Quote from: vshoes on Today at 12:32:46 PM

One more q for anyone who might be able to answer;

Code:

if hash < target :
# if(hash[:10] == '0000000000'):
print('success!!')
print('hash: {}'.format(hash))
payload = bytes('{"params": ["'+address+'", "'+job_id+'", "'+extranonce2 \
+'", "'+ntime+'", "'+nonce+'"], "id": 1, "method": "mining.submit"}\n', 'utf-8')
sock.sendall(payload)
print(sock.recv(1024))
input("Press Enter to continue...")

Why are we evaluating hash < target? Shouldn't that be

Code:

if hash == target:
print('success!!')

No, it should be < the target ( not equal to it).

When mining Bitcoin , the goal is to find a hash that is not equal to the target(near impossible), but less than the target value(probalistic). The target is a 256-bit number that the network adjusts every 2016 blocks to ensure that the time between blocks remains approximately 10 minutes on average. A lower target means a higher difficulty in finding a valid block.

The hashing process is essentially a race to find a nonce value that, when combined with the block's header data(which itself contains the Merkle root of the previous blocks tx) and passed through the SHA-256 hashing algorithm twice, produces a hash value that is less than the network-defined target, which everyone can easily verify for themselves too.

Therefore the condition, in the educational example, if hash < target: is correct because you are looking for a hash that is numerically less than the target.