Five stages, real cryptography

Play

Mine a block with real SHA-256, fill one against a fee market, date a block from its own statistics, survive a real historical cycle and decide what the network does under pressure.

This is the only page on BitcoinTrench that is not a measurement. Everything else here reports what the network is doing; this asks you to do it. The cryptography is real — the hashing below runs the same SHA-256 the network runs, in your browser. Your progress is kept in this browser only. There is no account, no score to submit, and nothing to buy.

Five stages

Understand Bitcoin by running it.

Each stage teaches one thing the rest of this site measures. They run in order because each depends on the one before.

not started

Afterwards

See the real thing.

MiningReal difficultyThe target you were guessing against, as the network sets it. NetworkReal mempoolThe queue you were packing, with money in it. LearnThe explanationsEight lessons on everything these stages make you feel.