Litecoin mining difficulty has peaked at just under 18 million hashes, according to a post by the Litecoin Foundation on coinmarketcap.com.

Miners generate hashes to compete to find one that is lower than the target set by the network’s mining algorithm. Whoever wins gets to add a block to the Litecoin blockchain and earn a reward.

Litecoin also halves its reward every 840,000 blocks, or every four years. Starting from 50 litecoins in 2011, the reward is currently at 12.5 litecoins, and will be further reduced to 6.25 litecoins at its next halvening event in 2023.

Author: Tris Bell