How to read Pearl network stats
Block height, difficulty, hashrate, block time, mempool: what each number on the explorer means, and what they tell you when you read them together.
The top of the explorer is a row of numbers, and if you're new they're easy to scroll past. Each one is simple on its own; the interesting part is reading them together. Here's the tour.
Block height
How many blocks the chain contains so far. It only goes up, about once every three minutes. If it stalls for ten minutes, either the network lost a lot of hashrate very suddenly or, far more likely, whatever page you're looking at is behind.
Difficulty and hashrate
Difficulty is the consensus knob that controls how hard blocks are to find. Estimated hashrate is derived from it: difficulty times 2⁴⁸, divided by the seconds blocks are actually taking. The units ladder up by thousands: H/s, kH/s, MH/s, and so on up to EH/s. As I write this the network is sitting around 30 EH/s, which tells you something about how much GPU capacity is pointed at Pearl right now.
Average block time
The recent average gap between blocks, and the most underrated number on the page. Compare it to the 194-second target: faster means hashrate recently joined and difficulty is about to rise; slower means hashrate left and difficulty will drop. And since a day has 86,400 seconds, expected blocks per day is just 86,400 divided by this number, which is handy for back-of-envelope mining math.
Mempool
Transactions waiting for a block. Small mempool: transfers confirm in the next block or two. Growing mempool: demand is outrunning block space at this moment. On Pearl it's usually small; blocks come quickly enough that there isn't much queueing.
Reading them together
A worked example. Say height is ticking normally, average block time is 160 seconds, and hashrate just jumped. Story: new miners arrived, blocks are temporarily coming fast, difficulty will retarget upward, block time drifts back toward 194. None of the numbers tells you that alone. Together they do. That's the skill, and it transfers to reading any proof-of-work chain.
