Monero's Battle Against ASICs
Monero is the best-known and perhaps the most robust privacy-oriented cryptocurrency. XMR is well-established, occupying 11th place in the cryptocurrency market cap rankings. Its success has recently been causing some conflicts, however - the Chinese specialized mining hardware manufacturer, Bitmain, has announced a Monero miner with an ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) designed for the CryptoNight algorithm. The miner is called Antminer X3, boasting a 220 KH/s hashrate along with a $12,000 price tag.
While additional hashing power would help secure the Monero network, the XMR developers are not exactly thrilled with the Antminer X3. In fact, they intend to make it obsolete before it even ships to customers starting with May 15. On April 6, the Monero network will undergo a mandatory update that will try to neuter the effectiveness of ASICs as much as possible. Since ASICs are designed to perform a single specific task as efficiently as possible, any changes in the task itself can cause them to underperform dramatically.
"I will do everything in my power to help the community prevent the proliferation of centralization-inducing ASICs on the monero network", said core developer Riccardo Spagni, better known to the cryptocurrency community by his nickname “Fluffypony”.
The majority of Monero developers and its community seem to be concerned about the scenario of Monero mining ASICs being used to establish a mining pool that is powerful enough to alter the Monero network and censor transactions. An excerpt from an announcement regarding the issue reads:
At this point in time, we suspect that any newly developed Cryptonight ASIC will not be egalitarian and will not foster a decentralized network.
The annoucement presents another scenario in which the centralization of Monero mining power could hurt the network:
For instance, a government could require these ASIC manufacturers to add a "kill-switch" which allows them to shut down a miner remotely or otherwise control it.
There are certainly downsides to barring additional hashing power from the network, and only time will tell if Monero’s battle against ASICs will prove to be a wise move.
source - https://coincodex.com
credit to - Peter Wind