Chaincode Decoded: Blockchain - Episode 14 The Chaincode Podcast

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.