Mining Difficulty

Mining difficulty is the protocol's measure of how hard it is for miners to find a block hash below the current target. Higher difficulty means miners need more expected hashes for each valid block.

Proof-of-work systems express difficulty relative to a target value. A lower target is harder because fewer hashes qualify as valid, while a higher target is easier.

Difficulty adjustment algorithms balance stability and responsiveness. Slow adjustments smooth out noise but react poorly to sudden hash-rate loss; per-block systems respond faster but must avoid oscillation or timestamp manipulation.