A nonce in a blockchain is a unique number used in mining, acting like a puzzle piece that miners must find through trial and error.
A nonce, short for “number used once,” is a special number that is assigned to a block in a blockchain during the mining process. It is an essential part of the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism.
The nonce, serving as a cryptographic puzzle, is a variable that miners manipulate to produce a hash value that satisfies particular requirements. Miners keep changing the nonce until they find a hash that possesses the necessary properties, which are frequently a set number of leading zeros. This iterative process, known as mining, ensures the security of the blockchain.
