March 14, 2019, | AtoZ Markets - The development team behind Monero (XMR) which is privacy-centric cryptocurrency has announced the successful upgrade of the network on March 9th, 2019. The coin scheduled the protocol update which was set to occur on block 1788000.
Monero managed to successfully complete the upgrade which included tweaks to the Proof-of-Work (POW) algorithm for better ASIC-resistance, some changes to moderate attacks and enhanced transaction homogeneousness to improve privacy even more. In this article, we’ll dive deep into the technical aspects of Monero’s hard fork and lookout Is Monero hard fork successful or not?
Is Monero Hard Fork successful?
One of the most important features of the upgraded v10 version is called Boron Butterfly. It has been addressing ASICs with ‘CryptoNight-R’ PoW algorithm. Monero ASIC miners have overrun the network again that this stood the risk of centralization which makes the network prone to 51% attack.
The coin’s hard fork implemented the ‘CryptoNight-R’ algorithm that disables the ASIC mining software code. In other words, it will prevent Monero mining through ASIC chips. After the hard fork, miners will have to update the mining software and system.
- The improved Hard fork feature includes an upgrade in privacy, security, as well as ASIC resistance which will offer to its users by deploying four key changes to the protocol. These include: Changes to the dynamic block-size algorithm to fix the big bang attack.
- A ‘dummy’ encrypted payment ID added to each transaction to improve transaction homogeneity.
- CryptoNight-R PoW tweaks to limit the ASICs present on the network and preserve ASIC resistance.
- Simplified amount commitments which have been achieved through shrinking the size of amount encodings and using deterministic masks.
Also, Monero has committed itself to offer a workable and accessible cryptocurrency which protects the user’s transactional privacy and identity. Currently, entries on the Montero's blockchain ledger are completely untraceable and cannot be linked to a particular user.
The latest Monero Hard Fork to the protocol will further strengthen Monero’s USP as a privacy cryptocurrency. This will improve to avoid unnecessary online surveillance and oversight.
Monero ASIC Miners War
Since the chain was forked to Boron Butterfly, as developer dEBRUYNE_1 has dubbed the upgraded protocol, the network’s hash rate has plummeted from 946 megahashes per second to 144 megahashes per second (84% drop).
Interestingly, the reduction in hashrate confirms by MoneroCrusher. They explained regarding Monero’s attempts to maintain ASIC resistance, Crusher determined that the nonce pattern shown in Monero blocks over recent months indicated that 85% of ASICs were hashing away. Considering the accuracy of Crusher’s 85% prediction, there likely are 5,400 XMR-centric ASICs bricked in farms across the globe. For manufacturers of the devices, this fork would be considered a crushing blow. But the same token, decentralists were likely pleased with how Monero’s hashrate reacted.
To give the success of this upgrade some context, here is some information about two previous moves to limit XMR ASICs. The first mining shift, which was activated in April 2018, pushed the network’s hashrate from 1,000 megahashes/s to 150 megahashes/s. Monero’s second, which came in October 2018, cut its hashrate by half. Also, mining profitability of Monero coin has been increased drastically, reaching beyond its 3 months peak after the recent hard fork. Thus, the latest changes in its working mechanism should be classified as a definite success.
The original Monero web miner, CoinHive has announced that it will be putting a stop to its mining operation. CoinHive explained that the operation was no longer economically feasible following a number of changes to market conditions. The company stated that:
"The drop in hash rate (over 50%) after the last Monero hard fork hit us hard. So did the "crash" of the cryptocurrency market with the value of XMR depreciating over 85% within a year. This and the announced hard fork and algorithm update of the Monero network on March 9 has to lead us to the conclusion that we need to discontinue Coinhive."
Meanwhile, the XMRUSD reaction was muted as Monero continued consolidation with an upward moving trend. At the time of press, XMRUSD is changing hands at $52.87.
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