Monero activated its semi-annual hard fork on April 6, bringing a host of new upgrades. One particular Monero upgrade, though, threatens to split the network into two competing chains.
Monero earlier this year announced its intention to update its instance of the Cryptonight Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining algorithm at regular intervals to prevent mining hardware manufacturers from developing Monero-compatible Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners, as critics allege that these devices lead to mining centralization and threaten the network’s health.
ASIC chips maximize efficiency to such an extent that it becomes no longer profitable to mine with GPU miners, whose chips are general-purpose and use for everything from PC gaming to searching for extraterrestrial life.