Archive for the ‘Crypto Coins’ Category

Ravencoin (RVN) a Few Days After the Fork to the X16Rv2 Algorithm

5, Oct 2019

A few days have already passed since the fork of Ravencoin (RVN) on October 1st that included a change in the PoW algorithm used for mining – from X16R to X16Rv2. As you can see from the network hashrate graph above from Ravencoin Statistics it is still lower than prior he spike from end of Agust/beginning of September. This means that the fork has effectively affected the usage of what seems to be ASIC miners that went operational at the end of August that resulted in more than doubling the hahsrate in just a few days of time. Another sign that there are no more ASIC miners mining and dumping coins is the fairly stable price of RVN after the fork with no selling pressure on exchanges from such miners trying to get rid go the mined coins. As a result RVN is among the most profitable coins to mine for Nvidia GPUs at the moment after the fork, even if the profit is nothing to brag about, pretty much all the rest of the altcoins are doing worse…

DERO, Another CryptoNight Project to Switch to RandomX

5, Oct 2019

The DERO project is one more crypto coin that plans to move from CryptoNight to the new RandomX algorithm most likely before the end of the year. The reason that is cided is to introduce more decentralization and participation to their platform with the move to the RandomX proof-of-work algorithm. Currently DERO can be mined using CryptoNight ASIC miners and this is something the developers of the project are trying to move away from and attract new users with the mining algorithm switch. The new RandomX algorithm should go live on the DERO testnet on October 31, 2019 and soon after that if everything works as expected we could see the main network forking to the RandomX PoW as well. Currently DERO is ranked around 500th place according to CoinMarketCap data with a market capitalization a bit below 4 million USD and has a daily trading volume of about 1/4 of the total capitalization. Some good crypto exchanges to trade DERO coins include Stex, Crex, Citex and TOKOK.

RandomX is a proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm that is optimized for general-purpose CPUs. RandomX uses random code execution (hence the name) together with several memory-hard techniques to minimize the efficiency advantage of specialized hardware. More information about the RandomX algorithm from the official GitHub repository including a benchmark to test performance on CPU mining. Do note that RandomX dos manage to perform better on processors with higher number of cores and threads available and apparently is doing best so far on the latest AMD Ryzen series of CPUs. GPU miners are also available, however performance wise they are similar to what hashrate a lower-end dual core processor can provide, so they are not the best choice for the new RandomX algorithm for the moment.

Luxcore (LUX) to Change PoW Algorithm to RX2 (RandomX-based)

3, Oct 2019

Luxcore (LUX) project also known as LUXCoin previously has announced their plans for an upcoming fork that will replace the currently used PHI2 algorithm to a new one called RX2 (essentially a variation of the lately popular RandomX algo). RX2 is Luxcore’s version of RandomX that has some small modifications to the RandomX parameters in order to suit some specific requirements (details are not yet revealed). The exact date for the introduction of the new algorithm has not been revealed yet, so it is sill “in the coming weeks”. This marks yet another crypto project that is going towards the RandomX algorithm in order to fight with FPGA and ASIC miners.

Since the RX2 algorithm is based on the RandomX it will also be more CPU-friendly for mining (will require a separate miner support apparently) as it will not work with any of the miners that currently support RandomX. It seems that so far the RandomX algo favors AMD’s latest multi-core Ryzen 3 CPUs in terms of performance over Intel’s products that are much more widely spread and used mostly by miners in the last years. This could help AMD’s sales of new processors if mining for RandomX picks up and offers decent profitability which is still not the case for the moment. If more projects move towards RandomX or variations of the algorithm, like LUX is apparently doing, the interest and profitability might as well skyrocket and spark a new wave of CPU mining oriented rigs to be built.


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