I do not understand cryptographic hashes,especially SHA-256 enough to be an expert on the subject. This is why I would like the opinion(telling me I'm wrong or right) of someone who does fully understand the SHA-256 algorithm and how it is implemented in the Bitcoin Protocol.


The difficulty in Bitcoin Mining is determined by the amount of zero's at the start of a hash. Of course, most elements of the hash influence eachother, but wouldn't it mean a huge increase in mining speed if we could figure out when a hash will turn out not to fit the difficulty?

As far as I know, the SHA-256 algorithm is built from right-to-left(Little Endian to Big Endian): The higher characters are dependent on the lower ones (By using: Higher = Higher + Lower % 2^32) but it does not seem to be the other way around.

This means that whenever we find out that at a certain spot above the difficulty treshold there wont be a zero in the final hash, we can discard this hash and instead move on to the next hash.


Does this make sense? Or did I miss something crucial?

~W-M