All about NONCE but no Nonsense in Etherum

# All about NONCE but no Nonsense in Etherum ## what is Nonce? * There are two type of Nonce used in Ethereum 1. Block Nonce 2. Account Nonce ## What is Block Nonce? - Miners compete with each other to find a nonce which produces a hash with a value lower than or equal to that set by a network difficulty. - If miners find such a nonce is called Golden nonce, then they win a right to add a block to a blockchain and receive a block reward. - The 32-bit size of the nonce means that there are four billion possible combinations. Although technically, it is much higher due to something called the extra nonce. - The nonce is the one and the only thing that a miner changes to find a sufficient hash value. It is really the accelerator, brake, and clutch to the entire setup. - The hash is a 256-bit number and has to start with a huge number of zeros, i.e. have an incredibly small value. If it does not have the sufficient number of zeros, then the miner discards the hash and tries a new nonce. This process is repeated until a miner discovers a nonce that produces a hash with a value less than or equal than that set by the difficulty. ## Relation to Mining Difficulty - As we have said, the miner is trying to find a nonce that produces a hash below the value set by the network difficulty. The Bitcoin protocol sets this mining difficulty. As the difficulty increases, so the target value for the hash decreases. This means there have to be more zeros at the start of the hash number. The probability of finding a lower hash value decreases and so miners have to test more nonces. When a miner hashes a block, the hash has to have a value equal to or less than the target number to be successful. - When mining Bitcoin, the difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks. This works out to be every two weeks. However, other PoW blockchains have faster adjustments. For instance, Litecoin, because of its shorter block time its difficulty adjusts every three and a half days. Digibyte, on the other hand, adjusts its difficulty at every block in real time. ## What is Account Nonce?