How Does the Concept of “Difficulty Bomb” Relate to Ethereum’s Original Ethash Algorithm?

The "difficulty bomb" was a mechanism intentionally coded into Ethereum's Ethash algorithm. It was designed to exponentially increase the mining difficulty over time, making block times impossibly long.

The purpose was not to stop mining permanently but to force the network to implement a scheduled protocol upgrade, specifically the transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, ensuring the community would not delay the change.