Let’s talk about mining mechanics and hash rates

How does a pool know a miner's hash rate? I mean, I get that miners send successful hashes, but that’s not the same as a direct hash rate, right?

It's pretty simple. Miners send shares to the pool. The pool figures out the hash rate based on the number of shares and the difficulty of those shares.

What are the inputs for hashing? I've heard about Nonce, timestamps, and some extra nonce stuff.

Right, block headers have a specific size and include those fields. There’s also the version field if you wanna get into ASICBoost.

So, if two identical miners are mining in the same setup, do they follow the same input sequence? How does that work?

They won't follow the same sequence. Each miner has unique variations in their inputs, which keeps the process random.

Is there a chance that all miners worldwide have enough variations to avoid overlap? Seems like it could get messy.

Yeah, the variety is huge. With different ScriptSig sizes, the randomness multiplies. The Merkle Root usually ends up pretty random too.

What about that 2-hour limit? I heard it only applies to Testnet, right?

Yeah, it’s mainly to prevent abuse on Testnet. Mainnet has no such limit because the difficulty keeps things in check.

But if someone submits a block timestamped too far ahead, what happens?

The node just ignores it, doesn’t reject it. It’s a bit different from outright rejection.

LOL, thanks for clearing that up. I’ve been curious about how it all interacts.

It's fascinating how it all comes together. By the way, my miner’s stuck at 246M difficulty, any tips?

You might want to check your router settings. Sometimes they can mess things up, especially when running nodes.

Interesting... I think I’ll look into that. Could be why my miner's acting weird.

How does the pool actually know my hash rate if I’m only sending lower difficulty hashes?

The pool estimates it based on the shares you submit and the share difficulty. It’s not just a straightforward count.

But how can a pool estimate accurately? I’m confused about the whole shares vs hashes thing.

You gotta remember, shares are accepted hashes. You could have tons of hashes but 0 shares, so it's a bit nuanced.