Blocks

Block header and transactions.

Height of a block in the block chain, starting at 0 for Genesis.

Block timestamp as Unix time (seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00 UTC).

Data type recording information of a Block. The hash of a block is defined as the hash of this data structure, serialized. The block mining process involves finding a partial hash collision by varying the nonce in the BlockHeader and/or additional entropy in the coinbase Transaction of this Block. Variations in the coinbase will result in different merkle roots in the BlockHeader.

Compute hash of BlockHeader.

A block locator is a set of block headers, denser towards the best block and sparser towards the genesis block. It starts at the highest block known. It is used by a node to synchronize against the network. When the locator is provided to a peer, it will send back block hashes starting from the first block in the locator that it recognizes.

Data type representing a getblocks message request. It is used in the bitcoin protocol to retrieve blocks from a peer by providing it a BlockLocator object. The response to a GetBlocks message is an Inv message containing a list of block hashes that the peer believes this node is missing. The number of block hashes in that inv message will end at the stop block hash, at at the tip of the chain, or after 500 entries, whichever comes earlier.

Similar to the GetBlocks message type but for retrieving block headers only. The response to a GetHeaders request is a Headers message containing a list of block headers. A maximum of 2000 block headers can be returned. GetHeaders is used by simplified payment verification (SPV) clients to exclude block contents when synchronizing the block chain.

BlockHeader type with a transaction count as VarInt

Block header hash. To be serialized reversed for display purposes.

Block hashes are reversed with respect to the in-memory byte order in a block hash when displayed.

Convert a human-readable hex block hash into a BlockHash. Bytes are reversed as normal.

The Headers type is used to return a list of block headers in response to a GetHeaders message.

Decode the compact number used in the difficulty target of a block.

The compact format is a representation of a whole number \(N\) using an unsigned 32-bit number similar to a floating point format. The most significant 8 bits are the unsigned exponent of base 256. This exponent can be thought of as the number of bytes of \(N\). The lower 23 bits are the mantissa. Bit number 24 represents the sign of \(N\).

\[ N = -1^{sign} \times mantissa \times 256^{exponent-3} \]

Encode an Integer to the compact number format used in the difficulty target of a block.