How can I look up a transaction on the blockchain?

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Your computer—in collaboration with those of everyone else reading this post who clicked the button above—is racing thousands of others to unlock and claim the next batch.

For as long as that counter above keeps climbing, your computer will keep running a bitcoin mining script and trying to get a piece of the action.

Your computer is not blasting through the cavernous depths of the internet in search of digital ore that can be fashioned into bitcoin bullion. The size of each batch of coins drops by half roughly every four years, and aroundit will be cut to zero, capping the total number of bitcoins in circulation at 21 million. But the analogy ends there. What bitcoin miners actually do could be better described as competitive bookkeeping. Miners build and maintain a gigantic public ledger containing a record of every bitcoin transaction in history.

Every time somebody wants to send bitcoins to somebody else, the transfer has to be validated by miners: If the transfer checks out, miners add it to the bitcoin transactions log. Finally, to protect that ledger from getting hacked, miners seal it behind layers and layers of computational work—too much for a would-be fraudster to possibly complete. Or rather, some miners are rewarded. Miners are all competing with each other to be first to approve a new batch of transactions and finish the computational work required to seal those transactions in the ledger.

With bitcoin transactions log fresh batch, winner takes all. As the name implies, double spending is when somebody spends money more than once. Traditional currencies avoid it through a combination of hard-to-mimic physical cash and bitcoin transactions log third parties—banks, credit-card providers, and services like PayPal—that process transactions and update account bitcoin transactions log accordingly. But bitcoin is completely digital, and it has no third parties.

The idea of an overseeing body runs completely counter to its ethos. The solution is that public ledger with records of all transactions, known as the block chain.

If she indeed has the right to send that money, the transfer gets approved and entered into the ledger. Using a public ledger comes with some bitcoin transactions log. The first is privacy. How can you make every bitcoin exchange completely transparent while keeping all bitcoin users completely anonymous? The second is security. If the ledger is totally public, how do you prevent people from fudging bitcoin transactions log for their own gain?

The ledger only keeps track of bitcoin transfers, not account balances. In a very real sense, there is no bitcoin transactions log thing as a bitcoin account. And that keeps users anonymous. Say Alice wants to transfer one bitcoin to Bob. That transaction record is sent to every bitcoin miner—i. Now, say Bob wants to pay Carol one bitcoin. Carol of course sets up an address and a key. And then Bob essentially takes the bitcoin Alice gave him and bitcoin transactions log his address and key from that transfer to sign the bitcoin over to Carol:.

After validating the transfer, each miner will then send a message to all of the other miners, giving her blessing.

The ledger tracks the coins, bitcoin transactions log it does not track people, at least not explicitly. The first thing that bitcoin does to secure the ledger is decentralize it. There is no huge spreadsheet being stored on a server somewhere. There is no master document at all. Instead, the ledger is broken up into blocks: Every block includes a reference to the block that came before it, and you can bitcoin transactions log the links backward from the most recent block to the very first block, when bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto conjured the first bitcoins into existence.

Every 10 minutes miners add a new block, growing the chain like an bitcoin transactions log pearl necklace. Generally speaking, every bitcoin miner has a copy of the entire block chain on her computer. If she shuts her computer down and stops mining for a while, when she starts back up, her machine will send a message to other miners requesting the blocks that were created in her absence. No one person or computer has responsibility for these block chain updates; no miner bitcoin transactions log special status.

The updates, like the authentication of new blocks, are provided by the network of bitcoin transactions log miners at large.

Bitcoin also relies on cryptography. The computational problem is different for every block in the chain, and it involves a particular kind of algorithm called a hash function. Like any function, a cryptographic hash function takes an input—a string of numbers and letters—and produces an output.

But there are three things bitcoin transactions log set cryptographic hash functions apart:. The hash function that bitcoin relies bitcoin transactions log SHA, and developed by the US National Security Agency—always produces a string that is 64 characters long. You could run your name through that hash function, or the entire King James Bible. Think of it like mixing paint. If you substitute light pink paint for regular pink paint in the example above, the result is still going to be pretty much the same purplejust a little lighter.

