Monero RandomX — ASIC Resistance
It’s no secret that Luxor likes privacy coins, and that Monero is one of our favourites. That is why it was one of the earliest pools we launched. You can learn more about why its technology is revolutionary here.
💡 Start mining here: https://medium.com/luxor/monero-luxor-mining-pool-setup-guide-6d7d32c89cf3
Mining Monero
Mining Monero has been an interesting journey to follow. While many coins have embraced ASICs and are opposed to resistance the Monero community has taken a contrarian view.
To help increase ASIC resistance, Monero has previously executed hard forks every 6 months, slightly altering and improving the algorithm. Because of this, specialized ASICs that were specifically designed to mine certain algorithms were rendered useless, returning mining power to CPU and GPU miners.
RandomX
RandomX is an algorithm that will take ASIC resistance one step further. It is designed to be ASIC resistant by using random code execution and memory-hard techniques to prevent specialized mining hardware from dominating the network. Because RandomX is optimized for general-purpose CPUs, the network will become more decentralized and egalitarian in the distribution of block rewards. ASICs are the clear target of RandomX, but since it’s optimized for CPUs, GPUs will also suffer.
Modes
RandomX has two modes with different memory requirements and performance. Fast Mode requires 2GB of shared memory but has 4x-6x the performance of Light Mode which only requires 256MB of RAM. Fast mode is intended for dedicated miners. Light mode is designed to allow fullnodes to validate blocks without requiring the 2+GB of RAM, so that small devices (like ARM single-board computers, e.g. Rock64) can still be used as standalone nodes.
Timeline
Monero is scheduled to begin using RandomX in the next network update (November 30th). Mining pools, exchanges, fullnode wallets, etc will have to upgrade between Oct 31 and Nov 30 to the latest release.
Monero was added as the 5th coin in the Luxor network, and is now a 0% PPS pool. Click here to join Luxor’s Monero pool as we transition to RandomX.
Happy hashing!
