Post
Topic
Board Pools
Re: [850 TH] Slush's Pool (mining.bitcoin.cz); TX FEES + VarDiff
by
Trongersoll
on 21/03/2014, 15:25:46 UTC
Okay... thats the noobness showing through! lol.

What I mean is (and maybe I'm getting this all confused) is if you look at the statistics page it usually shows several blocks that are being validated and have X number of confirmations left. Is that what my miners are hashing on or do I have that all wrong?

I think I am just misunderstanding how it all works...

You are pretty much misunderstanding. Confirmation numbers have to do with Orphans and such. Once a block is found it is announced to the network. when a block is built off of that one, that is one confirmation. When a block is built off that one, that  is a second confirmation. it is a chain.

if two miners find the same block before either is confirmed, the one with the most confirmations wins and the other is orphaned. Pools usually consider 100 - 120 confirmations as confirmed beyond a doubt. Merchants are usually content with about 6. That would be 6 blocks found after the block that their transaction is in.

Every block has part of the previous block as input.