What Is the Purpose of the Difficulty Adjustment in PoW?

The difficulty adjustment is an automatic recalibration of the required hashing target, designed to maintain a consistent block creation time, typically around 10 minutes for Bitcoin. If blocks are being found too quickly due to an increase in total network hash rate, the difficulty increases.

Conversely, if blocks are found too slowly, the difficulty decreases. This mechanism ensures a predictable and stable issuance schedule for the cryptocurrency.