Hashrate Explained

 

Hashrate is an important metric for assessing the strength and security of a blockchain network. The higher the hash rate the more ‘mining power’ is contributed to validating the transactions on the blockchain and the harder it becomes for malicious agents to disrupt the network.

Hashrate refers to the amount of computing power used for conducting mining activities. Each digital asset miner in the network is tasked to validate transactions and records the approved transaction as a “block” to the blockchain. The recording of each new block to the blockchain adds a new set of transaction data onto the distributed ledger where all the historical transactions are recorded, which then form the database for verifying further transactions.

 

In order to successfully record a new block, miners are quired to solve a numeric problem posed by the blockchain algorithm by constantly performing numeric calculation activities until it arrives at the target answer (“target hash”). The numeric calculation activity is, in fact, a guessing game wherein each guess generates a 64-digit hexadecimal number “hash”. The rate at which a miner can perform the numeric calculation (generate hashes) is called its “hash rate”, which is measured by the unit of one trillion hash per second.