Inputs/outputs/addresses are all pretty fundamental aspects of blockchain and I regularly encourage participants in crypto to take 5-10 minutes to read some wikis on them. IMHO it only takes that long to get the basic concept, and it's very good knowledge to have if you are involved in this space. (A thorough, in-depth understanding would take much longer for most people--however that is not really necessary or as much positive cost/benefit, IMHO.)
The semi-short answer is an input is an incoming amount to an address.
The semi-short answer is an input is an incoming amount to an address.
Well I'm thoroughly flummoxed now...
My wallet now holds 1001.9 TZC obtained through 192 mining payments to 2 addresses, and the last payment was a little over 48 hours ago so the minimum age of an input should be >2 days. The Penrose triangle, however, reports 148 inputs weighing 10178 coin days, of which 52 inputs are minimum age, 1 input is average age and 95 inputs are max age; so 148 inputs vs. 192 payments, and last payment was 2 days ago but still claiming that 52 inputs are minimum age. To muddy matters even more, the TZC whitepaper says that the minimum age for an input is 1 day, so is it any wonder that I am confused at this point?
Hopefully you checked up on inputs/outputs/etc., as that will help any communication/understanding.
Every time your wallet has received a payment, for example a small mining pool payout, that will represent an input. That is probably why you have so many inputs.
Note that inputs, while associated with addresses, are not 1-to-1 with an address. You can have many inputs under the same, single address.
The min, ave, max age are just a way of saying low, medium, high maturity. I don't remember the exact breakdown, but maybe inputs from 1-8 days in age may be min, 8-16 days ave, and 16+ days max? Anyway, it's just a 3-bucket way of considering your inputs and their age.
Your inputs that are under 24 hrs old (or perhaps 72 hrs if you don't have a conf on the original version wallet) are probably not being included in the count (e.g., the 148 you mentioned). Also, there may be a minimum input size to stake, but I have not gotten solid confirmation on that. So if that is true, inputs that are too small would not count either, theoretically.
Based on what you seem to be describing--a fair likelihood of many small inputs--it might be worth taking a moment to sweep up the tiny ones into larger inputs. You will reset the ages of any inputs you merge, but I think it would probably be worth it. Please be aware that regardless of whether they are set right or not, a total coin balance of 1000 will probably take months or longer to hit a PoS stake--of course, if you are particularly lucky it could happen much sooner.
Hope that helps--best of luck with your staking!
