Privacy-centric and ASIC-resistant Monero has released a PoW update scheduled for April to counter the new Bitmain Antminer.
After Bitmain’s announcement earlier this month of their new ASIC-powered Antminer X3 designed to mine Monero, as well as other cryptocurrencies based on the CryptoNight algorithm, the altcoin’s developers have released an update that will prevent the new device from being effective, according to Monero core developer Riccardo Spagni’s Github post from March 24.
The new Monero update, called Lithium Luna, is scheduled for April and states that it “slightly changes the proof-of-work algorithm to prevent DoS attacks by ASICs.”
When the Antminer X3 was added to Bitmain’s website on March 15, Spagni (@fluffypony) posted on Twitter that the device would “NOT work” on Monero. The privacy-centered, ASIC-resistant cryptocurrency had posted on their blog back in February that they would counter any crypto miner that threatened their ASIC-resistance by changing their Proof of Work (PoW).
Spagni’s original March 15 Twitter post has updated comments by the developer, who wrote on March 18 that any of the updates flaws are made up by preventing the effectiveness of the Antminer X3:
It might entirely be less secure, but the community has made the hard call, and all we can do is see what happens. It’s the same as Monero’s tail emission – maybe that turns out to be unnecessary, or even net negative, but in the absence of strong evidence we must try our best.
— Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) March 18, 2018
