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If I understand correctly, the block only has 4 bytes (32 bits) for the nonce. Is it possible for the difficulty to become high enough that there are no nonce solutions? If so, then what options does a miner have?
Nonce size - Will it always be big enough?
Answers
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The difficulty is already to the point where it requires over a quadrillion hashes to solve a block. 2^32 is only 4 billion. Fewer than one in a billion times will there be any nonce that makes the block valid.
A miner simply has to try every possible nonce on a different block. He can vary the coinbase, the transaction set, and/or the block timestamp. Any change to any of these things results in a new chance for there to exist a valid nonce.
Often the best choice is to bump the timestamp, a practice called NTime rolling.
The block timestamp doesn't have to be exact anyway, so you can back the timestamp back, say, ten seconds before you start mining and then bump it up 20 times before giving up and getting a new block. At worst, your block timestamp will be off by a dozen seconds or so -- nobody cares about that.
After that, you probably want to get a new block because there might be some new transactions to include -- this not only improves the efficiency of the network as a whole but reduces the chances you'll miss out on a transaction fee.
1By my calculations, a miner at 270Mhash/sec will run through 2^32 nonces in about 15 seconds! Are these techniques you speak of performed by the bitcoin server or the miner? – Highly Irregular – 2011-10-28T07:08:24.083
1Typically these changes are done by the Bitcoin node (eg mining pool server). The timestamp could potentially be changed by the miner but I don't think that's done. Changing the extraNonce in the generation transaction is harder, but I think requires only its Merkle branch and not the entire block. Adding new transactions definitely requires the node. – Meni Rosenfeld – 2011-10-28T09:44:53.077
2@MeniRosenfeld While tranditionally these changes were performed by the pool it is highly inefficient. The NTimeRolling option allows the miner to locally increment the timestamp. The pool only needs to calculate new headers on block change, periodically for new transactions, or when NTime rolling expires. – DeathAndTaxes – 2011-10-28T17:57:26.450
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Whether or not there is a solution depends on the contents of the block as well as the possible values of the nonce.
The transaction block can be altered if necessary which essentially means you get another 32 bits of nonce values to try. There is an additional component of a transaction block called the "coinbase" that can be altered without altering the actual transactions within the block. This has been in the past to insert short messages into the block chain.
3 The Coinbase value can be used to insert a small string, such as described here: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/26/516
2Since David already has a solid answer I will just make a trivia comment. Even with a difficulty of 1 there is a 36.7% chance of not finding any valid hash in the entire nonce range (2^32). At 1 million difficulty there is a 99.999905% that you will not find a solution in the entire nonce range. Luckily any other change to block header allows you another 4 billion tries. – DeathAndTaxes – 2011-10-28T14:28:59.397