CBP Bitcoin Mining and Consensus 5

Question 1

What is 'hash rate' a measure of in Bitcoin mining?

Accepted Answer

The number of SHA-256 hash computations a miner performs per second

Answer

Hash rate measures the computational power of a miner or the network, expressed as hashes per second (e.g., TH/s).

Question 2

What is the key vulnerability addressed by requiring multiple confirmations before accepting a Bitcoin payment?

Accepted Answer

Double-spend attacks via chain reorganization

Answer

Each additional confirmation makes it exponentially harder for an attacker to rewrite history and reverse a transaction through a chain reorganization.

Question 3

What is 'fee sniping' in the context of Bitcoin mining incentives?

Accepted Answer

Miners reorging recent blocks to steal high-fee transactions for themselves

Answer

Fee sniping is when a miner intentionally reorganizes recent blocks to claim transactions with high fees included in those blocks.

Question 4

In Bitcoin's proof-of-work, what cryptographic hash function is applied twice to the block header?

Accepted Answer

SHA-256

Answer

Bitcoin uses double-SHA-256 (SHA-256 applied twice) on the block header to produce the proof-of-work hash.

Question 5

What is the concept of 'difficulty retargeting' in Bitcoin?

Accepted Answer

Adjusting the proof-of-work target every 2016 blocks to maintain a 10-minute average block time

Answer

Every 2016 blocks (~2 weeks), Bitcoin adjusts mining difficulty up or down to keep block production near the 10-minute target.

(CBP) Certified Bitcoin Professional Practice Test

(CBP) Certified Bitcoin Professional Practice Test

CBP Bitcoin Mining and Consensus 5