3 ms·
> In general terms, I would think it’s possible to not calculate the entire hash to see if it starts with the required numbers of 0 for bitcoin but to break ear
by thrtythreeforty 3y ago
> In general terms, I would think it’s possible to not calculate the entire hash to see if it starts with the required numbers of 0 for bitcoin but to break early and thus save time/energy.
... no? That's the point of the hash function, that you can't compute it without computing all of it. This statement is equivalent to breaking the hash function (very severely), which lots of thought has gone into.
Granted, if you do have a break for SHA-256, arguably one of the best ways to commercialize it would be to secretly mine Bitcoin much faster than others.
- refulgentis 3y agoCrypto-noob here: let's say they broke SHA-256. Even then, they'd need to know the hash in advance, which they don't, right? It's really hard for me to follow, I'm getting old :( EDIT: Looks like no, they don't need to know the hash. Rasulek wrote a great overview here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39818305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39818305 I'm still confused about the leading zeros thing. I thought the article author was using a leaky abstraction. It sounds suspicious/notgood that you have a significant amount of info up front. But I'm just a noob free-associating.
- tromp 3y agoYou can avoid all operations (actually, gates since we're talking ASIC circuits) of the last round that only affect the least significant bits (e.g. the last 176 bits if the threshold is 2^80).