4 ms·

Well, I guess in real life blockchains it’s like the latter case. You have a block and look for a nonce. There is an effectively infinite stream of nonces (“lot

Well, I guess in real life blockchains it’s like the latter case. You have a block and look for a nonce. There is an effectively infinite stream of nonces (“lottery tickets”). You have no guarantee that even one works, other than statistical hope. So then if probability of a match is 1 in X, you expect to have to do X attempts. I have other issues with the article but this bit seems ok.

denton-scratch 5y ago
/me not a statistician! I'm not clear how "expected no. of attempts for X" is related to the probability of X. And I seem to be struggling to recall what little I used to know about probability. I'd welcome a (link to a) clear unpacking of this scenario. I'm feeling rather stupid, as if I've had a stroke and lost a mental faculty. It seems to be a straightforward and obvious scenario, but I've lost confidence in my reasoning about it.