Posts Tagged ‘Monero fork’

Monero (XMR) to Hardfork to the RandomX Algorithm on November 30th

27, Sep 2019

Monero (XMR) will be once more changing its PoW algorithm for mining in an effort to attract regular miners CPU/GPU miners and drive away FPGA/ASIC miners. Testing on the private RandomX testnet has concluded successfully and RandomX PoW mining will move to public testing on the XMR testnet later today. There is quite some time left before the fork happens though, it is scheduled for block 1978433 that should hit sometime on November 30th, so there is time for you to get familiar with the new RandomX algorithm by then. If you are interested in checking out the performance of your CPUs, then you might want to check the official RandomX Benchmark app (link for download below). There is also a not so optimized OpenCL miner available that works on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs available as well, though performance might be disappointing compared to that of higher-end CPUs at this point.

It is interesting to note that the RandomX algorithm apparently favors CPU mining due to its design even GPUs might not do so well initially with it, though we are probably going to see better optimized GPUs miners soon enough. All in all this might make CPU mining attractive to miners around the fork date, though there are other factors to take into account as well, so we will have to wait and see. AMD’s Ryzen CPUs are doing particularly good in the initial benchmarks of the RandomX algorithm as it is already being used by the new project Epic Cash (EPIC). You can see that the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X is doing particularly good in terms of performance with its big number of cores and low power consumption, though it is also an expensive and still hard to find product.

– To download the RandomX Benchmark CPU app (Windows and Linux)…
– To download the XMRig CPU miner with RandomX support (Windows and Linux)…
– To download the RandomX OpenCL GPU miner (Windows only)…

NiceHash to Support Both CryptoNight and the New CryptoNightV7 Algorithms

20, Mar 2018

The controversy surrounding the release of a number of CryptoNight ASIC miners from various manufacturers and the upcoming fork of Monero (XMR) and some other crypto coins to a new ASIC-proof CryptoNightV7 algorithm continues. NiceHash has recently announced that they will continue to support both the old CryptoNight as well as the new CryptoNightV7 algorithms. The service should add support for the new V7 algorithm by the end of the month, probably before the Monero fork planned to happen later this month. Furthermore a new NiceHash Miner that will bring support for the CryptoNightV7 algorithm should also be available soon, so while the updated POW algorithm will be ASIC-proof you would still be able to rent a lot of GPU hashpower apparently.

Other crypto coins that are using the same cryptoNight proof of work mining algorithm are expected to follow suit and also fork to the new ASIC-proof version of CryptoNight, though it would most likely take them some extra time. There are some coins that have already announced their plans to do a hard fork and follow in the footsteps of Monero (XMR), others are still considering and of course there will be some for sure that will remain on the old algorithm that can be mined using the upcoming wave of CryptoNight ASIc miners. Still going for a CryptoNight ASIC miner at the moment is considered very risky and will most likely cost you much more that you would be able to mine back, though there are no guarantees.

– To keep track of the time left until Monero (XMR) hard forks to the new CryptoNightV7…


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