Bitcoin Miners Catch a Break as Network Difficulty Decreases by 1.45%

Bitcoin miners can finally take a breather as the network’s difficulty level dropped by 1.45% on May 4, 2023, after witnessing five consecutive increases. The change happened at block height 788,256, lowering the overall difficulty to 48.01 trillion for the next two weeks. This decrease follows a combined increase of 22.62% over the previous five adjustments since February 24.

The Bitcoin network has been pushing miners to their limits with its increasing difficulty levels. However, the recent drop brings some much-needed relief. The network’s hashrate currently stands at 355.90 exahash per second (EH/s). Just two days prior, the hashrate had soared to an all-time high of 491 EH/s at block height 787,895.

Despite the recent decrease in difficulty, current block times remain slightly above the ten-minute average. The last block interval recorded was ten minutes and 49 seconds. Additionally, the Bitcoin network is struggling with a mempool containing over 200,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to be processed by miners. To speed up the process, users are paying high-priority fees of $5.05 per transaction, while medium-priority transfers cost $4.61.

As of May 4, the top mining pools include Foundry USA with a hashpower of 96.62 EH/s, constituting 27.17% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate. Other leading pools are Antpool (80.38 EH/s), F2pool (48.72 EH/s), Binance Pool (38.16 EH/s), and Viabtc (27.61 EH/s).