[PoW Round-Up] Bitcoin difficulty adjustment and privacy-focused improvement proposals

PoW Round-Up is our weekly report on the major news and mining insights in and around the Proof of Work ecosystem. Monitor and help secure the PoW world with f2pool.

Over the last week, we have seen the Bitcoin network difficulty increasing by 3.65%.

Other highlights include the Ethereum DAG file size increase and the Ethereum Classic debates about tackling 51% attacks.

Bitcoin

Last Saturday, October 17, the Bitcoin network adjusted its difficulty with a +3.65% increase, reaching a new all-time high of 19.97 TH.

Bitcoin Improvement Proposals 340, 341, and 342 were implemented, enhancing the future privacy of the Bitcoin network with Taproot, Schnoor, and Tapscript signatures.

Ethereum

Since last Saturday, October 17, Ethereum GPU miners with under 4GB of RAM won’t be able to mine ETH on Windows operating systems. This is due to the DAG file size increase, which occurs every 30,000 blocks. It won’t affect other operating systems until the end of December 2020.

Ethereum Classic

After ETC Core Dev Meeting #14 some weeks ago, where different solutions to 51% attacks and multiple future implementations were discussed, it was decided this week that ETC Core developers will implement ECIP-1099 within the month, which will allow 3–4 GB GPU cards to keep mining ETC even after the DAG file size would require GPUs to be over 4GB.

Litecoin

Last week was the 9th anniversary of Litecoin’s launch in 2011. It has been a long and extraordinary journey since July 25, 2013, when we started the f2pool LTC mining pool.

Monero

The Monero network went through the network upgrade “Oxygen Orion,” a planned hardfork to upgrade the network that happens every two years.

Ravencoin

A debate has been raised in recent days on whether or not a third-party code audit should be performed on the Ravencoin protocol and whether it should be funded with Ravencoin legal funds.

Zcoin

Zcoin’s next-gen privacy protocol is around the corner, judging by what we were able to see in a recent testnet transaction.

Beam

The Beam CTO shared on Twitter an upcoming development on BEAM introducing Shaders, WebAssembly smart contracts that will enhance network privacy.

Handshake

The team shared the coin emission schedule in a reddit post after many inquiries from the community and reminded everyone what was noted in the source code.