Bitcoin miners are set to receive some relief as the network Difficulty is expected to drop in an upcoming adjustment this Sunday, according to on-chain data. The Difficulty, a feature built into the Bitcoin blockchain, controls how hard it is for miners to mine a block on the network. This metric changes approximately every two weeks in events known as adjustments, which are entirely controlled by the cryptocurrency’s code.
The concept of Difficulty was established by Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, with the aim of keeping the average block time constant at 10 minutes. If miners are mining faster than this standard, the Difficulty increases in the next adjustment to maintain the block time. Conversely, if miners are taking longer than 10 minutes per block, the Difficulty decreases to make mining easier.
Data from CoinWarz indicates that the Bitcoin block time has averaged 10.27 minutes since the last adjustment, suggesting that miners have been slower than required by the blockchain. As a result, Bitcoin is expected to decrease its Difficulty by around 2.6% in the upcoming adjustment. However, the actual value may vary depending on how miners perform in the next two days.
Over the past two weeks, miners have faced the highest network Difficulty ever, with a sharp jump in the previous adjustment leading to a new all-time high. Changes in Difficulty are directly related to fluctuations in the Hashrate, the collective computing power of miners connected to the network. A chart from Blockchain.com shows the trend in the 7-day average Hashrate value over the past year, indicating a recent peak followed by a decline and subsequent rise.
The drop in Difficulty on Sunday is expected to coincide with an increase in Hashrate, potentially leading to faster mining speeds. Despite this positive development for miners, the price of Bitcoin has seen a slight decrease, trading around $96,900 at the time of writing, down approximately 2% in the last week.
Overall, the upcoming adjustment in Bitcoin’s Difficulty is anticipated to provide much-needed relief for miners, allowing them to mine more efficiently and potentially increasing the network’s overall performance.