Blob
Everything you need to know about the blob
The Blob in Cryptocurrency Mining
The "blob" is a crucial concept in RandomX mining, serving as the primary input for the hashing function. It's a byte string that contains essential information about the block being mined.
Monero Blob Example: A typical Monero blob might look like this (in hexadecimal):
As you can see it's a 76bytes string that is generated by hashing a Monero Block template.
Etica Blob Structure:
Etica doesn't generate the blob from a block template but the resulting blob is exactly same format as Monero RandomX blobs. Etica uses a ReservedSpace system to place it direclty in the blob.
Here is an example of an Etica Blob:
Nonce
When miners receive the blob, their mining software iterates by replacing the bytes at a certain position (it is named the nonceOffset). In Monero and Etica the NonceOffset is at position 39bytes and has a size of 4bytes.
ReservedSpace
In the RandomX system it is important that each miner receives a specific Blob, not all miners mine on the same Blob. In order to generate specific blobs there is a ReservedSpace Reserved Space (55-62 bytes):
8 bytes reserved for miner-specific data
This is where the truncated extraNonceHash is inserted
Etica's implementation of RandomX uses a blob structure inspired by Monero but tailored to its own blockchain requirements. Here's a breakdown of the Etica blob:
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