Why can't Monroe maintain a hard-for-half plan for half a year?

The hottest topic of the Monroe community in recent times is the long-term plan of the Monroe mining algorithm.

After the successful implementation of the hard fork in 3.9 Monroe, members of the community published their own concerns about regularly modifying the algorithm: Frequent modification of the algorithm not only increases Monroe’s security risks, but also provides services to Monroe ( For example, in exchanges and wallets, they also need to constantly respond. If the Monroe Ecology develops to a certain scale in the future, the cost of changing the algorithm will become very large.

Several core members have had a deep discussion and hope to reach a consensus and promote a long-term effective program. dEBRUYNE pioneered nine solutions, including regular hard forks, ASIC-friendly algorithms, Random X+SHA 3, and dual PoW algorithms . However, each program has its own advantages and disadvantages. At present, apart from the core members, most of the public opinion in the community tends to resist ASIC .

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In the end, Random X is a high-profile solution for most core members , but some of its features (such as 4GB memory requirements) do not necessarily lead to further decentralization of computing power, so they decided to fail after implementing Random X. The SHA-3 algorithm will be used . Because the amount of information in this discussion is very large, and some of the technical concepts and mechanisms are relatively embarrassing, the author is finishing, and after the completion, the complete discussion summary will be shared with everyone. Thank you for your attention.

The following is a brief analysis of the two algorithms: *Random X: This is a very unique hash algorithm, unlike the algorithm we saw earlier – it will generate a completely new algorithm for each block. . Applying it is risky because we can't guarantee that it doesn't have big holes. But once successful, it will completely defeat the ASIC mining machine.

*SHA-3: In the opposite direction (ASIC friendly), SHA-3 is the most acceptable solution for the community. We have seen giants like Bitumin, which have developed professional mining machines for SHA-256 and Scrypt algorithms for a long time. The characteristic of SHA-3 is that it is really very simple. It is simple that in the competition of SHA-3 algorithm chip, the gap between the strength of small companies and large companies is minimized, which helps to prevent the monopoly of computing power. Even for GPU miners, SHA-3 may still allow them to maintain profitability at low risk.

There may be some readers who don't quite understand what this resolution means. Random X is a very special algorithm. Using the algorithm's blockchain, each block's block-blocking process will use different algorithms, which will make ASIC such an extremely customized and efficient mining. The machine is at a loss in the face of this extremely unpredictable algorithm. In other words, Random X is the best anti-ASIC solution that the Monroe team can currently consider.

SHA-3, on the other hand, is the other extreme of the algorithm spectrum. It is extremely friendly to ASICs. It can even be said that in the family of SHA algorithms that are extremely friendly to ASICs (SHA-256, SHA-512, etc.), it is the most pro-ASIC algorithm.

So the question is: Why does the final decision of the Monroe team combine these two completely different and extreme algorithms? Does this represent a compromise and compromise between the two divisions of the core team? Or is it that resistance does not achieve self-defeating?

In the author's view, this program is actually quite subtle: Monroe's core concept has not changed – committed to the decentralization of computing power, allowing more people to participate in the Monroe network. The reason why the scheme of extreme pro-ASIC is adopted is that the two evils are taken carelessly: if the anti-ASIC is unsuccessful, then it will become friends with the enemy of the enemy, let the ASIC miners fully compete and promote the ASIC calculation. The decentralization of force.

Why does Monroe want to modify the mining algorithm?

Monroe's temporary hard fork upgrade, which was dominated on March 9, was very successful, but it was very successful. The computing power of the entire network was more than 70%, and the hidden ASIC mining machine had nowhere to go. Once again, the ASIC miners' frustrations are popular with the community of Monroe, especially for the GPU/CPU miners. However, it is rarely known that hard forks are very serious for team energy consumption. Changing the algorithm once is not a matter of simply selecting a piece of code to upload and then notifying everyone to update the client.

A hard fork upgrade, including the basic algorithm selection, merge, test, repair, until the confirmation is correct, can be used as the final solution. After determining the plan and upgrade time, you need to connect all parts of the ecosystem: wallet (there are 5 in the mainstream), exchanges (tens of dozens), browsers, APIs, businesses, etc. The team needs to provide technical support to them and update the documentation to multiple languages. With the development and growth of Monroe's ecology, the cost of hard forks will become larger and larger. Frequent hard forks not only make the team innocent, but also affect the other parties in the ecology. None of the above includes the unexpected vulnerabilities and attacks that the new algorithm may bring.

According to Monroe's core developers, no one in the team is currently in favor of maintaining the current fork frequency, so it is urgent to seek a once-and-for-all solution.

* Due to space reasons, the author will continue the follow-up and elaboration of this algorithm change discussion in the next report (4.9), and readers are welcome to leave a message.

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