yes we're still trying to "crack this block".

Yes, this block for us, as in the next block the we finally solve, but we've been working on lots of different network blocks since we cracked our last one. We'll all still use the "this block" expression though because it is convenient for our discussion purposes. That said........Let's crack this block! Grin

Edit: And of course, at any point in time, the block we are trying to solve is "this block". It's just that "this block" is a group of different blocks since our last one. Ok, I think this horse is dead so I'll stop beating it. Grin

Thanks for this great explanation, and it sort of confirms what I suspected was happening. May I restate it and you folks make sure I understand it?

Kanopool grabs a block
We work on a whole bunch of math problems designed to help us find an encryption key that "unlocks" the block.
More frequently however, some other pool/solo miner beats us to the solution.
So we grab another block and start again.
It is theoretically possible(though highly unlikely) that we might never find another block ever again - ie someone always beats us to the solution on every block we try, forever more. Sorry - I shouldn't risk jinxing us (-: )

In other words, we don't necessarily always work on the same block until it is solved(but we might solve it and get the coins), nor do we work on a "new" empty block until it is solved(side note: I originally guessed this was what was happening - we decrypted dummy data in the new block then we would be handed a "real" block to move into our new solved empty block, stripping out the loot in the process.

[edited to be more clear]

That is kind of what I thought was going on...and was wondering why we as a pool just didn't toss the block we were working on and picked up another one...