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Let's assume, the hash 00000000000000000024c0bdbec66a889778c00bc69be0a96cbbd98b75c3ce09 of block #499644 is smaller than 0000000000000000002d429f39afec70c938e888c3417d690bbc85e83529991c of block #499645.

They both have 18 Zeros, then 2=2, but then 4<d.

Which is the smallest hash that has ever been hashed during cryptomining? How many zeros? Which block?

hardfork
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5 Answers5

10

The 12 lowest block hashes in Bitcoin as of Jan 22 2023:

Vojtěch Strnad
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Pieter Wuille
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    I'd be interested to know how you generated this list, and why you decided to post the lowest 12. – Adam Millerchip Dec 17 '17 at 04:09
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    I run http://bitcoin.sipa.be and the website data is generated from a text file with a list of all blocks with hash and height. I sorted the file based on hash and posted the top 12, to give an idea of how common the top number of zeroes is. – Pieter Wuille Dec 17 '17 at 05:59
  • The following equation estimates total chain work based on just 1 of the lowest hashes and its rank. Chain_work = (2^256-1) * (N-1) / Nth_smallest_hash. Stdev error =~ 1/SQRT(N). But for the lowest hash N=1, experiment requires replacing the N-1 with 1/12 which has 5,000% stdev err. – zawy Dec 12 '23 at 18:20
6

Just for fun I made a program to list all record low hashes starting from block 1 ...

Max block count: 773048

Block      1 : 00000000839a8e6886ab5951d76f411475428afc90947ee320161bbf18eb6048
Block      2 : 000000006a625f06636b8bb6ac7b960a8d03705d1ace08b1a19da3fdcc99ddbd
Block      4 : 000000004ebadb55ee9096c9a2f8880e09da59c0d68b1c228da88e48844a1485
Block      6 : 000000003031a0e73735690c5a1ff2a4be82553b2a12b776fbd3a215dc8f778d
Block     10 : 000000002c05cc2e78923c34df87fd108b22221ac6076c18f3ade378a4d915e9
Block     12 : 0000000027c2488e2510d1acf4369787784fa20ee084c258b58d9fbd43802b5e
Block     16 : 00000000174a25bb399b009cc8deff1c4b3ea84df7e93affaaf60dc3416cc4f5
Block     23 : 000000000cd339982e556dfffa9de94744a4135c53eeef15b7bcc9bdeb9c2182
Block     46 : 0000000002d5f429a2e3a9d9f82b777469696deb64038803c87833aa8ee9c08e
Block    113 : 00000000019176838de40606d70738084f2fbc48a50548eeeac3ceb857677c6d
Block    525 : 00000000015402dc2bcc4afdc3be3c58e873a7ecea22c12f72d6889eb9b9a0b1
Block    598 : 0000000000d16752cf56ebae77a37a8fa1ac8e234336a41622c3b7924a07a644
Block    722 : 000000000033b4ee1cc40f05145b1a3987cca2473589e7e23082996e2fe7c899
Block   1430 : 000000000009606d829b157912edb060c406b519fb2bfcc1078c196b69c67e49
Block  11686 : 00000000000243ab3dd422f82638c9651cfc401ac763b2228f00f6abae334f48
Block  43011 : 000000000000c09b5844620bdec4d533107844efea128a6ec6326dd92f6dc7e6
Block  55593 : 000000000000b545d467b95ad844b8c718f9b76e9426e4efab7e097ca09a83da
Block  60040 : 0000000000009f9f9991befc49dc787a190206d1dd32467b687e32157d48c651
Block  61068 : 000000000000177131355902f9a7a9d94d1f57aba9ef4430bb01123190325977
Block  73373 : 000000000000013af45c4ac4814ab12a69a6e65a40db0e1e3844fcb2ecaddb24
Block  89665 : 0000000000000062864d8512b92b2f6a0c2a9edcda82aae03063879b3869d507
Block  91940 : 000000000000004fa1186f88c245f89757b74b7ef1fa87302ab340b635686c1c
Block 101777 : 000000000000000834e72c05564b54cc21ac27fb0cbe4ec686bfe607273ad611
Block 114335 : 0000000000000006acb7899a26faa6290030e25ae41c8b3f62d69809994b89d8
Block 125552 : 00000000000000001e8d6829a8a21adc5d38d0a473b144b6765798e61f98bd1d
Block 206712 : 00000000000000000ae2dba9951e28a3e6308ac7e9e8536104c503aa772c848f
Block 239572 : 000000000000000006582fa9652895fda92c757ae6beee9dfbc3932125b5ab8e
Block 244583 : 000000000000000004ae693a1a8e740a33dd996c27ccc64217ed647e0b90d910
Block 258283 : 0000000000000000004bb6e7e2661661ba9809062d90c3121933d6d02c8bd763
Block 266381 : 000000000000000000028c32e6952731326747bae4be8db0f832d6eea0362050
Block 313338 : 00000000000000000000b7de9e5c19e52be073156924b7cf235efb27ae8a202a
Block 326055 : 000000000000000000007e1166d92acf81d4e2d95934fcdec1276b09a7db9390
Block 331908 : 000000000000000000006836c4009ab00485cd1de4d5958ca7839184d0b80067
Block 334261 : 000000000000000000002d414bb8f9175ba6c6563721e1ba2c1373c2bd94f29f
Block 368527 : 00000000000000000000013712632da34788a7b4ae2cd78f7982c7036610126b
Block 458091 : 00000000000000000000011246f099d94f91628d71c9d75ad2f9a06e2beb7e92
Block 500174 : 0000000000000000000000bb5b432a764ad6c7acf677dcd99161abfdf68e698e
Block 515910 : 0000000000000000000000ab789f6d71d9642ae3f697975ccd00afcb98fe6bd2
Block 585774 : 000000000000000000000019b43763eb4519f4fe65eae9be90fe73117b89026d
Block 634842 : 000000000000000000000003681c2df35533c9578fb6aace040b0dfe0d446413
Block 742035 : 000000000000000000000000fcb36c64b8a99acde151e61c933c6f7a57271db3
Block 756951 : 0000000000000000000000005d6f06154c8685146aa7bc3dc9843876c9cefd0f
Vojtěch Strnad
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johanpm
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5

I don't think there is a site that will show you this information, but it is fairly trivial to find out.

