Difficulty Test

Location /BasicTests

Test Implementation

These 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 its 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)

Test Structure

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

Fileds

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