Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

Block difficulty

Block difficulty is increased if the time between two blocks decreases, whereas it increases if the block time between two blocks decreases. This is required to maintain a roughly consistent block generation time. The difficulty adjustment algorithm in Ethereum's Homestead release is shown as follows:

block_diff = parent_diff + parent_diff // 2048 *

max(1 - (block_timestamp - parent_timestamp) // 10, -99) +

int(2**((block.number // 100000) - 2))

The preceding algorithm means that, if the time difference between the generation of the parent block and the current block is less than 10 seconds, the difficulty goes up. If the time difference is between 10 to 19 seconds, the difficulty level remains the same. Finally, if the ...