Hash Rate

The hash rate is a fundamental part of any cryptocurrency that uses a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus system, such as Bitcoin, also referred to as hash power. The hash rate is the indicator of how fast a machine completes a PoW network process.

The hash rate is basically the rate at which a crypto miner (a machine, really) operates. The faster a miner runs, the higher the hash rate, and the more likely the miner is to finish the next block of the network successfully and claim their reward.

Hash

A hash is a list of information which has been mapped to a fixed size. It will provide you with a string of numbers and letters if you hash data. Changing something in the data would alter the performance of the hash entirely.

It's a way to condense a dataset while being able to check the integrity of the data. If you continue to use the same hash function, irrespective of the length of the input, the hash output will remain the same length.

Miners compete to solve a mathematical puzzle in a Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to verify the next block being added to the database of the network. The information is stored as a hash in each new block.

The majority of miners use machines devoted to mining. "These machines work to complete a predefined task that usually looks for a long random number called a "nonce". The NONCE returns the desired hash. In the block, the rest of the content is predefined.

By the the amount of zeros needed at the start of the hash, the complexity of locating the hash, and thus the nonce, can be scaled.

This is how the Bitcoin network works.

How it works?

Miners presume that a number they think may be the nonce, and it is discovered whether or not the number is the nonce when compared with the ordered transactions in a block, depending on whether the hash output meets pre-defined requirements.

To try to find the nonce to claim the reward, every miner in the network is guessing.

Many times a second, miners try various random numbers. They have to hash the contents of the block each time they guess a number, along with the number they are checking, to see if they have found the desired hash value and thus found the desired nonce.

The rate at which a miner will produce a new random number and hash it to verify if it is the right nonce (with the rest of the block contents) is known as the hash rate. The hash rate is determined by hashes (h/s) per second.

If a miner has a hash rate of 100 h/s, they complete 100 nonce-per-second guesses. This implies that the miner produces a random number every second and hashes it, along with the contents of the block, 100 times.

From a network standpoint, hash rate can also be looked at. Take the example of Bitcoin. By knowing the hash rate of every single Bitcoin miner in the world, the total hash rate of the network could be determined.

If a network's average hash rate rises, since there is more competition, the complexity of finding the right nonce increases too.