On July 21, 2022, at 2:14 p.m. (ET) at block height 745,920, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty dropped by 5.01% outpacing the last two epoch changes. It is now 5% more difficult to locate blocks than in the previous two weeks and 8.77% simpler since June 22.
It’s Now 11.39% Easier to Find a Bitcoin Block Since the Difficulty’s All-Time High on May 10
The difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA), which adjusts downward for Bitcoin miners, was able to give them a little relief this week. It did so for the third consecutive week. The network’s difficulty is essentially measured by how difficult it is to find the correct hash for every minted block subsidy.
The difficulty epoch is assessed every 2,016 blocks, and if the time it takes to mine those blocks is too fast, difficulty increases, and if it’s too slow, the difficulty decreases. At block height 739.872 the difficulty epoch was last increased by 1.29%. This is compared to two weeks ago.
Two reductions were recorded by the network in the last four weeks. It was June 22nd at block height 741.888. The network recorded a drop of 2.35% on that day.
On July 6, block height 743.904 saw the second difficulty drop. This particular decrease was approximately 1.41%, and the difficulty fell to 29.15 billion. Today’s block height of 745,920 has resulted in the difficulty now at 27.69 Trillion, an unprecedented parameter since March 17th, 2022.
It is now 11.39% simpler to locate a Bitcoin block at the moment of writing than when it reached its all-time peak on May 10th, block height 735.840. The record height was 31.25 trillion and so far, 3.56 trillion has been erased from the network’s difficulty.
During the last two weeks, prior to the most recent difficulty adjustment, BTC’s hashrate saw an average of around 197.4 exahash per second (EH/s). Foundry USA received the largest block subsidy in the past 30 days as it discovered 926 blocks of the 4,165 that were mined over the month.
Foundry’s hashrate during the last month was around 22.23% of the entire global network. Antpool followed the mining operation, which found 638 block rewards. F2pool also discovered 606 Blocks.
Binance Pool discovered 505 blocks, while Poolin received 434 reward block payments over the last 30 days. The 13 bitcoin mining operations found 4,108 blocks in the span of one month. However, unknown stealth miners (or hashrate) managed to locate 57 blocks.
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