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Keccak uses a sponge function which is cool but what benefits does keccak have over sha-256 for cryptography operations in the code? thanks

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While Monero does not use Keccak for its hashing, one advantage of using CryptoNote is to prevent Monero from immediately being able to be mined by ASICs. There is tremendous investment in SHA-256 hashing because of Bitcoin's popularity, so using a less popular / more memory intensive standard allows Monero to be mined by the "common man"- at least until ASICs are developed.

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    monero does not use keccak as a pow. cryptonight is a bunch of random hash functions afaik, but i am referring to crypto operations in the monero code not the mining
    – samwellj
    Commented Dec 11, 2016 at 3:19
  • @samwellj Yes, I should have clarified that monero does not use keccak.
    – Daniel Ternyak
    Commented Dec 12, 2016 at 2:40
  • @DanielTernyak You can still edit your answer to clarify
    – Smart Kid
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 18:26
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Keccak has "built-in" protection against length extension attacks.

Edit: spelling

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