mining difficulty is not changed on regtest

I want to see the automated mining difficulty change on regtest but it did not change even I generated 2016 blocks. How can I see it?

// initial difficulty
$ ./bitcoinA/src/bitcoin-cli -rpcuser=bitcoinrpc -rpcpassword=bitcoinrpcpass -rpcport=16591 -regtest getmininginfo
{
  "blocks": 0,
  "currentblockweight": 0,
  "currentblocktx": 0,
  "difficulty": 4.656542373906925e-10,
  "networkhashps": 0,
  "pooledtx": 0,
  "chain": "regtest",
  "warnings": ""
}

// generate 2016 blocks
$ ./bitcoinA/src/bitcoin-cli -rpcuser=bitcoinrpc -rpcpassword=bitcoinrpcpass -rpcport=16591 -regtest generate 2016

// show the difficulty
$ ./bitcoinA/src/bitcoin-cli -rpcuser=bitcoinrpc -rpcpassword=bitcoinrpcpass -rpcport=16591 -regtest getmininginfo
{
  "blocks": 2016,
  "currentblockweight": 4000,
  "currentblocktx": 0,
  "difficulty": 4.656542373906925e-10,
  "networkhashps": 12,
  "pooledtx": 0,
  "chain": "regtest",
  "warnings": ""
}

// generate 2016 blocks again
$ ./bitcoinA/src/bitcoin-cli -rpcuser=bitcoinrpc -rpcpassword=bitcoinrpcpass -rpcport=16591 -regtest generate 2016

// the difficulty was not changed
$ ./bitcoinA/src/bitcoin-cli -rpcuser=bitcoinrpc -rpcpassword=bitcoinrpcpass -rpcport=16591 -regtest getmininginfo
{
  "blocks": 4032,
  "currentblockweight": 4000,
  "currentblocktx": 0,
  "difficulty": 4.656542373906925e-10,
  "networkhashps": 12,
  "pooledtx": 0,
  "chain": "regtest",
  "warnings": ""
}

zono

Posted 2019-02-11T06:50:42.147

Reputation: 1 569

There’s effectively no difficulty. That would defeat the purpose quite a lot. – Anonymous – 2019-02-11T07:09:17.637

Thanks. Do you mean that there is no way to change the difficulty? I want to see the retargeting process even I change the source code. I'm trying to debug around the process. e.g https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/chainparams.cpp#L285

– zono – 2019-02-11T07:29:53.150

mining difficulty is not changed on regtest

Answers