Is it necessary to be based on the prefix, or can it be implemented by pattern, for instance, every even byte is zero, or the 4 bytes after the first 3 bytes must be all 7s, etc?
Is it simply brute-forcing hashes, looking for matching patterns that are not yet known?
In practice Bitcoin treats SHA-256 outputs as integers, and requires them to be under a certain limit, based on the current difficulty.
That way we can make small adjustments to the difficulty. If we actually used a rule like "this many zeros in hex", the difficulty bumps would have to be rather large.
lmpostor|7 years ago
And yeah, but it also requires valid transactions if you want to collect fees, as well as the knowledge of the valid previous block.
dlubarov|7 years ago
That way we can make small adjustments to the difficulty. If we actually used a rule like "this many zeros in hex", the difficulty bumps would have to be rather large.