Nonce

Everything you need to know about the Nonce

Nonce

The nonce is a crucial element in the mining process. It is a 4-byte (32-bit) number that miners repeatedly modify and hash along with the blob to find a valid block hash. The nonce is located at a specific offset within the blob, known as the nonceOffset. In Monero and Etica the NonceOffset is at position 39bytes and has a size of 4bytes. Nonce is set between 39-42 bytes.

How it works

When miners receive the blob, their mining software iterates by replacing the bytes at the nonceOffset position. This process involves changing the nonce value, rehashing the blob, and checking if the resulting hash meets the network's difficulty target. Example of how and where the nonce is modified for a given blob

Examples We'll be using the following blob example: da4670bae10db93a46fad64b14d091189cafa19f61674963f2f2d635b4f2a812685f828da7adb7de554b4090363931bde43a6042eafd6197fbf4866191c9e845ae615393f941f4bb9f92b7ed537c2fb7 NonceOffset is at position 39-42bytes, so the 4bytes nonces will be put at the position of fa19f61674 Nonce 1: 89abcdef da4670bae10db93a46fad64b14d091189ca89abcdef963f2f2d635b4f2a812685f828da7adb7de554b4090363931bde43a6042eafd6197fbf4866191c9e845ae615393f941f4bb9f92b7ed537c2fb7 Nonce 2: 5f6e7d8c da4670bae10db93a46fad64b14d091189ca5f6e7d8c963f2f2d635b4f2a812685f828da7adb7de554b4090363931bde43a6042eafd6197fbf4866191c9e845ae615393f941f4bb9f92b7ed537c2fb7

Note: When passing the Nonce to Ethereum related functions like Ethereum libraries it is often necessary to add 0x at the begining of the Nonce. For instance here it would beb 0x89abcdef and 0x5f6e7d8c.