by Priyeshu Garg
A few days ago, BTCManager ran a story on the Monero hard fork and how it might show if the blockchain had been secretly hijacked by ASIC miners. Suspicions over the way in which hashrate of the Monero blockchain had increased dramatically toward the end of 2017 when there was a general boom in the market led to speculation that there may already be secret ASIC miners on the network.
As a result, the development team at Monero was desperate to make sure that the scheduled hard fork made the blockchain even more resistant to ASIC mining.
The debate over ASIC mining and its place in the crypto ecosystem is one that is at the heart of the crypto evolution. Pioneers of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology held to libertarian ideals and philosophies which was greatly centered on decentralization. ASIC mining, however, undermines this decentralization philosophy as it creates the opportunity for monopolization and mining centralization.
Proponents of ASIC argue that a truly libertarian ecosystem is one in which no one is prevented from being able to express their economic potential. Thus, the practice of making blockchains immune to ASIC is seen as being anti-libertarian.
Examining the Evidence
On quite a number of discussion threads on Reddit, the online forum, members of the crypto community have been airing their views on what has been observed since the recent Monero hard fork.
The Monero hashrate decreased by about 80 percent after the hard fork. Before the hard fork, the hashrate which refers to the computing power expended during the mining activity stood at about 1,030 Mh/s. After the hack, it plunged all the way down to about 157 Mh/s.
At the time of writing this article, the hashrate is somewhere around 525 Mh/s.
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