Here's an old Bitcointalk thread that discusses this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=29675.0

Here's a python script that will calculate it for you. You will need a bitcoind for it to connect to:

from bitcoinrpc.authproxy import AuthServiceProxy, JSONRPCException
import binascii
import struct

def uint256_to_str(u):
    rs = b""
    for i in range(8):
        rs += struct.pack("<I", u & 0xFFFFFFFF)
        u >>= 32
    return binascii.hexlify(rs)


def uint256_from_str(s):
    s = binascii.unhexlify(s)
    r = 0
    t = struct.unpack("<IIIIIIII", s[:32])
    for i in range(8):
        r += t[i] << (i * 32)
    return r


def byteswap(a):
    return "".join(reversed([a[i:i+2] for i in range(0, len(a), 2)]))


rpc_user and rpc_password are set in the bitcoin.conf file


rpc_user = "user"
rpc_password = "password"
rpc_connection = AuthServiceProxy("http://%s:%[email protected]:8332"%(rpc_user, rpc_password))


best_hash = uint256_from_str("ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff")
best_height = 0
counter = 0


while True:
    try:
        commands = [ [ "getblockhash", height] for height in range(counter, counter + 10000) ]
        block_hashes = rpc_connection.batch_(commands)


    for block_hash in block_hashes:
        block_uint256 =  uint256_from_str(byteswap(block_hash))
        if block_uint256 &lt; best_hash:
            best_hash = block_uint256
            best_height = counter
        counter += 1

    print(&quot;Processed &quot; + str(counter) + &quot; blocks&quot;)
except Exception as e:
    print(e)
    break;




print("Lowest Block Hash: " + byteswap(uint256_to_str(best_hash).decode()) + " at block height " + str(best_height))

This script gave me the following output:

Lowest Block Hash: 00000000000000000000011246f099d94f91628d71c9d75ad2f9a06e2beb7e92 at block height 458091
Benjamin Loison
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Ava Chow
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4

As an alternative to syncing a full Bitcoin node, there is a BigQuery public dataset for Bitcoin (and some other cryptocurrencies):

SELECT
    `number`,
    `hash`
FROM 
    `bigquery-public-data.crypto_bitcoin.blocks` 
ORDER BY  
    `hash`
LIMIT 
    10

Results in JSON:

[
  {
    "number": "634842",
    "hash": "000000000000000000000003681c2df35533c9578fb6aace040b0dfe0d446413"
  },
  {
    "number": "585774",
    "hash": "000000000000000000000019b43763eb4519f4fe65eae9be90fe73117b89026d"
  },
  {
    "number": "675600",
    "hash": "00000000000000000000001a9bf725a1f7d019440a04f39706c083751b62974d"
  },
  {
    "number": "658771",
    "hash": "00000000000000000000001e9590a06c8452a3ce553834b2bab3daebf62f8b79"
  },
  {
    "number": "679468",
    "hash": "0000000000000000000000250fae6b97e3241d86c65fb5be489875c49032b25b"
  },
  {
    "number": "679848",
    "hash": "00000000000000000000002d142973ed07a220bf571360b70b90f4f0a1e739ce"
  },
  {
    "number": "625857",
    "hash": "000000000000000000000030f8cf8e0a76db53525aff8d56dcfdf4c74fc7878c"
  },
  {
    "number": "622050",
    "hash": "000000000000000000000031a10e42c80137b3c3ad3e15c5dfb4ea213c83e497"
  },
  {
    "number": "664602",
    "hash": "000000000000000000000032ad53b18dadb72800d883f8e1188ceaa566b9a222"
  },
  {
    "number": "696345",
    "hash": "00000000000000000000003c5c9269d93153a4eb8fabef76318d849a2ec2b29e"
  }
]
Benjamin Loison
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penfold
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3

I improved on this to print the lowest 50 block hashes as well as their heights and the dates they were generated:

from bitcoinrpc.authproxy import AuthServiceProxy, JSONRPCException
import datetime

rpc_user and rpc_password are set in the bitcoin.conf file


rpc_user = "user"
rpc_password = "password"
rpc_connection = AuthServiceProxy("http://%s:%[email protected]:8332" %
                                  (rpc_user, rpc_password))


block_cnt = rpc_connection.getblockcount()
block_hashes = []


for n in range(0, block_cnt, 1000):
    commands = [["getblockhash", h] for h in range(n, min(n+1000, block_cnt))]
    block_hashes += rpc_connection.batch_(commands)


block_hashes.sort()


commands = [["getblock", block_hash] for block_hash in block_hashes[0:50]]
blocks = rpc_connection.batch_(commands)


for block in blocks:
    time = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(block['time']).strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
    print(block['hash'], block['height'], time)

A new record was just set yesterday!

0000000000000000000000bb5b432a764ad6c7acf677dcd99161abfdf68e698e 500174 2017-12-19
Benjamin Loison
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Clayton Smith
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