what is an example of a nonce 
the best example of a nonce is a nonce used to mine a block the nonce used in block 841 954 was 3 983 795 221 4 this doesn t mean it only took the miner 3 98 trillion attempts it likely rolled over several thousand times and was used in combination with the variable extra nonce and timestamp entries as a 32 bit number the nonce can only increase to slightly more than 4 29 billion the bottom linein bitcoin mining miners compete to find a nonce that meets the network s difficulty criteria the information in a block header is sent through a hashing algorithm resulting in a value that must be less than or equal to the network difficulty target in every attempt to meet the target the nonce is increased by one if it exceeds the 32 bit limit it is rolled over and the extra nonce and timestamp are used in combination with it until a miner is successful the comments opinions and analyses expressed on investopedia are for informational purposes online read our warranty and liability disclaimer for more info 