ADVERTISEMENT
Advertise with BNC

Monero continues its resistance to ASIC mining

In response to the increasing threat of ASICs centralizing its mining, the Monero network. is scheduled to implement a hard fork on block 1788000.

At current speeds the ASIC resistant fork may fall on or around March 9th and will be followed by another hard fork on March 10 at block height 1788720. The upgrades to the code are the latest from Monero developers who have long been working to make ASIC mining ineffective on their network. The privacy-centric project is among a number of ventures that believe mining and its benefits should be accessible to private individuals using only GPU or CPU miners.

In the past, much of the cryptocurrency community has felt the effects of ASIC miners developed by mining giants. This is especially pronounced on the Bitcoin network. However, in early 2018, a number of mining operations announced they would be releasing ASICs designed specifically for Monero mining.

In an attempt to mitigate the threat, the Monero core development team moved to implement an emergency hard fork. The developers at Monero believe that because ASICs are typically manufactured by a few companies, they represent a single point of failure, which is an eventuality most cryptocurrency projects work hard to avoid.

On April 6, 2018, Monero hard forked and was able to stave off the ASICs for a while as the hashrate dropped by more than half and it was rationalized that ASIC mining in these conditions would neither be profitable nor would many of the ASIC miners in circulation be able upgrade their software quickly enough to effectively function.

However, a recently published analytics report has reignited the conversation around the specialized miners and the threat they could post to the Monero community. A pseudonymous analyst going by the name MoneroCrusher has been able to determine that much of the hashrate on the network was being generated by ASICs.

In the report, the analyst was able to determine that more than 85 percent of the current Monero hashrate originates from ASICs and that each machine is operating at 128 kh/s capacity. The analyst came to these conclusions by analyzing nonces on the network. Nonces are random numbers generated as a by-product of the mining process.

The report triggered a response from the core team which then published details of a software upgrade following what they described as a discourse within the team as well as with the greater community.

The March 9 upgrade will not introduce many new features to the underlying software underpinning the privacy-centric digital asset. The main goal is to implement "a third PoW tweak (CryptoNight-R) to curb the ASICs currently present on the network and further preserve ASIC resistance. As a result, miners will have to update their miners (i.e. mining software) as well."

Another minor change slated to be included in the upgrade is the addition of a new notification system for payments. The second upgrade, tentatively calculated to fall on March 10, is supposed to solidify the changes implemented in the fork preceding it.

While much of the Monero community has lauded the relatively quick response from the core dev team following MoneroCrusher’s report, some sections of the community are displeased with how the upgrade was discussed and decided upon as well as the way the disclosure was carried out.

Monero web miner ‘CoinHive’ is closing down

The original Monero web miner, CoinHive has announced that it will be putting a stop to its mining operation. On its company blog, CoinHive explained that the operation was no longer economically viable following a number of changes to market conditions. The company explained: "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 lead us to the conclusion that we need to discontinue Coinhive."

CoinHive came into the limelight when it was announced that a significant number of websites were adding the software provided by the company in order to mine Monero without their users’ knowledge. CoinHive advertised the software as a way for website owners to make money without hosting advertisements on their pages.

However, because the mining happened without their users’ knowledge and would also significantly slow down affected computers, the move drew significant public outcry, leading to many security companies creating ways to stop the malware.

While CoinHive may be shutting its doors, the Monero mining malware boom that was sparked by CoinHive in late 2017 has led to "cryptojacking" becoming one of the leading threats to Internet users, and it looks like there is no end in sight.

New Monero mining malware hits Windows OS

Security and intelligence firm, Trend Micro, has reported that there is a new Monero mining malware targeting Windows users. The attackers are reportedly focusing their efforts on countries in Asia, with most of the infections happening in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. A few users in Italy were also affected.

The malware infiltrates devices through infected websites or other malware. Once in the system, it proceeds to connect online and download the newest version of itself. Then, it downloads encrypted coin miner software and begins to mine Monero. Additionally, it connects to a number of IPs to transmit information about the host device.

The malware moves laterally through a network, similar to the Petya malware which was prevalent in 2018. To further avoid detection, the attackers ensured to begin activity on dates which coincided with holidays in the affected countries. To protect devices, users are being advised to stay up to date with any software upgrades provided by windows.

The price of Monero XMR has risen by around twelve percent in the last month. It remains to be seen how the upcoming changes will affect the price of the leading privacy-centric cryptocurrency and how effective the planned forks will be in the battle against ASICs.


ADVERTISE WITH BRAVE NEW COIN

BNC AdvertisingPlanning your 2024 crypto-media spend? Brave New Coin’s combined website, podcast, newsletters and YouTube channel deliver over 500,000 brand impressions a month to engaged crypto fans worldwide.
Don’t miss out – Find out more today


ADVERTISEMENT
Advertise with BNC
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertise with BNC
BNC Newsletters: A weekly digest of the most important news and analysis.
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertise with BNC
Submit an event on bravenewcoin.com
Latest Insights More
ADVERTISEMENT
Advertise with BNC