Chaincode Decoded: Blockchain - Episode 14

In this Chaincode Decoded segment we talk about the fundamental role of Bitcoin's blockchain and some of its peculiarities.

We discuss:

• Purpose of the blockchain (0:40)


• Mining is a lottery, not a race (1:57)


• Why doesn't the same miner always win? (5:12)


• What happens if two blocks are found at the same height? (6:12)


• The longest reorgs (9:11)
• How does the blockchain work? (12:18)
   - Headers-first synchronization and Ultraprune: Episode 1 with Pieter Wuille
   - Episode 5: The UTXO set
  
• Why does Bitcoin converge on one chain? (15:20)
   - Selfish mining paper: Majority is not Enough: Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable
  
• Will we always find a new block? (18:04)
   - Entropy sources in the block header
  
• Mining pools have disjoint hashing spaces (19:30)
   - Correction: mining pools do not have a separate pay-out address for each participant, but give out a unique coinbase transaction stub for each.
   - Eschaton block
  

Thanks to Caralie for the sound engineering.