Difficulty Tests

Difficulty tests

Found in \Basic Tests\difficulty*.json files. This tests are designed to just check the difficulty formula of a block.

difficulty = DIFFICULTY(currentBlockNumber, currentTimestamp, parentTimestamp, parentDifficulty)

described at EIP2 point 4 with homestead changes.

So basically this .json tests are just to check how this function is calculated on different function parameters (parentDifficulty, currentNumber) in it's extremum points.

There are several test files:

difficulty.json - Normal Frontier/Homestead chain difficulty tests defined manually
difficultyFrontier.json - Same as above, but auto-generated tests
difficultyMorden.json - Tests for testnetwork difficulty. (it has different homestead transition block)
difficultyOlimpic.json - Olympic network. (no homestead)
difficultyHomestead.json - Tests for homestead difficulty (regardless of the block number)
difficultyCustomHomestead.json - Tests for homestead difficulty (regardless of the block number)

Basic structure

{
    "difficultyTest" : {
        "parentTimestamp" : "42",
        "parentDifficulty" : "1000000",
        "currentTimestamp" : "43",
        "currentBlockNumber" : "42",
        "currentDifficulty" : "1000488"
    }
}

Sections

parentTimestamp - indicates the timestamp of a previous block
parentDifficulty - indicates the difficulty of a previous block
currentTimestamp - indicates the timestamp of a current block
currentBlockNumber - indicates the number of a current block (previous block number = currentBlockNumber - 1)
currentDifficulty -- indicates the difficulty of a current block