<p>The difficulty does not specify a <em>certain amount</em> of computational effort that needs to be expended. In other words, the difficulty is <strong>not</strong> set to '1000 effort', and miners slowly progress from 0 to 1000, with the first one to expend 1000 effort winning the next block. </p>

<p>Instead, you need to think of it like a lottery. You can expend effort to make a guess, and if your guess is correct, you win the next block! The higher the difficulty, the lower the odds of any one guess generating a valid block. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-15T00:42:19.570Z
2017-12-15T00:42:19.570Z
chytrik
<p>What is the computational effort to mine a block successfully given the number of leading zeros in a resulting hash?</p>

<mining-theory>
computational effort needed to mine a block given the number of leading zeros in the resulting hash?
dreamilam
# computational effort needed to mine a block given the number of leading zeros in the resulting hash?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-12-15)

What is the computational effort to mine a block successfully given the number of leading zeros in a resulting hash?

**Tags:** mining-theory


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2017-12-15. Score: 1

The difficulty does not specify a *certain amount* of computational effort that needs to be expended. In other words, the difficulty is **not** set to '1000 effort', and miners slowly progress from 0 to 1000, with the first one to expend 1000 effort winning the next block.

Instead, you need to think of it like a lottery. You can expend effort to make a guess, and if your guess is correct, you win the next block! The higher the difficulty, the lower the odds of any one guess generating a valid block.


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