Ethereum PoW difficulty reaches new ATH as Beacon Chain sets for launch

TL:DR Breakdown:

• Ethereum PoW difficulty has reached a new all-time high (ATH)
• The increase in mining difficulty comes at the back of new ATH in Ethereum hashrate, as Eth2 is set to kick-off.

The second-largest blockchain, Ethereum, has reached a new all-time high (ATH) in mining or Proof-of-Work (PoW) difficulty. The new record in Ethereum PoW difficulty today comes as the network is readied for the deployment of Phase 0 (i.e., the Beacon Chain), as the co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the increase in ETH mining difficulty comes at the back of the new hashrate ATH, which was observed on Monday.

New ATH for Ethereum PoW difficulty and hashrate

According to the data provided by Etherscan, the Ethereum blockchain explorer, the network posted the highest increase in average mining difficulty, at 3,616.421 TH on November 30. The previous ATH was recorded in the past two years when the Ethereum PoW difficulty reached 3,606.036 TH precisely on August 9. The adjustment came amid the spike in the network hashrate in the same period.

Ethereum hashrate reached a new all-time high at 288 TH per second in seven-day moving average (7DMA), according to the information provided by Ycharts. The COO at HASHR8, Thomas Heller, commented that the increase in the network hashrate and difficulty came as miners are deploying more GPUs and ASIC mining machines on the network. Heller opined that Ethereum PoW difficulty and hashrate might continue to increase if ETH price maintains the price growth.

Beacon Chain will go live today

The whole development comes as the long-anticipated Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 is set to kick-off today. Cryptopolitan reported that Beacon Chain is expected to be deployed by 12 UTC on December 1. Phase 0 is more like a backbone for Ethereum 2.0, which will transition the blockchain from PoW to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), meaning that Ethereum mining will soon phase out.