Bitcoin Academy
What Happens During a 51% Attack?
A 51% attack is when a miner or group controls a majority of Bitcoin's hash rate, potentially enabling…
Bitcoin Academy
Bitcoin Academy
What Is Bitcoin’s Longest Chain Rule?
The longest chain rule tells every Bitcoin node to follow whichever competing chain represents the most accumulated Proof…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is a Mining Pool?
A mining pool lets many miners combine computing power and split block rewards proportionally, using a share system…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is Bitcoin Mining Hardware? ASICs Explained
Bitcoin mining hardware evolved from CPUs to GPUs to ASICs -- chips built to do nothing but compute…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is a Bitcoin Full Node vs a Light Node?
A full Bitcoin node stores the entire blockchain and independently verifies every rule, while a light (SPV) node…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is a Merkle Tree in Bitcoin?
A Merkle tree compresses every transaction in a Bitcoin block into a single short fingerprint called the Merkle…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is a Bitcoin Halving? How the Mechanism Works
A Bitcoin halving is a programmed event that cuts the block reward exactly in half every 210,000 blocks,…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is the Lightning Network? Bitcoin’s Layer 2 Explained
The Lightning Network is a Layer 2 payment system on top of Bitcoin that lets two parties open…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is Difficulty Adjustment in Bitcoin Mining?
Difficulty adjustment is the automatic mechanism that recalculates every 2,016 blocks (about two weeks) how hard Bitcoin's Proof…
Bitcoin Academy
What Is Bitcoin’s Block Time? Why 10 Minutes?
Bitcoin targets a new block roughly every ten minutes, a deliberate balance between fast confirmations and giving newly…