nonce [English]

InterPARES Definition

No definition in earlier IP projects. ITrust definition not yet developed.

Other Definitions

  • Bitcoin Glossary 2017 (†812 s.v. "Nonce"): A random string of data used as an input when hashing a transaction block. A nonce is used to try and produce a digest that fits the numerical parameters set by the bitcoin difficulty. A different nonce will be used with each hashing attempt, meaning that billions of nonces are generated when attempting to hash each transaction block.
  • Bitcoin Group [2017] (†846 s.v. "Nonce"): A random string of data used as an input when hashing a transaction block. A nonce is used to try and produce a digest that fits the numerical parameters set by the bitcoin difficulty. A different nonce will be used with each hashing attempt, meaning that billions of nonces are generated when attempting to hash each transaction block.
  • ISO TC307 (Japan). 2017 (†857 s.v. "3.7 nonce" ; p.9): a nonrepeating value, such as an increasing counter, a sufficiently long random string, or a timestamp. [SOURCE: ISO/IEC/IEEE 8802-15-4:2010, 3.29]
  • Scaling Bitcoin [2017] (†845 s.v. "Nonce"): In cryptography, a nonce is an arbitrary number that may only be used once. It is similar in spirit to anonce word, hence the name. It is often a random or pseudo-random number issued in anauthentication protocol to ensure that old communications cannot be reused in replay attacks. They can also be useful as initialization vectors and in cryptographic hash function.
  • Seibold et al. 2016 (†821 p.18): A unique identifier used to get into a network just once.
  • Wood 2014 (†803 p.3): A scalar value equal to the number of transactions sent from this address or, in the case of accounts with associated code, the number of contract-creations made by this account.
  • Wood 2014 (†803 p.5): A 64-bit hash which proves combined with the mix-hash that a sufficient amount of computation has been carried out on this block...

Citations

  • Bitcoin Wiki Vocabulary [2017] (†796 s.v. "Nonce"): The "nonce" in a bitcoin block is a 32-bit (4-byte) field whose value is set so that the hash of the block will contain a run of leading zeros. The rest of the fields may not be changed, as they have a defined meaning. · Any change to the block data (such as the nonce) will make the block hash completely different. Since it is believed infeasible to predict which combination of bits will result in the right hash, many different nonce values are tried, and the hash is recomputed for each value until a hash containing the required number of zero bits is found. The number of zero bits required is set by the difficulty. The resulting hash has to be a value less than the current difficulty and so will have to have a certain number of leading zero bits to be less than that. As this iterative calculation requires time and resources, the presentation of the block with the correct nonce value constitutes proof of work. (†2096)
  • Buterin [2017] (†818 s.v. "Merkle Trees"): An important scalability feature of Bitcoin is that the block is stored in a multi-level data structure. The "hash" of a block is actually only the hash of the block header, a roughly 200-byte piece of data that contains the timestamp, nonce, previous block hash and the root hash of a data structure called the Merkle tree storing all transactions in the block. (†2113)
  • Piasecki 2017 (†815 s.v. 2017-02-20 "Blockchain Terminology-a dev): A nonce is a random number used to easily create a different input. It is most notably used in a Block Header to create a different Block Hash without changing any important information stored in a Block. This is most often used in Proof of Work Blockchains that need to iterate over many block hashes. Due to the avalanche effect, changing even a single bit in the nonce creates a completely different Hash. (†2103)
  • Wood 2014 (†803 p.13): The mining proof-of-work (PoW) exists as a cryptographically secure nonce that proves beyond reasonable doubt that a particular amount of computation has been expended in the determination of some token value "n". (†2054)