Difficulty

Contents

• Difficulty

• Mean Difficulty

Difficulty

Definition

The difficulty of the last block in the considered time period. Difficulty represents how hard it is to find a hash that meets the protocol-designated requirement (i.e., the difficulty of finding a new block) that day. The requirement is unique to each applicable cryptocurrency protocol. Difficulty is adjusted periodically by the protocol as a function of how much hashing power is being deployed by miners.

Name	MetricID	Unit	Interval
Difficulty	DiffLast	Dimensionless	1 day, 1 hour

Details

• This metric is not comparable across all chains as its value is dependent on the hashing function used by each chain.

Chart

Chart

Source: CM Network Data Charts

Asset-Specific Details

• This metric is only available for PoW chains.

Examples

• Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is a network-determined parameter that automatically adjusts roughly every 2 weeks (2,016 Bitcoin blocks) to target a 10-minute block interval. To maintain this frequency, the algorithm steps in and increases or decreases the difficulty of mining Bitcoin depending on the mining activity on the network. When China banned BTC mining in Q2 of 2021, we saw a drop in mining activity on the network, therefore the difficulty dropped as well.

Release History

• Released in the 4.2 release of NDP

Interpretation

• Difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to mine a block. The greater the difficulty, the more computational power is needed to mine a block.

Availability for Assets

Coin Metrics CoverageCoin Metrics Coverage

Mean Difficulty

Definition

The mean difficulty of finding a hash that meets the protocol-designated requirement (i.e., the difficulty of finding a new block) that day. The requirement is unique to each applicable cryptocurrency protocol. Difficulty is adjusted periodically by the protocol as a function of how much hashing power is being deployed by miners.

Name	MetricID	Unit	Interval
Mean Difficulty	DiffMean	Dimensionless	1 day

Details

• This metric is not comparable across all chains as its value is dependent on the hashing function used by each chain.

Chart

Source: CM Network Data Charts

Examples

• When the majority of the Bitcoin blocks are produced at 10 minutes, the difficulty adjustments will not be significant. This could indicate new miners are not getting online and existing ones are not shutting off their operations.

Asset-Specific Details

• This metric is only available for PoW chains.

Interpretation

• This measures how difficult and time consuming it is to find the right hash for each block

Release History

• Released in the 1.0 release of NDP

Availability for Assets

Coin Metrics CoverageCoin Metrics Coverage

API Endpoints

metrics can be accessed using these endpoints:

• timeseries/asset-metrics

and by passing in the metric ID's Diff* in the metrics parameter.

Asset metrics

Returns requested metrics for specified assets. Results for block by block metrics (1b frequency) are ordered by tuple (asset, height, block_hash), all other metrics are ordered by tuple (asset, time). You can change the sorting using sort query parameter. Supported output formats are json (default) and csv, use format query parameter to override it. To fetch the next page of results use next_page_url JSON response field or x-next-page-url CSV HTTP header if present. If multiple metrics are requested in the same time the strict policy for partially available metrics among requested ones is applied:

GEThttps://api.coinmetrics.io/v4/timeseries/asset-metrics

Authorization

api_key

Query parameters

Response

200400401403414

Time series of metrics for an asset.

Body

application/jsontext/csv

data*any

next_page_tokenNextPageToken (string)

Token of the next page results for a given request.

next_page_urlNextPageUrl (string)

URL of the next page results for a given request.

Response

200400401403

{
  "next_page_token": "text",
  "next_page_url": "text"
}

Shell

curl --compressed "https://api.coinmetrics.io/v4/timeseries/asset-metrics?metrics=DiffMean&assets=btc&pretty=true&api_key=<your_key>"

Python

import requests
response = requests.get('https://api.coinmetrics.io/v4/timeseries/asset-metrics?metrics=DiffMean&assets=btc&pretty=true&api_key=<your_key>').json()
print(response)

Python Client

from coinmetrics.api_client import CoinMetricsClient

api_key = "<API_KEY>"
client = CoinMetricsClient(api_key)

print(
    client.get_asset_metrics(
        metrics="DiffMean", 
        assets="btc",
    ).to_dataframe()
)