How Do Mining Difficulty Adjustments Respond to a Significant Number of Miners Leaving the Network Post-Halving?

The Bitcoin protocol includes a difficulty adjustment mechanism designed to keep the average time between blocks close to ten minutes, regardless of the total hash power. If many miners leave, the hash rate drops, and the time between blocks increases.

The adjustment mechanism then automatically reduces the mining difficulty, making it easier to find a block, thereby restoring the target block time. This typically occurs every 2016 blocks, or roughly every two weeks.