Today, in about 30 minutes or less from now, RandomX will be activated on Monero as part of its network protocol upgrade, so this seems like a good moment to share this timeline. It’s like the raw material for writing the history of ASIC resistant proof-of-work algorithms. If you think it’s incomplete, let me know what you’d like to add. I didn’t include Monero ASICs or FPGAs that weren’t publicly released, since it would be difficult to pin down a date.Original version written in Dutch for Monero Meetup Utrecht #2 on March 14, 2019 (next meetup is on Tuesday, December 3).2010-10: Start of Bitcoin mining on GPUs2011-06: First Bitcoin FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays)2011-09-26: Launch of Tenebrix (with a premine) using Scrypt algo to avoid GPUs2011-10-13: Fair launch of Litecoin, also using Scrypt2013-01-19: Avalon releases the first Bitcoin ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit)2014-03: Bytecoin, using CryptoNight version 12014-04: Litecoin ASICs2014-12: Vertcoin, using Lyra2RE (multi-algo, curently 5)2014-01: X11, a chain of 11 algos, for Xcoin => Darkcoin => Dash2014-09: Digibyte (multi-algo with separate difficulty adjustment)2015-07-30: Ethash for Ethereum (memory-hard, i.e. using lots of RAM)2018-04-06: CryptoNight version 2 by Monero (flipped a bit)2018-05: Bitmain releases the Antminer X3 for CryptoNight, which doesn’t mine Monero2018-07: Bitmain releases Antminer E3, the first Ethash ASIC2018-10-01: Siacoin developers use a protocol change to disable ASICs other than their own Obelisk SC1 miner2018-10-18: CryptoNight version 3 by Monero (changed a bit more than one bit)2018-10/12: 51% attack on Vertcoin (double spends with rented GPUs)2019-01-15: Launch of Grin using two algorithms, one ASIC friendly and one ASIC resistant2019-03-09: Monero’s CryptoNight version 4 or CryptoNightR, a self-programming algorithm, generating hashing instructions pseudo-randomly2019-11-30: RandomX, a randomized and memory-hard algorithm, designed from scratch to use all elements of a general-purpose CPU2020-??: Ethereum will probably switch to ProgPOW (programmatic proof of work) before switching to proof of stake
Submitted December 01, 2019 at 01:41AM
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