Last Wednesday the live estimate for this epoch read about +5.8% at one third of the window. Seven days later it is still about +5.5% at 85%. The early print held. That is the opposite of the previous epoch, where an early downside estimate collapsed to flat.
What last Wednesday showed
On Wednesday morning, October 7, the chain tip was 970,349. That was 653 blocks into the new window, about 32% of 2,016, with 1,363 blocks left to the next retarget at 971,712. Blocks were averaging about 9.47 minutes. The live mempool.space projection read about +5.8%, and the next retarget was already penciled in around Friday, October 16. Hashrate that morning read about 984 EH/s. Fees sat at 1 to 3 sat/vB.
An early-epoch print is direction, not a forecast. The question this week was whether that +5.8% would hold as more of the window filled in, or settle the way the previous epoch's early -2.7% did.
How the previous epoch collapsed
The prior retarget landed at height 969,696 just after midnight Pacific time on Saturday, October 3 (12:16 AM PT). Difficulty moved about -0.03%, to 132.72T. Essentially flat.
Two Wednesdays earlier, on September 23, that same epoch was about 30% done and the live projection printed roughly -2.7%. By September 30, with about 81% of the window behind it, the projection had drifted near zero. The early downside read was a fair snapshot of slow blocks at the time. It was never a lock.
Where this epoch sits this morning
As of Wednesday morning Pacific time, October 14, the tip is 971,411. That is about 85.07% of the way through the 2,016-block window (1,715 blocks in, 301 remaining) to the next retarget at 971,712.
Blocks are averaging about 569 seconds, roughly 9.48 minutes, against the ten-minute target. That is why the live projected change still reads about +5.54% (about +5.5%). If block times hold, mempool.space puts the next retarget around 6:49 AM PT on Friday, October 16, about two days out.
Hashrate reads about 1,003 EH/s on mempool.space's current figure. The one-day averages in its weekly series for October 7 to 13 were about 1,019, 916, 961, 1,025, 1,029, 999, and 1,077 EH/s. That range, roughly 916 to 1,077, is mostly measurement noise from luck in block discovery. Difficulty remains 132.72T until Friday's retarget.
Fees are quiet. Recommended rates are 2 sat/vB for fastest, and 1 sat/vB for half-hour, hour, economy, and minimum. The mempool holds about 83,600 transactions (83,585) and about 40.1 million vbytes.
Why "held" still is not finished
A projection at 85% is built from most of the window. The remaining 301 blocks can still nudge the final print if they come in much slower or much faster than 9.48 minutes. They are unlikely to flip the sign the way last epoch's late blocks erased a -2.7% early read. The useful habit is the same:
- Watch epoch progress and blocks remaining. At 85%, with 301 left, the estimate has less room to move than it did at 32%.
- Watch average block time against the ten-minute target. Today's 9.48 minutes is what the +5.5% encodes.
- Watch smoothed hashrate over days and weeks, not one-day prints. The past week alone swung by about 160 EH/s between daily averages.
- Watch mempool depth and fees. A hike into a quiet fee market at 1 to 2 sat/vB is a different miner-math story than a hike into a busy one.
Where NodeView fits
NodeView puts that board in one place: live hash rate, difficulty, mempool, fees, active nodes, market charts, and a block explorer. The core dashboard is free. Premium adds valuation models and forecasts if you want them later.
Check back Friday morning. Ask whether the +5.5% lands near the early +5.8%, or whether the last 301 blocks pull it somewhere else.
Not financial advice. NodeView provides data and analytics for informational purposes only.