Analysis Suggests that 85 Percent of Monero Network is Dominated by ASICs

Within the last 40 days, analysis suggests that Monero is once again dominated by ASIC mining, with 85 percent of the network hash rate coming from this specialized computer hardware.

In a Medium analysis performed by pseudo-anonymous user MoneroCrusher, the author suggests that more than 85.2 percent of the Monero network is mined via ASICs.

Based on the analysis, the author suggests that the ASICs that ran on the network did not choose nonces randomly.

As these ASICs dominated Monero mining it became obvious that a disproportionately large number of blocks were being found in that particular nonce range, producing a distinct pattern.

In April of 2018, Monero successfully hard forked and implemented a new mining algorithm to thwart ASICs.

At the time of the fork, Monero's hash rate dropped from 1030 Megahashes per second down to 158 Megahashes per second, again suggesting that 85 percent of the network was ASICs.

The proliferation of ASICs on Monero is problematic because it increases centralization on a network.

Monero's community has taken a stance that is strongly anti-ASIC. Especially when compared to Bitcoin, where ASICs have become a fundamental part of its ecosystem, and Ethereum, where the core development team is neither for or against ASICs.

Since ASICs are specialized at solving a single, or narrow set, of mining algorithms, such changes tend to render ASICs ineffective or useless at mining.

If the analysis is correct-and XMR is indeed dominated by ASICs-then the community will either need to implement another hard fork with a new mining algorithm; or, decide that ASICs dominating the Monero network is acceptable.