Talk:Cryptographic nonce

message: The word derives from nonce. The n represents an arbitrary number that, for security reasons, will only be used once.
I removed this because it is uncited, I've never seen such a derivation elsewhere, and because the regular English word nonce exactly matches the cryptographic usage, making any other etymology highly suspect. Arvindn 02:38, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There seems to be a good etymology here... .  — Lee J Haywood 09:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed from article

message: Do you say "NONce", so it sounds like the word ON, or do you say "n(w)ONCE", like the word ONCE? 198.49.180.40 (talk) 20:35, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The first -- It's an 800-year-old word.  The backformation given as the etymology is now in the very first sentence, but it doesn't make it remotely correct.  I've had my fill of correcting such idiocy in Wikipedia, so I'm just going to let it stand.  76.14.60.75 (talk) 03:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Listen here. 46.116.86.242 (talk) 19:43, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  How do you prononounce this? 

message: The statement regarding Bitcoin's proof-of-work system is not entirely correct. The difficulty factor changes dynamically to prevent an increase or decrease in time taken to find a block, not in the amount of bitcoins actually rewarded. The reward for solving a block is halved every 210,000 blocks regardless of how long those blocks take to mine, so coin generation is block sensitive, not time sensitive. Even the difficulty re-target itself is block sensitive, rather than time sensitive, occurring every 2016 blocks. The target is to generate one block every 10 minutes  so if, at re-target, it is found that blocks have been generated faster than one per 10 minutes, difficulty increases. Conversely if block generation has taken too long the difficulty will decrease. The confusion is understandable since coins are awarded every time a block is found, so varying the time between blocks will vary the coin generation rate overall, but the specific mechanism mentioned here is used to control block time and the language of the article does not accurately reflect that.
Also, when referring to the project or the application, the word "Bitcoin" is a proper noun and should be capitalized. When referring to some quantity of the currency, it is typically accepted to use the lowercase "bitcoin" or "bitcoins." 
I therefore recommend that we change this:
:Similarly, the bitcoin block-chain hashing algorithm can be tuned to an arbitrary difficulty by changing the required minimum/maximum value of the hash so that the number of bitcoins awarded for new blocks does not increase linearly with increased network computation power as new users join. This is likewise achieved by forcing bitcoin miners to add nonce values to the value being hashed to change the hash algorithm output. Because cryptographic hash algorithms cannot easily be predicted based on their inputs, this makes the act of blockchain hashing and the possibility of being awarded bitcoins something of a lottery, where the first "miner" to find a nonce that delivers a desirable hash is awarded valuable bitcoins.
To something like this:
:Similarly, the Bitcoin block-chain hashing algorithm can be tuned to an arbitrary difficulty by changing the acceptable value range of the hash so that the time between new blocks does not decrease with increased network computation power as new miners join. This is likewise achieved by forcing Bitcoin miners to add nonce values to the value being hashed to change the hash algorithm's output. Because the outputs of cryptographic hash algorithms cannot easily be predicted based on their inputs, this makes the act of blockchain hashing and the possibility of being awarded bitcoins something of a lottery, where the first miner to find a nonce that delivers a desirable hash is awarded bitcoins and the odds of winning that lottery increase or decrease dynamically to maintain a steady block rate.
Opinions?
Enmaku (talk) 18:20, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bitcoin PoW 

message: This article is almost entirely missing relevant citations, and contains much unsourced material, so I've added the refimprove tag. I may work on the article over time, but feel free to make changes. 
131.204.254.100 (talk) 00:20, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations Lacking 

message: This article is in dire need of some actual examples of use. I personally only know of HTTPS, but there must be more. Adding examples would a) establish the relevance of the topic and b) make the topic more concrete to the reader. As it stands, it's very abstract and one wonders how the topic relates to oneself and how notable it is in general.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.114.146.117 (talk) 02:54, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Websockets use this to ensure you are not getting a proxy reply back. And http digest authentication uses this method as well (but has other flaws)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.126.128.209 (talk) 09:50, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs some examples 

message: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/nonce
 In this context, "nonce" stands for "number used once" or "number once."
If we find who invented that and when, that would be worth adding.
Cheers! Syced (talk) 08:22, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Retro-acronym? "Number used once" 

message: 11 years on, are the citations adequate now? 81.187.145.134 (talk) 23:05, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Enough citations now?