What is hash rate?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 4 min
In short
Hash rate measures how many hash attempts a network — or a single machine — can make per second. On a proof-of-work chain, a higher figure means an attacker needs more computing resources to overpower it. The unit is hashes per second, usually expressed in terahashes or exahashes.
Key points
- The number of hash attempts made per second
- Higher figures raise the cost of attacking the chain
- It works together with difficulty adjustment
- Network figures are estimates, not direct measurements
Definition
The number of hash computations performed per second during mining. A network-wide figure is estimated from observed block intervals and the current difficulty.
Mining means changing a value inside the block and hashing again and again until the result falls below a target. Hash rate is the speed of that trial process. For the Bitcoin network as a whole, the figure is quoted in exahashes per second.
Nobody counts the network's hashes directly. The published figure is inferred from the difficulty and the intervals at which blocks actually appeared, so it swings over short windows and is usually smoothed with a moving average for trend analysis.
For an individual miner, their share of total network hash rate roughly indicates their chance of finding a block. Each attempt is independent, however, so short-run results do not track that share closely.
Watch out for
- · Published network hash rate is an estimate, and short-term swings include noise
- · A machine's rated output often differs from what it delivers under real thermal conditions
- · High hash rate covers only one attack surface, not every risk to a chain