After many 51% attacks, Eth Classic Community seems to have found a way to increase the total hashrate, making such attacks more difficult.
As we read in the post announcing the hard fork named Thanos on the Eth Classic site, the original intent is to provide ASIC resistance to the mining protocol in order to prevent centralization of mining distributions and thereby provide for an objectively fair distribution of tokens.
As evident by ASICs being developed that are capable of matching current GPU miners while being more energy efficient, the DAG has succeeded in leveling the playing field between GPU incumbents and ASIC challengers, avoiding ASIC takeover and domination, and leading to a competitive and large mining ecosystem. However the original parameters are proving too aggressive, resulting in obsoleting support for GPUs still in wide use today by miners.
4GB GPUs are getting obsoleted while they still make up a significant amount of ethash hashrate. Activating this change at epoch 376 (for example), would reduce the DAG size from 3.94GB to 2.47GB. With the reduced growth rate, 4GB GPUs will remain supported for an additional 3+ years.
“After the successful implementation of MESS, the finality algorithm that provides 51% protection, we continue to see Ethereum Classic innovate and grow in a way that distinguishes itself and increases functionality for its users,” said James Wo, Founder and Chairman of Ethereum Classic Labs. “The Thanos hard fork is the natural next step for the network, reducing the DAG size to help cultivate a more distributed and healthy mining ecosystem, increasing hash rate, and allowing for miners to continue mining ETC and for new miners to join the ecosystem.”
Ethereum Classic Mainnet activation at block 11,700,000, around November 29th, 2020.
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