Work, rules & rewards
Work. Miners try block-header hashes until one meets the target. Ten minutes is an average target; the next block has no departure time.
Every 2,016 blocks, the target adjusts using the previous period’s block times. Difficulty is exact for a block; network hash rate is an estimate from work and elapsed time.
Verify. Full nodes check blocks against their rules. More mining power cannot make an invalid subsidy valid for those nodes.
Reward. A miner can claim the subsidy plus transaction fees. Fees move existing BTC; only the subsidy allows new coins. The miner can claim less.
Pools. Many miners can work through one pool. A pool’s share of recently found blocks is not a count of miners or an exact hash-rate share.
Read the validation and mining rules ↗