More Examples
“There is a Bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment about every 2 weeks.”
“I bought ASIC miners but the difficulty increased before they arrived!”
“What is the current bitcoin block difficulty?”
Definition(s) from the Web
- The difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks based on the time it took to find the previous 2016 blocks. At the desired rate of one block each 10 minutes, 2016 blocks would take exactly two weeks to find. If the previous 2016 blocks took more than two weeks to find, the difficulty is reduced. If they took less than two weeks, the difficulty is increased. The change in difficulty is in proportion to the amount of time over or under two weeks the previous 2016 blocks took to find. To find a block, the hash must be less than the target. The hash is effectively a random number between 0 and 2**256-1. Source
- Difficulty is a value used to show how hard is it to find a hash that will be lower than target defined by system. The Bitcoin network has a global block difficulty. Valid blocks must have a hash below this target. Mining pools also have a pool-specific share difficulty setting a lower limit for shares. Source
- Bitcoin mining is a competitive endeavor. An “arms race” has been observed through the various hashing technologies that have been used to mine bitcoins: basic CPUs, high-end GPUs common in many gaming computers, FPGAs and ASICs all have been used, each reducing the profitability of the less-specialized technology. Bitcoin-specific ASICs are now the primary method of mining bitcoin and have surpassed GPU speed by as much as 300-fold. The difficulty within the mining process involves self-adjusting to the network’s accumulated mining power. As bitcoins have become more difficult to mine, computer hardware manufacturing companies have seen an increase in sales of high-end ASIC products. Computing power is often bundled together or “pooled” to reduce variance in miner income. Individual mining rigs often have to wait for long periods to confirm a block of transactions and receive payment. In a pool, all participating miners get paid every time a participating server solves a block. This payment depends on the amount of work an individual miner contributed to help find that block. Source
