A vulnerability in Ravencoin (RVN) resulted in the unsanctioned minting of about 1.5% of its maximum supply of 21 billion RVN. The exploit was disclosed by Recencoin on Friday after initial reports were confirmed, but details remain fuzzy as the investigation is still underway. About 315 million RVN were minted, worth about $5.7 million at current prices. Ravencoin said it notified law enforcement in hopes of catching the unknown perpetrators of the exploit, though given the nature of the bug, no money was directly stolen. Instead, the losses were spread over all RVN holders as extra inflation, which amounts to …

The Ethereum (ETH) All Core Devs call to decide on the fate of ProgPow was held on March 6. Despite a tentative decision to reformulate the mining algorithm as “Ethash 2.0,” the call raised more questions than it answered. The call lasted approximately three hours, two of which were entirely dedicated to ProgPow. Several representatives of both the pro and anti-ProgPow sides were invited. Supporters included Kristy Leigh-Minehan, one of ProgPow’s creators, and BitsBeTrippin, the founder of an educational channel on mining. Anti-ProgPow representatives included Gnosis Co-founder Martin Köppelmann and Matt Luongo, founder at Thesis.co. Ameen Soleimani, CEO of Spankchain, …

The Ravencoin community continues to argue over what mining algorithm the project should adopt in the future to best deter ASICs, despite Ravencoin conducting a hard fork intended to bolster ASIC-resistance just five months ago. Tron Black, Ravencoin’s lead developer, posted an update on Feb. 18 stating that “work is ongoing to test various alternative algos for mining Ravencoin.” He added that the campaign to change algorithms is being led by “a large contingent of GPU miners.” “Several algos have been tried with benchmarking. Some will not work because they are too slow for validation,” Black continued. The post also …

Ethereum (ETH) core devs once again discussed the proposed Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)-resistant Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm ProgPoW during their weekly meeting on March 15. This week, the devs again reached an overall consensus that the algorithm should be implemented, while the timeline for its implementation remains unclear. When discussing the algorithm, the developers argued over how effective ProgPoW will prove to be at diminishing the efficiency advantage of ASICs. Ethereum core developer Greg Colvin noted that the team has discussed such doubts many times in the past. He also pointed out that the decision has already been …

Ethereum (ETH) network users have unanimously supported the ProgPoW algorithm, which is expected to make the platform resistant to application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners. Initially, opponents of the update prevailed over supporters by a margin of 96 percent, according to a Cointelegraph report on Feb. 15. The current scenario is exactly opposite, with 94 percent of voters favoring the implementation of ProgPoW, as evidenced by the Etherchain charts. What is ProgPoW? Simply put, ProgPoW is a version of the proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm, which is supposed to smooth the transition of the Ethereum network to proof-of-stake (PoS). As a part of …

An online vote over the implementation of ProgPoW in the Ethereum (ETH) proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm shows a majority in favor of the change, according to the results updated today, Feb. 15, on the dedicated voting portal. ProgPoW is an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)-resistant PoW algorithm meant to replace ETHhash, Ethereum’s current PoW algorithm. By defining the algorithm as ASIC-resistant, ETH developers mean that the algorithm would decrease — but not eliminate — the efficiency advantage of mining using ASICs over using generic hardware such as graphics processing units (GPUs). At press time, over 76 percent (628.000 ETH, equivalent to over …

Ethereum (ETH) core developers have delayed the decision to implement Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)-resistant proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm ProgPoW. According to an Ethereum core developer meeting on Feb. 1, the team wants to wait until the algorithm is audited by a third party. Ethereum core developer Hudson Jameson declared during the call that “there is a group forming or multiple groups forming to perform an independent audit on ProgPoW.” He explained that the audit is an attempt to establish how effective the algorithm would be in leveling the playing field for different kinds of hardware used to mine crypto, including GPUs, …