Blocks are the building blocks of blockchain. Each block contains a header with metadata (previous hash, Merkle root, timestamp, difficulty, nonce) and a body with transactions. Miners in Proof of Work systems repeatedly modify the nonce trying to find a hash below the difficulty target.

This demo lets you experience mining: adjust difficulty to see how many attempts it takes to find a valid hash with the required leading zeros. Higher difficulty = exponentially more work!

Related Topics: Anatomy of a Block • Consensus Mechanisms

Block Anatomy & Mining (Toy PoW)