But with hashes, a slight variation in the input results in a completely different output:. The proof-of-work problem that miners have bitcoin transactions log solve involves taking a hash of the contents of the block that they are working on—all of the transactions, some meta-data like a timestampand the reference to the previous block—plus a random number called a nonce.

Their goal is to find a hash that has at least a certain number of leading zeroes. That constraint is what makes the problem more or less difficult. More leading zeroes means fewer possible solutions, bitcoin transactions log more time required to solve the problem. Every 2, blocks roughly two weeksthat difficulty is reset.

If it took miners less than bitcoin transactions log minutes on average to solve those 2, blocks, then the difficulty is automatically bitcoin transactions log. If it took longer, then the difficulty is decreased. Miners search for an acceptable hash by choosing a nonce, running the hash function, and checking. When a miner is finally lucky enough to find a nonce that works, and wins the block, that nonce gets appended to the end of the block, along with the resulting hash.

Her first step would be to go in and change the bitcoin transactions log for that transaction. Then, because she had modified the block, she would have to solve a new proof-of-work problem—find a new nonce—and do all of that computational work, all over again. Again, due bitcoin transactions log the unpredictable nature of hash functions, making the slightest change to the original block means starting the proof of work from scratch.

But unless the hacker has more computing power at her disposal than all other bitcoin miners combined, she could never catch up. She would always be at least six blocks behind, and her alternative chain would obviously be a counterfeit. She has to find a new one. The bitcoin transactions log that makes bitcoin mining possible is completely open-source, and developed by volunteers.

But the force that really makes the entire machine go is pure capitalistic competition. Every miner right now is racing to solve the same block simultaneously, but only the winner will get the prize. In a sense, everybody else was just burning electricity. Yet their presence in the network is critical. But it also solves another bitcoin transactions log. It distributes new bitcoins in a relatively fair way—only those people who dedicate some effort to making bitcoin work get to enjoy the coins as they are created.

But because mining is a competitive enterprise, miners have come up with ways to gain an edge. One obvious way is by pooling resources. Your machine, right now, is actually working as part of a bitcoin mining collective that shares out the computational load.

Your computer is bitcoin transactions log trying to solve the block, at least not bitcoin transactions log. It is chipping away at a cryptographic problem, using the input at the top of the screen and combining it with a nonce, then taking the hash to try to find a solution.

Solving bitcoin transactions log problem bitcoin transactions log a lot easier than solving the block itself, but doing so gets the pool closer to finding a winning nonce for the block.

And the pool pays its members in bitcoins for every one of these easier problems they solve. If you did find a solution, then your bounty would go to Quartz, not you. This whole time you have been mining for us! We just wanted to make the strange and complex world of bitcoin a little easier to understand.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the long pink string of numbers and letters in the interactive at the top is bitcoin transactions log target output hash your computer is trying to find by running the mining script.

In fact, it is one of the inputs that your computer feeds into the hash function, not the output it is looking for. Obsession Future of Finance.

This bitcoin transactions log has been corrected.

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A transaction is a transfer of Bitcoin value that is broadcast to the network and collected into blocks. A transaction typically references previous transaction outputs as new transaction inputs and dedicates all input Bitcoin values to new outputs.

Transactions are not encrypted, so it is possible to browse and view every transaction ever collected into a block. Once transactions are buried under enough confirmations they can be considered irreversible. Standard transaction outputs nominate addresses , and the redemption of any future inputs requires a relevant signature.

All transactions are visible in the block chain , and can be viewed with a hex editor. A block chain browser is a site where every transaction included within the block chain can be viewed in human-readable terms. This is useful for seeing the technical details of transactions in action and for verifying payments. The input in this transaction imports 50 BTC from output 0 in transaction f5d Then the output sends 50 BTC to a Bitcoin address expressed here in hexadecimal When the recipient wants to spend this money, he will reference output 0 of this transaction in an input of his own transaction.

