How can I find a hash with leading zeros

2

I came across a similar question that was asked but the answer didn't seem quite complete. Coding is completely foreign to me and I have spent some time trying to solve with no success. I am trying to increase the difficulty by getting 8 leading 0s and the corresponding nonce for the initial hash (no previous blocks) in python. Any direction here is appreciated

import hashlib

m = hashlib.sha256()
m.update(b'Your Name')
m.digest()
m.hexdigest()

'9cd26bee4d76694cb03cfee8c2355a83339157f2e9234fd1352c12597da72474'

magner73

Posted 2019-11-21T20:53:42.010

Reputation: 21

Are you trying to create a genesis block for an altcoin? – chytrik – 2019-11-21T21:04:55.010

2

This is an exercise for Grad school. The concept is to enter your name into the data field https://anders.com/blockchain/blockchain in the first block with a corresponding nonce that would generate a hash with 8+ leading 0's. I thought perhaps through the use of python (based on what i have come across so far, but I am a real novice) that this could be achieved, although I assume it will take time to run

– magner73 – 2019-11-21T21:09:09.390

Answers

3

You're missing multiple parts here. If that's your complete code, you don't seem to be adding a nonce to your preimage at all. You will need to generate a nonce, add it to the preimage, and test the corresponding digest against your acceptance criteria. To that end, you probably want to use a while loop that continues rolling random nonces and testing digests until one has the correct prefix. In the success case, it should output the relevant nonce.

You will also need to make sure that you use the same method of combining the nonce and your name as the exercise's test framework.

Murch

Posted 2019-11-21T20:53:42.010

Reputation: 41 609

Thank you. I will work on incorporating the missing items. – magner73 – 2019-11-22T00:36:31.910

Asked: 2019-11-21T20:53:42.010

Viewed: 45 times

Active: 2019-11-21T23:36:36.537