What Is the Role of ‘Difficulty Adjustment’ in Proof-of-Work?

Difficulty adjustment is an automatic process in Proof-of-Work blockchains that ensures the average time between blocks remains constant, typically around 10 minutes for Bitcoin. The network periodically recalculates the mining difficulty target based on the total hash rate over the preceding period.

If the hash rate increases, the difficulty increases to slow down block finding, and vice versa. This mechanism maintains a predictable supply schedule and secures the network by making consistent block production economically stable.