An input is a reference to an output from a previous transaction. Multiple inputs are often listed in a transaction. All of the new transaction's input values that is, the total coin value of the previous outputs referenced by the new transaction's inputs are added up, and the total less any transaction fee is completely used by the outputs of the new transaction. Previous tx is a hash of a previous transaction. Index is the specific output in the referenced transaction.

ScriptSig is the first half of a script discussed in more detail later. The script contains two components, a signature and a public key. The public key must match the hash given in the script of the redeemed output. The public key is used to verify the redeemers signature, which is the second component. More precisely, the second component is an ECDSA signature over a hash of a simplified version of the transaction. It, combined with the public key, proves the transaction was created by the real owner of the address in question.

Various flags define how the transaction is simplified and can be used to create different types of payment. An output contains instructions for sending bitcoins. ScriptPubKey is the second half of a script discussed later. There can be more than one output, and they share the combined value of the inputs. Because each output from one transaction can only ever be referenced once by an input of a subsequent transaction, the entire combined input value needs to be sent in an output if you don't want to lose it.

Any input bitcoins not redeemed in an output is considered a transaction fee ; whoever generates the block will get it. To verify that inputs are authorized to collect the values of referenced outputs, Bitcoin uses a custom Forth-like scripting system. The input's scriptSig and the referenced output's scriptPubKey are evaluated in that order , with scriptPubKey using the values left on the stack by scriptSig. The input is authorized if scriptPubKey returns true.

Through the scripting system, the sender can create very complex conditions that people have to meet in order to claim the output's value. For example, it's possible to create an output that can be claimed by anyone without any authorization.

It's also possible to require that an input be signed by ten different keys, or be redeemable with a password instead of a key. It is possible to design more complex types of transactions, and link them together into cryptographically enforced agreements. These are known as Contracts. A Bitcoin address is only a hash, so the sender can't provide a full public key in scriptPubKey. When redeeming coins that have been sent to a Bitcoin address, the recipient provides both the signature and the public key.

The script verifies that the provided public key does hash to the hash in scriptPubKey, and then it also checks the signature against the public key. P2SH addresses were created with the motivation of moving "the responsibility for supplying the conditions to redeem a transaction from the sender of the funds to the redeemer.

They allow the sender to fund an arbitrary transaction, no matter how complicated, using a byte hash" 1. Pay-to-Pubkey-hash addresses are similarly a byte hash of the public key. Pay-to-script-hash provides a means for complicated transactions, unlike the Pay-to-pubkey-hash, which has a specific definition for scriptPubKey, and scriptSig.

The specification places no limitations on the script, and hence absolutely any contract can be funded using these addresses. The scriptPubKey in the funding transaction is script which ensures that the script supplied in the redeeming transaction hashes to the script used to create the address. In the scriptSig above, 'signatures' refers to any script which is sufficient to satisfy the following serialized script. Generations have a single input, and this input has a " coinbase " parameter instead of a scriptSig.

The data in "coinbase" can be anything; it isn't used. Bitcoin puts the current compact-format target and the arbitrary-precision "extraNonce" number there, which increments every time the Nonce field in the block header overflows. Outputs can be anything, but Bitcoin creates one exactly like an IP address transaction. The extranonce contributes to enlarge the domain for the proof of work function. Miners can easily modify nonce 4byte , timestamp and extranonce 2 to bytes. The input sufficiently describes where and how to get the bitcoin amout to be redeemed.

If it is the only input of the first transaction of a block, it is called the generation transaction input and its content completely ignored. Historically the Previous Transaction hash is 0 and the Previous Txout-index is The output sets the conditions to release this bitcoin amount later.

The sum of the output values of the first transaction is the value of the mined bitcoins for the block plus possible transactions fees of the other transactions in the block. Retrieved from " https: Navigation menu Personal tools Create account Log in. Views Read View source View history. Sister projects Essays Source. This page was last edited on 28 March , at Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution 3. Privacy policy About Bitcoin Wiki Disclaimers.