What Is the Difference between Hashrate and Network Difficulty?

Hashrate is the total computational power being contributed to the network by all miners, measured in hashes per second (H/s). It represents the speed at which the network is attempting to solve the cryptographic puzzle.

Network difficulty, conversely, is a variable metric that determines how hard it is to find a valid block. The difficulty is automatically adjusted by the protocol to maintain a consistent block time (e.g. every 10 minutes for Bitcoin), regardless of changes in the total hashrate.

If hashrate increases, difficulty increases to slow block production.