In this Chaincode Decoded segment we talk about the fundamental role of Bitcoin's blockchain and some of its peculiarities. We discuss: Purpose of the blockchain (0:40) Mining is a lottery, not a race (1:57) Why doesn't the same miner always win? (5:12) What happens if two blocks are found at the same height? (6:12) The longest reorgs (9:11) How does the blockchain work? (12:18)  - Headers-first synchronization and Ultraprune: Episode 1 with Pieter Wuille  - Episode 5: The UTXO set Why does Bitcoin converge on one chain? (15:20)  - Selfish mining paper: Majority is not Enough: Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable Will we always find a new block? (18:04)  - Entropy sources in the block header Mining pools have disjoint hashing spaces (19:30)  - Correction: mining pools do not have a separate pay-out address for each participant, but give out a unique coinbase transaction stub for each.  - Eschaton block Thanks to Caralie for the sound engineering.