Blocks / minting timeline New bitcoins are created as part of bitcoin blocks.The blocks are built on top of each other in a chain.This page shows the blocks generated at BitMinter.If someone else builds a block at the same height as us, one of the blocks (theirs or ours) will become orphaned and yield no coins.If the block is orphaned upon creation it will be listed as stale.This can happen if a proof of work for creating a block is submitted too late, after we have already started building at the next height.If you have the prepay perk activated you get paid when a block is created, as long as it is not stale.If the block is later orphaned you still keep the coins.Without the perk you must wait until enough new blocks have been built on top of it that the block is considered confirmed.This confirmation status is shown below.With merged mining we also make namecoins with no additional effort.Namecoins are shown as type NMC, and bitcoins as BTC.All timestamps are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Advertisements Show: all | only BTC | only NMC Height Created Duration Type Made by Confirmations 468983 2017-05-31 02:43 10d 20h 23m 333,715,091,392 595,921,917,085 42.9% 1,529.0 BTC robertga 467246 2017-05-20 06:20 12d 19h 10m 393,814,755,968 559,970,892,890 50.5% 1,529.5 BTC DaveyBC 465263 2017-05-07 11:09 2h 07m 1,782,961,280 521,974,519,553 % 1,003.1 BTC farsider350 465241 2017-05-07 09:02 34d 5h 40m 893,911,025,728 521,974,519,553 % 1,297.9 BTC Saglimbeni 460151 2017-04-03 03:22 9d 16h 36m 269,868,162,944 499,635,929,816 41.7% 1,384.2 BTC bighash99 458703 2017-03-24 10:45 12h 25m 16,916,002,368 475,705,205,061 % 1,624.2 BTC scaary 458619 2017-03-23 22:20 15d 16h 32m 485,707,889,408 475,705,205,061 64.0% 1,538.9 BTC Gagaf 456263 2017-03-08 05:47 14d 22h 05m 403,407,772,160 460,769,358,090 58.3% 1,344.0 BTC ktrks 454007 2017-02-21 07:41 8d 9h 50m 192,010,341,888 440,779,902,286 35.3% 1,135.0 BTC th1nk3r 452747 2017-02-12 21:51 16d 7h 21m 352,170,232,832 422,170,566,883 56.6% 1,073.6 BTC sug 450272 2017-01-27 14:30 14d 0h 36m 297,176,876,608 392,963,262,344 53.1% 1,053.3 BTC sergeantloki 447989 2017-01-13 13:53 16d 13h 43m 365,189,915,072 336,899,932,795 66.2% 1,095.5 BTC SINYC 445414 2016-12-28 00:10 19d 16h 55m 415,285,959,424 310,153,855,703 % 1,047.6 BTC Saglimbeni 442476 2016-12-08 07:14 17d 3h 41m 378,041,720,512 286,765,766,820 % 1,095.5 BTC WMminer 439868 2016-11-21 03:32 49d 3h 10m 2,061,380,193,920 281,800,917,193 % 2,085.6 BTC th1nk3r 432582 2016-10-03 00:22 5d 13h 20m 311,673,347,968 241,227,200,229 % 2,788.7 BTC argonsd1 431756 2016-09-27 11:02 4d 16h 30m 255,904,134,016 241,227,200,229 65.4% 2,713.7 BTC Bitvest4 431020 2016-09-22 18:31 3d 18h 49m 211,413,547,456 225,832,872,179 60.8% 2,777.2 BTC Made966 430452 2016-09-18 23:42 3d 6h 25m 180,143,091,008 225,832,872,179 55.0% 2,740.3 BTC Farcryf 429954 2016-09-15 17:16 4d 20h 39m 262,162,569,472 225,832,872,179 % 2,681.1 BTC satfree3079 Yo app: send a yo to BITMINTED and receive a yo when a block is found.

Phones Laptops Cameras Tablets Headphones Smartwatches VR Headsets This is my NextThere is a lot of talk of “full-nodes” in Bitcoin.They are apparently very important.From the day-to-day of my Twitter feed you would think there was a direct relationship between the number of reachable nodes on the network and Bitcoin’s health.bitcoin mall of americaThis is wrong.A full-node is a mining node.Bitcoin relies on a distributed network of these mining nodes, providing all the features we love about Bitcoin.mmm world bitcoinDecentralization, security, censorship resistance and availability.With a healthy distribution of mining nodes, SPV wallets become feasible, a user can ask the mining network for fraud proofs instead of downloading the entire blockchain.bitcoin glasgow

