Bitcoin Miners Sail Through Over 400 Difficulty Changes With 13 More Anticipated Before the Halving
Bitcoin’s difficulty saw a 6.47% increase this week, surpassing the 61 trillion mark at block height 812,448. This marked the cryptocurrency’s 403rd difficulty epoch, some of which included retargets with no change. In basic terms, Bitcoin’s difficulty measures the challenge of identifying a new block relative to its easiest potential level.
This measure, denoted by a specific number, is adjusted by the Bitcoin protocol every 2,016 blocks — approximately every two weeks — based on the time taken by miners to discover those 2,016 blocks. The difficulty adjustment ensures a consistent discovery of new blocks by miners, regardless of the number of miners in the network.
Notably, during its initial phase at block height 2,016, the difficulty didn’t alter due to a lack of mining activity.
If these blocks are discovered quicker than this ten-minute benchmark and the block discovery rate accelerates, the difficulty escalates. Conversely, if it lags, the difficulty diminishes.
Bitcoin’s difficulty will persistently adapt, responding to the ebb and flow of miners within its network. To date, miners have amped up their hashrate, pushing it by an impressive 0.68 exahash per second (EH/s) daily. Remarkably, despite 15 difficulty increases in 2023, the hashrate still surged, tacking on an extra 194 EH/s in under a year.
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