8
2
I'm trying to get my head around the difficulty setting of Bitcoin. How can I calculate how many zeros the target string needs to start with?
How many zeroes does the current target have?
Answers
9
17 judging by the latest blocks published on blockchain.info: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000000000000057fcc708cf0130d95e27c5819203e9f967ac56e4df598ee
3
Clarifying: difficulty is a more human-friendly representation of the target. Tha target itself is not specified in terms of the amount of zeroes. This seemed to be the case with hashcash.
The more precise definition of the target is a maximum accepted number for the produced block hash. In this sense a certain hash with a certain number of leading zeroes may be accepted and another hash with the same amount of leading zeroes may not be accepted.
Hi Jonathas, we see that the amount is growing, so, who (authority or Bitcoin-rule) define the amount? – Peter Krauss – 2017-11-18T12:43:45.477
Hum... See current difficulty and target concept, this is the reference for number of zeros (!).
1Thanks especially for the link to make it easy to find out the answer in the future, as well. – sarnold – 2017-01-18T01:23:50.487
2
The future is now ;-) Changed to 18, https://blockchain.info/pt/block/0000000000000000008be77e83deb352669b55fbe8f5ed208005fc1a9830c06c (since Feb 2017 as this block, perhps before).
– Peter Krauss – 2017-11-18T12:38:50.533An early block of Mar' 2009 (block deep 6100) have 8 zeros (see same at other explorer).
– Peter Krauss – 2017-11-18T14:16:25.870Still 18 zeros in June 2018 – Paul Razvan Berg – 2018-06-23T17:29:24.850
December 2018, 19 zeros – Konstantinos Kamaropoulos – 2018-12-16T15:38:48.587