The world's fifth-largest cryptocurrency network by market capitalization reached block height 630,000 at roughly 12:20 UTC on Wednesday – by design triggering the so-called "halving" event that reduced the network's mining reward from 12.5 bitcoin cash (BCH) per block to 6.25.
That means miners competing for block rewards on the network will see their immediate mining revenue reduced by half, resulting in no or slight returns despite investments in costly mining equipment.
The mining difficulty and hash rate on bitcoin cash – a measure of how much miner power is participating on the network – has recently been on a downward trend in the run up to the halving, dropping from around five exahashes per second (EH/s) in mid-February to 3.3 EH/s currently.