A user might trust a wallet service provider to provide blockchain data, it doesn’t really matter, the wallet service has no influence or bearing on the network.The mining nodes are the basis of the entire economy.A full-node is a mining node.Three things: ASICs, mining pools and the stratum mining protocol.ASICs brought specialization and professionalization to mining, taking it out of the reach of the casual bedroom enthusiast and into serious hobbyist and professional operations.bitcoin price history in inrThis created centralization pressure making earning for smaller miners very difficult.Mining pools to the rescue!litecoin rig setup(but not really)Mining pools enable smaller mining operations to cut a steady profit, by pooling resources with other miners they can reduce the variance inherent in the way blocks are paid out.exchange litecoin for gbp

Instead of getting the full block payout when they find a block, they forgo this to the pool.In return they earn a steady small daily payout.Sounds OK right?I am a small miner, I have a few AntMiners in my garage, I use a pool, what’s the difference?I still have my node.Instead of a CPU I use my ASIC.I still choose the transactions I include in a block.bitcoin farm botI just route my payouts via a pool as a kind of accountancy trick.bitcoin worth 75 millionPerfect.This would be the case, only mining pools are competitive:“What if you could just plug your miner into the wall, connect it to your WiFi and receive a steady stream of Bitcoin’s into your wallet?”“Yes please!bitcoin mlm scamsWhat’s the catch?”“No catch, you don’t even need to run a node anymore!

No more losing money when your node crashes.No more pesky updates- and don’t worry- the pool will choose the transactions to include in a block for you.Also, as a bonus, less internet bandwidth as those pesky blocks and transactions no longer need to be relayed to you!”This was the nail in the coffin of Bitcoin as we knew it.We now have the complete separation of node and miner, and the original definition of a node is obsolete.Based on the original and correct definition, there are around 20 mining-nodes on the Bitcoin network.These are all mining pools.It is clear the dynamics have massively changed as a result of the aggressive re-configuring of the system.A few known central parties now handle three of the most critical aspects of the system:We now have a system where mining pools are the full-nodes but their customers hold the hashing power*.However, these customers and the pools themselves still need to be sure that they can spend and exchange the bitcoins that they are generating, to pay their electricity bills, employees and to buy things.They need to be sure that the people they spend their bitcoins with will accept the blocks they produce, so there is an incentive for them to care about users outside of mining nodes.

Bitcoin can still hold on to a form of decentralization if non-mining users run wallet-only nodes.More specifically, economically dependent wallet-only nodes.Why?Well, we have say 20 full mining nodes on the network- not very decentralized right?However if we had say 50,000 users of Bitcoin that were regularly sending and accepting bitcoin, the mining nodes would have to care about these users.If these users managed their own node, and so validation of blocks and software updates, then this set of distributed Economic-Nodes would provide a counter-balance to the semi-centralized mining nodes.Mining pools wouldn’t produce blocks unless they were sure the majority of these nodes would accept their bitcoins.This group is referred to as the economic majority.Guess what?So far, users don’t want to manage their own node just to have a wallet.They want the convenience of centralized wallet services and SPV wallets.As a result we have also seen an aggressive centralization of Economic-Nodes and SPV wallets relying on them.

(Or more likely relying on non-economic nodes, more on that later)To give an idea of how aggressive this has been, it is estimated that blockchain.info’s node is responsible for 45% of the transactions on the Bitcoin network.That’s just one node.As with the mining pools, we can probably break this down to 100 nodes representing the majority of the Economic activity in Bitcoin.These will be comprised of the central services you have heard of: Blockchain, Coinbase, BitPay, the various exchanges etc.The advent of Bitcoin API services has further centralized this with many services now sharing the same API provider.So, 20 mining-nodes, 100 economic-nodes.These are the only nodes that mining pools need to care about.If someone wants to change a parameter of the network via a software update, most of the work is in convincing this relatively small set of nodes.I call this the Central Economic Zone.There is a trend for running a “full-node” as a volunteer.These nodes contribute very little.

Unless they are responsible for significant economic transactions, they are literally just sitting there and passing messages around.If they stopped accepting blocks from mining pools- would you notice economically?Would anyone lose money?If they all refused to update their software, would anything change?I would go as far to say running a “full-node” in this way simply makes it harder to estimate how many genuine Economic-Nodes might be out there.21 Inc.have a great approach in terms of deploying their platform based on a node with a full validated copy of the blockchain.They have also indicated that they are searching for ways to enable decentralized mining pools.There is no such thing as a full-node anymore.Now there are two types:Both sets are now semi-centralized on the network, are heavily inter-dependent and represent the majority of the active Bitcoin users.Did I get anything wrong?Feedback very welcome via Twitter @shibuyashadows*Pools often also control significant hashing power themselves directly.** All numbers are estimates.