🪙 What is bitcoin mining and how does mining work?
Every node on the bitcoin network shares information about new transactions.
Each node stores the new transactions they receive in their memory pool (Is a node's temporary storage area for new transactions).
Each node also has the option to try and "mine" the transactions in their memory pool into a permanent file. This file is a ledger of every bitcoin transaction, and it's called the blockchain.
However, to add transactions from the memory pool to the blockchain, a node has to use a lot of computer processing power.
This processing power is required due to the presence of a specific type of challenge.
🪙What is this challenge?
Now, imagine you're a node. At any moment in time you can condense the transactions in your memory pool into a single "string" of numbers and letters. This represents all of the transactions in your memory pool and is basically a hash of the transactions in the memory pool.
