Decoding Bitcoin’s First Block Coinbase Transaction
And Satoshi’s hidden message
To go straight to Satoshi’s hidden message in the first Bitcoin block would be a bit dull. There are so many other fields in the Bitcoin block that we can look at! Let’s take a quick look at them before decoding the Bitcoin genesis block message.
Have you ever looked at a Bitcoin block in one of those block explorers and wondered what’s the meaning of all those numbers, the hash, the height, and the reward?
Block
A block in the blockchain is usually composed of the block hash, the previous block hash, time-stamp, nonce, a Merkle root, and/or a number of transactions. Once a block mined, broadcasted, and accepted by the other nodes in the blockchain, it can no longer be modified or deleted. Each block contains the hash of the previous block, forming a chain between them.
Block Explorer
A block explorer is a user interface for users to look at the blockchain. It is a tool, often a web-based app, the allows users to view and explore all the information in a blockchain, including transactions, transaction history, addresses, blocks, etc.. Behind the scenes, the block explorer is connected to a full node with the entire ledger and works as a search engine for that ledger.
