Monero Cryptonight V7 and Sumokoin Hardforks – All You Have to Know

As you probably know, Monero developers have decided to implement some changes in the hashing algorithm in order to make existing Criptonight ASICs unable to mine XMR. (More about this here)

Monero hard fork will eventually take place April 6^th. Since the fork is consensual, no additional alt coin will be created (no chain split like with BTC/BCH). All you have to do is update your software once the fork is complete and keep mining in your pool. If you are running a desktop wallet you will have to update your binaries as well.

Here you can see the countdown.

Here is the link to the official announcement on Reddit.

How to Mine the New Monero?

It is already certain that the new Cast XMR version 0.9.2 supports Cryptonight V7, so you can use it to mine after the fork. According to the devs, the new version shows some interesting hashrate for the AMD Radeon RX Vega GPU series when using 18.3.4 Adrenaline drivers.

Sumokoin is Forking Too

Sumokoin is following Monero’s footsteps and forking too. Sumokoin developers have announced that they are switching the coin to a slightly different algorithm – the CryptoNight Heavy. Anyone mining it should use the new xmr-stak.

According to the devs, “[Cryptonight Heavy is] not a minor tweak on cryptonight, its an effort to create a modified asic resistant cryptonight pow without having to fork periodically. We believe that this has been accomplished”

Cryptonight-heavy, #sumokoin asic resistant algo is finalised and under testing. Feel free to test/report and produce patches for miners other than xmr-stak. Feedback would be much appreciated. Exact fork block height and writeup will follow soonhttps://t.co/wYINr1tvmA$sumo

— Sumokoin (@sumokoin) March 24, 2018

Will this new fork save Sumokoin from existing ASICs? Time will show. Also, it seems that Sumokoin has been heavily mined by ASICs in the past few days. Users report a heavy decrease in GPU mining profits (with profits being about 20% of what they’ve used to be few days ago). As a response to that, Sumokoin developers have decided do fork earlier than planned in order to stop this attack as soon as possible.

Recent Monero Scandal

Sometimes developers do things that split the community into several conflicting sides. Apparently, one of Monero Core team members has posted a sort of Aprils fool joke that led to certain conflicts in the Monero community and the subsequent decrease in the price of the coin. Or as some say, it was a coincidence that created a lot of misunderstandings between Monero community and its devs.

Riccardo “fluffypony” Spagni, Monero’s lead developer, is known for his dedication to the coin as well as for his ironical and funny remarks. This “April’s fool joke” was first met with a lot of criticism and hate comments, though later more positive and supportive comments have appeared.

Some people believe that the so-called “joke” was nothing less than Riccardo’s way of grabbing some free money from the community. Others think that this was a smart move to make shorters abandon Monero.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It is a fact that due to the price drop XMR holders have seen a decrease in the value of their digital assets. As it always happens with crypto, your coins might lose some of its value overnight. It is all part of the high risk-high reward reality of cryptocurrencies.

That being said, it is also a fact that Monero developers are one of the first ones who have decided to stand up against ASICs since it would compromise the security and decentralization of the coin. Like, the guys do some great job so far, they also have solved many security issues and have actually managed to create a solid cryptocurrency.

What do you think about this move? What side are you taking?

In Conclusion

It is still uncertain whether other Cryptonight coins will be forking anytime soon. If you are mining any of them you might want to keep a constant eye on the news of the coin in case it forks. It is very probably that several other ones will fork after Monero and Sumokoin doing it.