PANews reported on January 3 that according to CoinDesk, Bitcoin's hash rate is expected to reach 1 Zettahash per second (ZH/s) before the next halving event in about 3.5 years, which puts pressure on miners to ensure that they can obtain cheap electricity transactions and more efficient equipment. Even if the hash rate grows at a relatively steady rate of 20% per year, the average hash rate may reach this level, that is, 1,000 EH/s, by 2027. According to Glassnode data, the hash rate has increased by an average of 65% per year since 2020, and the current seven-day moving average is about 787 EH/s.
At 1 ZH/s, miners will need to find more creative ways to maintain operations and adapt to a more challenging market. In fact, according to a post on X on Thursday, the hash rate for a single block may have already touched 1 ZH/s per second. However, due to the probabilistic nature of mining, block time variability, and short-term network fluctuations, readings for a single block are inaccurate. The industry standard is usually to use at least a seven-day moving average to account for outliers and reliability.
Not only is the hash rate increasing, but so is the difficulty of mining a block. Since October, the blockchain has had seven consecutive positive difficulty adjustments, with the difficulty currently sitting at 109.78 T. The difficulty is adjusted every 2,016 blocks and is recalibrated to keep mining a block in about 10 minutes.
