A virtual war in the world of "ASIC" specialized in virtual currency mining is occurring, the operator of the virtual currency "Monero" reveals

In the virtual currency represented by Bitcoin (bit coin), in many cases, in order to increase the reliability of the block chain "Proof of work"(PoW) will be done. In that case, a tremendous amount of computing power is required, so a machine with a chip called "ASIC" (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) specialized for its application is used However, besides the world of the virtual currency to be heated, a fierce "war" about this ASIC is occurring.

PoW change and key reuse | Monero - secure, private, untraceable
https://getmonero.org/2018/02/11/PoW-change-and-key-reuse.html

Monero Declares War on ASIC Manufacturers
https://www.ccn.com/monero-declares-war-asic-manufacturers/

There are a number in the worldAlto Coinone ofMoneroIs a virtual currency named for words meaning coins and coins in Esperanto. Monero featuring a high privacy feature began operation in 2014, but this Monero developer announced measures on "Increasing ASIC tolerance" on February 11, 2018 blog did.

The measure that the development team decided to adopt is to change the PoW algorithm each time you implement hard fork which is usually scheduled twice a year. Although this algorithm alteration which has little influence for Monero's general user, this "ASIC minor" mining using ASIC has the effect that the previous method will be obsoleted every hard fork I will do. Also, if it turns out that this countermeasure is inadequate, developers say that by implementing "emergency hard fork", it prevents "digging too much" by ASIC minor.


Also, in the virtual currency world, "unfairness" caused by mining using ASIC is regarded as a problem. The fact that the development team of Monero decided to take measures also made this system universally equal to a wider and equal system and prevents the virtual currency which is originally distributed from being "monopolized" by some minor It is said that it is aim. In addition, the oligopolization of manufacturers producing ASIC is also regarded as a problem. ASIC manufacturer in ChinaBitmainHas ordered an enormous amount of silicon base material "silicon wafer" for ASIC production, and its size is more than NVIDIA, a leading GPU manufacturer.

The world's largest Bitcoin minor has purchased more silicon semiconductor than NVIDIA for mining machine construction - GIGAZINE


It is also the monopoly of mining technology by some manufacturers that Monero's development team is ringing alarm bells. If the environment where Monero's mining is completely monopolized by ASIC made by Bitmain has been made, there is a "kill switch" where the Chinese government based in Bitmain stops ASIC mining with some restriction If it happens that a thing to force things to happen, Monero will no longer be a centralized virtual currency by the Chinese government.

Therefore, Monero aims to create an environment in which manufacturers do not perform arbitrary control by specific forces by making mining using distributed GPUs . The next hard fork of Monero is scheduled for March 2018.