Mining · Glossary

Glossary

Block Reward
The new MLRT created and awarded to whoever successfully adds a block to the chain.
Coinbase Transaction
The first transaction in a block that creates the block reward out of nothing and pays the miner.
Hashrate
The rate at which your CPU or GPU attempts mining work, measured in hashes per second.
Mining Pool
A server that combines hashrate from many miners and splits the rewards proportionally.
Nonce
A number a miner changes on each attempt to produce a different hash for the same block.
Orphan Block
A valid block that loses the race to be part of the main chain when two blocks are found at nearly the same time.
Proof of Work
The mechanism that requires miners to spend real computation to add a block, making the chain expensive to attack.
Share
A piece of mining work that meets the pool difficulty target but not necessarily the full network difficulty.
Stale Share
A share that arrived at the pool after the block it was working on had already been found.