Monero’s New Consensus Algorithm RandomX Coming Before the Year Ends

Monero network is all set to change its consensus algorithm from CryptoNight to Random X before 2019 is over, with the goal to remove Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) from the network permanently by providing a competitive mining advantage to CPUs.

Monero community has always taken a firm stand against the ASIC miners developed by mining giants. It started in late 2017 when the hash rate of the network increased substantially, suggesting stealth ASIC mining.

Most recently, a hard fork of the network occurred on March 9th that improved transaction efficiency but also resulted in a significant drop in hash rate.

As can be seen, a similar drop in hash rate was seen last year in April, suggesting the possibility of significant ASIC use on the Monero blockchain. However, since then the hash rate has stabilized.

Monero Takes an Aggressive Approach

Due to ASIC competition, CPUs and GPUs can no longer mine XMR efficiently.

Increased use of ASICs any chain could mean increased centralization because efficient hardware become unprofitable to use.

As such, Monero’s proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm has been scheduled for changes through periodic hard forks every six months.

Now, the Monero community is taking an aggressive approach to this as the PoW algorithm will have a new consensus algorithm altogether, slated for November end.

This new algorithm is Random X, developed over the past year, which gives CPU mining a competitive advantage over ASICs, even to GPUs to a certain extent. The changes with the goal to improve the users’ and network’s privacy also include transactions requiring at least two outputs, removal of long payment IDs, and tens block time for incoming transactions.

Howard Chu, CTO of Symas Corp and one of the people leading this shift said at the MoneroKon 2019,

“So with RandomX, we want an algorithm that is so inefficient, that uses so much power that we’re using as much as possible of CPU.”

Random X algorithm has already passed security audits and will be implemented via Monero Core v0.15.

As for the fear that once ASICs are removed, botnets can easily dominate the network, RandomX would require significant amounts of RAM to run “most efficiently” which will make it easier to detect by sysadmins.

XMR Price on a Downslide

Created in April 2014 Monero is a privacy-focused coin that has three key features viz. ring signatures, stealth addresses, and ring confidential transactions. In comparison to other privacy coins like Zcash, DASH, GRIN, and PIVX, Monero leads in market capitalization, GitHub activity, and total fees.

The 14th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, meanwhile, is trading at $53.12 with 24 hours loss of 0.70 percent, as per Coincodex.

Whether it has been past 7 days, a month or a year, XMR has only lost its value and is still down over 89% from its all-time high of $542.