The "Best Difficulty" metric on a Bitaxe (or any other Bitcoin mining device) represents the most difficult valid share the miner has found so far during its operation. It helps gauge the effectiveness of the miner in searching for a valid hash.

How It Relates to Bitcoin Mining

Bitcoin mining involves repeatedly hashing block headers to find a hash that is below the target difficulty. The difficulty target is set by the network and adjusts every 2016 blocks (~2 weeks) to maintain an average 10-minute block time.

Breaking It Down:

Nonce Searching:

The miner generates hashes using different nonces, aiming for a hash that is below the network difficulty target.

Finding Shares:

Mining pools use a lower difficulty than the network difficulty to distribute work. Miners submit shares (hashes below this lower pool difficulty) as proof of work.

Best Difficulty (Highest Quality Share):

Each hash a miner produces has a certain difficulty, determined by how low it is compared to the highest possible hash (max target).

The Best Difficulty metric on the Bitaxe shows the hardest (lowest) hash found so far.

If a miner were solo mining and this hash were below the Bitcoin network difficulty, it would result in a block being mined.

Key Takeaways:

Best Difficulty tracks your miner's best proof-of-work effort—the most competitive hash it has found.

If Best Difficulty > Bitcoin Network Difficulty, you've mined a block!

For pool mining, it shows how close your miner has come to finding a block.

Higher values indicate the miner is working effectively and submitting valuable shares.