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I'm not sure how this exactly works. So roughly every 10 mins a block is released to the network. How is this done?
Does my bitcoin client signal this? Would that mean in theory if there was just one user, one client, you would just mine alone?
Where is the code that specifies when a block is released?
Answers
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Every time a block is successfully mined, the miner releases it immediately. The mining difficulty is adjusted over time to keep the average block release rate at roughly ten minutes. Successfully mining a block is so difficult that all the miners in the world only successfully build a single block, on average, once every ten minutes.
So how did it work when it was just satoshi mining? Step1 - he runs the client on his computer. Step 2 - Code from his client sets the difficulty? (Where is the code for this?) Step 3 - He mines the block and receives the coins. - Step 4 - His client releases the second block? (I still don't fully understand this) – Sean – 2014-03-09T10:17:29.993
Back then, the mining was done in the client, so his client would release each block as it mined it. Every 2016 blocks, it would adjust the difficulty per the specification.
– David Schwartz – 2014-03-09T10:23:47.113