How Does the “Difficulty Adjustment” Mechanism Maintain Bitcoin’s Block Time Consistency?
The difficulty adjustment mechanism automatically recalibrates the target for the block hash every 2016 blocks, which is roughly every two weeks. This adjustment is based on the time it took to mine the previous 2016 blocks.
If the blocks were mined too fast, the difficulty increases; if too slow, it decreases. The goal is to maintain an average block creation time of approximately ten minutes, regardless of changes in the total network hash rate.
Glossar
Difficulty Adjustment
Calibration ⎊ Difficulty Adjustment represents a core algorithmic mechanism within proof-of-work cryptocurrency networks, dynamically modulating the computational effort required to mine new blocks.
Difficulty Adjustment Mechanism
Algorithm ⎊ The core of a Difficulty Adjustment Mechanism (DAM) within cryptocurrency networks, particularly proof-of-work systems, is a dynamically adjusting function designed to maintain a consistent block generation rate irrespective of fluctuating computational power.