Explain Block Anatomy in Blockchain

So far you have learnt about the architecture of the bitcoin blockchain network and the types of nodes that exist in the network. However, we are yet to discuss what comprises the blockchain, i.e., Blocks. Blocks are the fundamental components of the blockchain. The word "block" is an interesting way to think about the information it stores; but what a block actually is, might be a little different than what you expect. In this segment, we'll discuss what blocks are, and the various elements that are included in the block.

A blocks header comprises the following components:

• Merkle root - aggregation of all the hash values of the transactions into a single hash value.

• Timestamp - Timestamp of the block creation time.

• Nonce - Random Value that is altered/updated to try different permutations to achieve the required difficulty level. You will learn more about this in the upcoming section.

• Transaction counter - Count of the number of transactions in a block.