The nonce thing.
Discussion
Op return
The chain with the most proof of work situation
Mining pools
Mining pools simply take your hashpower (randomly guessed numbers) and pool them together. When one of them hits, they broadcast the block and distribute rewards to those who contributed guesses.
Are minng pools governed at the base level , or is this something that happens outside of that ?
The blockchain is made up of blocks. The more blocks in a given blockchain, the more proof of work thats there. The blockchain with the most blocks is the longest chain.
When miners mine, they have to come up with a number below the difficulty number. When they go to guess the magic number, they start with a nonce. It's a number that is plugged into a formula to generate a guess. If that guess is below the difficulty, they mine the block by broadcasting it. If it is above, they add 1 to the nonce and try again.
...I think...