Definition and meaning: Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), also called digital fiat currency or digital base money, is a digital version of a fiat currency like Euro, Dollar or Yen issued by a central bank.
CBDC/digital base money is being issued by a central authority like a central bank or government. It is by law, a means of payment. A holder of a CBDC coin would have a claim on the central bank.
Definition: A fork is a split of the blockchain into two (or more) branches. This happens, if there are two blocks with the same height (or block number).
In this post we explain what forks in blockchain context are, how they can happen and what the result is.
Definition: A long range attack is an attack on the consensus model of a proof of stake blockchain. A block producer (or validator) tries to create an alternative chain starting from a long ago created common block. The long range into the past is necessary to circumvent possible penalties for forking. Long range attacks are explained mostly in conjunction with proof of stake, since this problem is prevalent here and closely related to the nothing at stake problem.
Definition: Nothing at stake means that in a proof of stake (PoS) consensus algorithm rational validators (block producer) risk nothing (have nothing at stake) if they create blocks on different chains. As a consequence, the whole blockchain network won’t reach consensus on the longest chain.
List of blockchains with information about consensus algorithm, privacy and smart contracts.
| Blockchain | Consensus | Turing complete Smart Contracts | privacy |
| Bitcoin | PoW | no (scripts) | no |
| Bitcoin Gold | PoW | no (scripts) | no |
| Bitcoin SV | PoW | no (scripts) | no |
| BitShares | DPoS | yes | no |
| Cardano | PoS | yes | no |
| Dash | PoW | no | yes |
| Dogecoin | PoW | no | no |
| EOS | DPoS | yes | no |
| Ethereum | PoW | yes | no |
| Ethereum 2.0 | PoS/PoW | yes | no |
| Ethereum Classic | PoW | yes | no |
| Hyperledger Fabric | yes | no | |
| IOTA | PoW/TaPoW | no | no |
| Lisk | DPoS | no | no |
| Litecoin | PoW | no (scripts) | yes |
| Monero | PoW | no | yes |
| NEO | DPoS | yes | no |
| Peercoin | PoS | no (scripts) | no |
| Qtum | PoS | yes | no |
| Tezos | PoS | yes | no |
| TRON | DPoS | yes | no |
| Zcash | PoW | no | yes |
Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)
Proof of Work (PoW)
Proof of Stake (PoS)
Definition: Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) is a form of consensus algorithm, where voters vote for block producers (sometimes called witnesses) who then perform the block creation and enforce the consensus. In order to vote a voter needs funds. And the voting power is proportionally to the amount of tokens or coins a voter has (or stakes).
Explanation: Proof of Stake is a consensus model in cryptocurrencies. Block producers (miners) get selected according to the amount of coins they hold or stake. The more coins a miner holds the higher is his probability to get selected in order to validate a block.
In this post we describe how to calculate an verify a Bitcoin block hash manually. We need to follow five easy steps to calculate the block hash.
If you want to try it out, you can use our online bitcoin block hash calculator.
But before we start with the calculation we take a look at the input values.
The SHA-256 hash function takes six inputs in order to calculate the block hash.
| Input | Explanation |
| Version | Tells us the block version number. Is also used to participate in polls about protocol changes |
| Previous Block Hash (hashPrevBlock) | 256-bit hash of the previous block header |
| Merkle Root hash (hashMerkleRoot) | 256-bit hash of the Merkle root. The Merkle root is based on all transactions in a block. |
| Time | Block timestamp as seconds since 1970-01-01T00:00 UTC |
| Bits (difficulty) | Target to be met by the block hash |
| Nonce | 32-bit number used to find the correct block hash in PoW |
Blockchain data are public. If you install a node you will be able to request the data from your node.
But there are also public services called block explorers which provide the data. Here is a list of block explorers you can use:
However, there is on caveat. The format in which the data are provided can be pretty messy. Some block explorers display the data in hex values others in decimal values. This requires a little cleanup before the actual calculation can begin. Some block explorers even give imprecise data like a truncated date without the seconds.
We take example data from the block number 600,000.
| Input | Value (original) | Value in hexadecimal |
| Version | 0x20000000 | 0x20000000 |
| Previous Block Hash (hashPrevBlock) | 00000000000000000003ecd827f336c6971f6f77a0b9fba362398dd867975645 | 00000000000000000003ecd827f336c6971f6f77a0b9fba362398dd867975645 |
| Merkle Root hash (hashMerkleRoot) | 66b7c4a1926b41ceb2e617ddae0067e7bfea42db502017fde5b695a50384ed26 | 66b7c4a1926b41ceb2e617ddae0067e7bfea42db502017fde5b695a50384ed26 |
| Time | 2019-10-19 02:04:21 as timestamp: 1571443461 | 0x5DAA5305 |
| Bits (difficulty) | 0x1715a35c | 0x1715a35c |
| Nonce | 0x3f93ada7 | 0x3f93ada7 |
All values need to be converted into little-endian hex format. Usually block explorers or hex calculators provide the data in big-endian. Little-endian means that the least significant byte is on the left side. (In big-endian it is on the right side)
| Input | Value in little-endian hexadecimal |
| Version | 00000020 |
| Previous Block Hash (hashPrevBlock) | 45569767D88D3962A3FBB9A0776F1F97C636F327D8EC03000000000000000000 |
| Merkle Root hash (hashMerkleRoot) | 26ED8403A595B6E5FD172050DB42EABFE76700AEDD17E6B2CE416B92A1C4B766 |
| Time | 0x0553AA5D |
| Bits (difficulty) | 0x5CA31517 |
| Nonce | 0xA7AD933F |
Input data from Bitcoin block 600000.
The next step is to concatenate all little-endian formatted hash values in the right order. The symbol || means concatenation. As result we receive our rawHex.
rawHex = Version || Previous Block Hash || Merkle Root hash || Time || Bits || Nonce
rawHex = 0000002045569767d88d3962a3fbb9a0776f1f97c636f327d8ec0300000000000000000026ed8403a595b6e5fd172050db42eabfe76700aedd17e6b2ce416b92a1c4b7660553aa5d5ca31517a7ad933f
The concatenated hash value now needs to be converted into binary format. Most hash calculators and libraries distinguish between string inputs and hexadecimal inputs.
Let us consider an example.
The string “2c” would have a binary representation of 0011001001100011. This is derived from the ASCII table.
| Character | 2 | c |
| Binary ASCII representation | 00110010 | 01100011 |
If we interpret “2c” as hexadecimal value its binary representation would be: 101100. And this is exactly what we need.
This step is usually done internal with many hash libraries. The resulting binary number of our rawHex would be too large to display here.
On our bit representation of the rawHex we apply the SHA-256 now twice. This means, we first calculate the SHA-256 of the binary representation of our rawHex and then take the result (again as binary) and input it into our SHA-256 function again.
2 x SHA-256: 915fcd96d1c84298a8fbfb9c13a9f7b4760e9056683107000000000000000000
The last step is to convert the output of the last step into little endian hexadecimal format. Once this is done, we have your block hash.
00000000000000000007316856900e76b4f7a9139cfbfba89842c8d196cd5f91
If you want to calculate or verify a Bitcoin block hash manually, you need to take care of the format of your input values.
Version: The version can be given as 1, 2, 0x00000002, 0x20000000, or in different values. If the version is given as decimal values like 1 or 2 it needs to be converted into a padded hexadecimal value first (0x00000002). If it is given as hex-value like this 0x20000000, it can be used as input value right away (it still needs to be converted to little-endian thought).
Date: make sure you use the correct date. Some browsers might give you wrong date values, because they apply the wrong time zone. And some block explorers cut off the seconds from their dates.