To add to the discussion.
Re:SETI@home Is in Hibernation
by squeaky-clean on Saturday March 18, 2023 @01:36AM
(#35206436)
User bitcoinistrash is the one that brought it up, and they're spreading incorrect information about how it works.
Cracking sha256 hashes implies trying to reverse a specific hash. There are literally thousands (millions?) of potential inputs that hash to a valid bitcoin mining block output. It's basically a race to find the first one matching the rules of the current block difficulty. The goal isn't to produce any one specific input/hash pair.
In which context would somebody try to reverse a hash? That would be like arbitrarily enhancing a bad-resolution image to see something that cannot be seen.
Hash collision should always be about finding matching content for a hash.
So why'd you bring it up?