Monero is the latest cryptocurrency to face a hard fork – but the upgrade is to improve the blockchain rather than increase the throughput of transactions.
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Other hard forks – like the recent Bitcoin Cash fiasco – have looked towards speeding up the cryptocurrencies blockchain.
The Monero hard fork will happen when a specific block numbered 1564965 is mined.
This is expected to happen around March 9.
The hard fork will give Monero an infinite capacity for coins rather than the current 256 million, which is expected to be reached in 2067, and lift the cap off block size.
The developers have issued guidance to Monero holders concerned how the hard fork will affect their holdings.
Protecting your wallets
“Prior to the airdrop, keep your coins at a cold wallet or at an exchange that would support the fork,” said a spokesman. “Unfortunately, currently there are no official statements of support from exchanges. After the split, an XMV wallet will be created with the corresponding number of tokens, same private keys and a passphrase as your existing Monero wallet.
“If you are the holder of the private keys, you would be able to claim your tokens via the official XMV GUI wallets that the team is planning to release several days after the fork.
“If you are storing your funds at a service where you don’t have access to the private keys, you should inquire in advance whether the coins would be distributed between XMR holders, because it is not compulsory for any platform to do this.”
Monero is currently trading as the 13thlargest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation – Monero’s market cap is $839 million, compared with the largest coin – Bitcoin, which has a market cap of $68 billion.
Monero is worth $49.88.
Coinhive pulls plug
Coinhive, the cryptocurrency mining app that secretly mines Monero by piggy-backing web sites and online apps is pulling the plug.
The developers say Coinhive will stop operating from March 8.
“It has been a blast working on this project over the past 18 months, but to be completely honest, it isn’t economically viable anymore,” they said.
“The hash rate drop after the last Monero hard fork hit us hard. a year. This and the announced hard fork and algorithm update of the Monero network has led us to the conclusion that we need to discontinue Coinhive.”
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