diff --git a/ch10.asciidoc b/ch10.asciidoc index e5ec9159..a7522732 100644 --- a/ch10.asciidoc +++ b/ch10.asciidoc @@ -1778,10 +1778,15 @@ in the merkle tree, which means that any change in the coinbase script causes the merkle root to change. Eight bytes of extra nonce, plus the 4 bytes of "standard" nonce allow miners to explore a total 2^96^ (8 followed by 28 zeros) possibilities _per second_ without having to -modify the timestamp. If, in the future, miners could run through all -these possibilities, they could then modify the timestamp. There is also -more space in the coinbase script for future expansion of the extra -nonce space. +modify the timestamp. + +Another solution widely used today is to use up to 16 bits of the block +header versionbits field for mining, as described in BIP320. If each +piece of mining equimpent has its own coinbase transaction, this allows +an individual piece of mining equipment to perform up to 281 TH/s by +only making changes to the block header. This keeps mining equipment +and protocols simpler than incrementing the extranonce in the coinbase +transaction every 4 billion hashes. [[mining_pools]] ==== Mining Pools