The Polycash blockchain calculates difficulty differently from other blockchains. Instead of a global difficulty that changes based on the network's hashrate, Polycash calculates a different difficulty for each miner that lowers the advantage of high hashrates.

Advantages

Low energy usage

In Proof of Work blockchains, energy usage is a large issue. Because miners gain revenue directly proportional to their hash rate, they are incentivized to start very large mining operations, which use large amounts of energy. First of all, this high energy usage increases the barrier to entry for mining due to high energy costs. It also negatively impacts the environment and increases energy prices. But in Polycash, things are different. Miners don't need to use immense amounts of energy to be profitable; there is an optimum amount of computing power to gain the most profit. This lets new miners use less energy and resources to join and participate in the network, lowering energy usage of the blockchain by a huge amount.

Decentralizaion

In many other blockchains, centralization occurs when nodes combine their computing power into pools. When these pools control large portions of the network, its decentralization and security decreases, and it becomes more and more reliant on trust. For example, based on the last 6 months of data, only 2 mining pools, Foundry USA and AntPool, control over 50% of the hashrate in Bitcoin's network. In the Polycash blockchain, however, difficulty adjustment keeps these pools in check, ensuring that independent, smaller miners can have a share in the network's security.