Hashrate, or hashing speed (in English, Hashrate, hashing power), is the number of hashing operations a mining device is able to perform per unit of time, usually per second. Essentially, it is a measure of the equipment's performance: the higher the hashrate, the more possible solutions to the cryptographic task the miner sifts through, and the higher its chances of being the first to find a valid block and receive the reward.
Hashrate is measured in hashes per second (H/s), but because of the enormous values, decimal prefixes are used in practice:
- kilohash per second (kH/s) — thousands of hashes;
- megahash per second (MH/s) — millions;
- gigahash per second (GH/s) — billions;
- terahash per second (TH/s) — trillions.
Network hashrate and its significance
In addition to the power of an individual device, there is the total hashrate of the entire network — the combined computing power of all miners. This parameter is directly related to the security of the blockchain: the higher it is, the harder it is to carry out an attack and the more expensive it becomes for an attacker. The overall hashrate also determines the mining difficulty, which is periodically recalculated to keep the time at which new blocks appear stable.
