How Does a “Hash Rate” Differ from “Network Difficulty”?

Hash rate is the total combined computational power being used by miners to secure a Proof-of-Work network, measured in hashes per second. Network difficulty is a measure of how hard it is to find a valid block hash, and it is a value that is adjusted by the protocol.

The difficulty adjusts to ensure the average time between blocks remains constant (e.g. 10 minutes for Bitcoin), regardless of fluctuations in the total hash rate.

High hash rate leads to a higher difficulty setting.