Monero begins the fight against ASIC mining

Financial Review March 27 news: Monero (codenamed XMR) is fighting against ASIC mining. According to foreign media Coindesk on March 36, developers are doing their best to protect the world's largest cryptocurrency from profit infringement.

For many years, high-speed hardware ASICs have been used for mining. For example, Bitcoin ASIC miners are specialized for the SHA256 hash algorithm to mine Bitcoin. Because they are designed for specific purposes, they usually have greater performance advantages than general hardware such as CPUs, GPUs, and even general-purpose devices such as FPGAs. Newly developed ASIC miners will obtain the vast majority of network computing power, leading to centralization.

In early March this year, cryptocurrency mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain released a new mining machine, AntMiner X3, which is designed specifically for mining Monero.

According to industry insiders, this type of mining machine can easily lead to "the rich getting richer" and make the "decentralized" nature of cryptocurrency disappear completely.

To this end, the Monero development team immediately issued an announcement, saying that it would upgrade the PoW algorithm. They also said that they would urgently upgrade the software in April this year to change the system rules to prevent Bitmain from mining. This means that the X3 mining machine developed by Bitmain will not be able to be used.

Generally speaking, it takes at least five months for Bitmain to launch a mining machine, from design, R&D, trial production to integrated chip mass production. For this reason, Bitmain’s official Twitter blocked Monero founder Riccardo Spagni in response.

It can be said that the software upgrade in April is just the first step for Monero to resist ASIC mining. It is understood that the upcoming software upgrade will make Antminer X3 mining machines inoperable. In order to prevent hardware manufacturers from catching up, Monero's algorithm editors plan to upgrade the network twice a year.

Taking a step back, the current mining algorithm used by Monero, Cryptonight, can protect Monero to a certain extent and maintain the equality of mining power. The upgraded algorithm allows miners to mine Monero on ordinary laptops. However, once ASIC joins the mining business, mining based on ordinary laptops will fall into silence.

Spagni said on GitHub:

I will do my best to help the community prevent ASIC "centralization" from occurring on the Monero network.

Given that most ASICs are designed and shipped by Bitmain, and the company is also the only supplier of Antminer X3 mining machines, it is also worried that Antminer X3 may face some attacks, such as mining pools taking over most of the hash rate of cryptocurrencies, creating false transaction histories, double spending and payment audits.

Another voice believes that ASICs are good for the security of cryptocurrencies. However, many people in the Monero community hold opposing views.

According to a core developer “moneromooo”, Coindesk:

If someone mines 51% of a cryptocurrency using Amazon servers, it would not be a wise move to throw away the ASIC hardware.

The developer also said that if you are worried about being attacked by Bitmain, then don’t fork ASIC. Because Bitmain’s mining machines will soon be able to mine 51%.

Bitmain has long been distrusted

Of course, it must be said that this decision was influenced by developers’ long-standing distrust of Bitmain (and the company’s co-CEO Jihan Wu).

Leifeng.com Note: Jihan Wu of Bitmain

Last year, Bitmain took advantage of a loophole in the Bitcoin PoW (proof of work) algorithm mechanism and developed a program called ASIC Boost, which allowed the company's three mining pools to mine 20% faster than competitors. This move attracted a lot of controversy.

Soon after this debate, a mining chip vulnerability known as Antbleed emerged. At the time, some industry insiders believed that Bitmain deliberately exploited the vulnerability so that it could forcibly terminate miners’ mining at will.

Then, Bitmain launched an ASIC hardware at the end of last year, which can be used to mine the small cryptocurrency Siacoin. These actions have led Spagni to start a boycott of ASIC. He wrote on Twitter:

Bitmain’s behavior in the Bitcoin community and more recently on Yunbi.com is clearly the work of a bad actor.

“binaryFate” is a core developer of Monero. In this regard, he explained that even if there were no concerns about Wu Jihan and Bitmain, using ASIC hardware to mine Monero would bring greater risks. Because censorship resistance is also critical. He added:

Compared to other cryptocurrencies, "decentralization" is more important for Monero to ensure compliance review.

In an announcement, the Monero team extrapolated the risks of ASIC “centralization,” noting that unless ASIC hardware is ubiquitous, there will be high security risks, including the possibility of government bribery.

Spagni even said:

This threat has the potential to bring down an entire network.

Cryptonight Algorithm Controversy

Therefore, Monero will continue to fight against ASICs.

"binaryFate" says:

If we react quickly, I believe it will set a precedent for active ASIC resistance. In the foreseeable future, I believe no manufacturer will want to try to mine Monero, after all, no manufacturer would not mind losing money.

However, this move has also received different opinions. The main reason is that the Cryptonight algorithm used by Monero is also controversial.

Last November, cybersecurity company Check Point found that a group of websites used CoinHive's browser-side mining code to completely bypass CoinHive's own operations and avoid the platform's commission fees. At the same time, the tool became the sixth most popular malware in the world. As of February this year, the Monero Cryptonight algorithm had been attacked by a botnet of more than 500,000 mining machines.

Philip Daian, an Ethereum researcher, wrote on Twitter:

A small cryptocurrency is discouraging the use of ASICs by actively targeting economies of scale to destroy their security.

Andrew Poelstra, a mathematician working at Blockstream, also pointed out in a research report published in 2015 that although anti-ASIC chip code may delay manufacturers' actions, it is ultimately futile.

There are also concerns that continually editing the underlying algorithm could weaken the code, leaving it vulnerable. To address this, developer “iamsmooth” has proposed an “ASIC-friendly” approach that focuses on reducing hardware costs and improving accessibility.

In fact, the Monero team believes that upgrading the software twice a year is a relatively poor practice, so they also hope to find a better algorithm.

But before that, Spagni and many others have joined the movement to defend Monero.

Spagni wrote on Github:

Botnets and ASICs are both malicious to Monero, and we must choose the lesser of two evils.