Difficulty Ribbon

Seven moving averages of difficulty, from 7 to 128 days. There is no unsmoothed line: every series here is derived

Linear: equal distances are equal differences, so 0 to 100 takes the same height as 100 to 200. Logarithmic: equal distances are equal ratios, so each step up is a multiplication, and only positive values can be drawn. A series spanning several orders of magnitude, such as price or difficulty, shows its early years on a log axis and flattens into a line along the bottom on a linear one.

Short ranges plot one point per block, about one every ten minutes. Longer ranges plot one point per day, computed from every block in that day. How it is computed depends on the chart: some average, some total the day up, some are a ratio of the day's sums, and each chart says which. Either way a brief spike inside a day is smoothed away.

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Key factsCalculated from the points currently plotted, so they follow the range you pick. Zooming with the slider changes only what you see, not these.

over selected range

OverlaysExtra context drawn on top of the chart. Event markers are vertical lines at dated moments; a comparison series is a second set of numbers on its own axis at the right.

Event markers

Every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years, the block subsidy halves. Fees are the other part of what a miner collects and do not halve with it. Four halvings have happened so far.

A BIP is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal: a design document for a change to the protocol. These lines mark the dates that proposals such as SegWit and Taproot became active on the network.

Releases of Bitcoin Core, the software most nodes run. A release does not change consensus rules by itself, but it often changes what transactions a node will relay, which can show up in these charts.

Dated moments outside the protocol that moved the numbers: exchange failures, country-level bans, the first Ordinals inscriptions.

Comparison series

The BTC price in US dollars, drawn on its own axis on the right. Sampled every 4 days, which is all the source provides for the full history, so a range shorter than that cannot draw it. Price crosses six orders of magnitude, so it usually wants the logarithmic setting beside it.

The total size of the block chain on disk, growing as blocks are added. An archival node keeps every byte of it; a pruned one verifies the same blocks and then discards the old ones.

Compare with

one at a time: they share the right axis

RelatedCharts measuring the same thing or covering the same part of the network, for reading this one in context.

Difficulty Hash Rate Difficulty Adjustment Mining Diversity Index

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CSV and JSON take the selected range without overlay series. PNG captures the chart as it looks now.

About this metric

Definition

Difficulty, smoothed over seven different spans at once. Each line is the same number averaged over a different length of time, so the short ones follow recent changes and the long ones lag. Together they show whether difficulty has been rising or falling for a while or has just turned.

How it is measured

Seven moving averages of difficulty form the ribbon. Per-block resolution smooths over 9, 14, 25, 40, 60, 90 and 128 blocks; daily resolution smooths over 7, 14, 25, 40, 60, 90 and 128 days. Only the shortest span differs between them, and a span in blocks is about ten minutes each while a span in days is a day each, so no line covers the same length of time in the two views. When the ribbon is wide, difficulty is rising steadily. When it compresses or inverts, the recent average has fallen below the longer one, which is what a falling difficulty looks like once smoothed. Why it fell is not in this data: hash rate leaving the network and hash rate simply being unlucky for an epoch produce the same shape.

Measured from my own Bitcoin node. Methodology