25 votes
Accepted

What is the difference between CryptoNote and CryptoNight?

CryptoNote is the name of the cryptocurrency technology that Monero (and Aeon, and various others) is based on. CryptoNight is the name of the hash function that is used in the CryptoNote Proof-of-...
hyc's user avatar
  • 4,233
23 votes
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Where can I find a description of the CryptoNight hash algorithm?

The description of the CryptoNight hash algorithm and the steps it performs can be found in the code as well as in a written file by the CryptoNote team, which can be found here. Lastly, in his blog, ...
dEBRUYNE's user avatar
  • 15.1k
16 votes
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Is Monero amenable to ASIC mining?

Cryptonight (the PoW hash used by Monero and most Cryptonote coins) does not lend itself well to ASIC development, for the following reasons: Cryptonight requires 2 MB of fast memory to work. This ...
user36303's user avatar
  • 34.8k
15 votes
Accepted

CryptoNight-Lite PoW modifications in Aeon

There are two modifications: the scratchpad is only half the size of regular Cryptonight (1 MB rather than 2 MB) and the number of AES iterations is halved (half a million rather than a million). This ...
user36303's user avatar
  • 34.8k
14 votes
Accepted

Which reasons were discussed for potentially changing the proof-of-work algorithm?

One of the main reasons Cuckoo cycle is atractive when compared to Cryptonight is that it is very fast to verify. This is one drawback of Cryptonight: it makes all operations that need to verify ...
user36303's user avatar
  • 34.8k
12 votes

Is it better to mine with a CPU or GPU

The most profitable consumer-grade hardware that I know of is the GTX 750 Ti (an nVidia GPU). This is on a Hashrate per Energy Used basis, since the marginal cost of mining is the energy spent. It ...
bigreddmachine's user avatar
11 votes
Accepted

CryptoNote features in other cryptocurrencies

There's less than a couple dozen CN based currencies. See http://mapofcoins.com/bytecoin. Shadowcash tried to implement ring signatures on a Bitcoin code base. See https://shnoe.wordpress.com/2016/02/...
user36303's user avatar
  • 34.8k
9 votes

Is it better to mine with a CPU or GPU

That statement does not mean that CPU mining is generally more profitable than GPU mining. The emphasis should be on significantly reduces. The large memory footprint of CryptoNight is a large reason ...
Smart Kid's user avatar
  • 6,563
7 votes

Mining Monero with Pencil and Paper

I think the overall answer is "it's ridiculously impractical to perform by hand". The Cryptonight hash operates over a 2 megabyte data space, using multiple rounds of AES along with a variety of other ...
hyc's user avatar
  • 4,233
7 votes
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How secure is CryptoNight?

This annotated whitepaper acknowledges the importance of a thorough review: Constructing a hash function is difficult; constructing a hash function satisfying these constraints seems to be more ...
studycrypto's user avatar
  • 2,083
7 votes
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Monero Hash, how does it work, C++ basisc

piHashVal = (uint64_t*)(result.bResult + 24); result.bResult is a pointer to some data structure, it's storing the memory address at which the structure begins. We're not interested in the beginning ...
JollyMort's user avatar
  • 19.9k
7 votes
Accepted

I'm trying to create a Python miner, can I get some guidance please?

The general steps are as follows: Call your Monero daemon's RPC method get_block_template. Take the blockhashing_blob from the response and convert the hex to binary. Set a 4 byte nonce in bytes 39....
jtgrassie's user avatar
  • 18.9k
6 votes
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Mining Monero with Pencil and Paper

I like the question because an answer to it will give a better understanding, from first principles, of the underlying algorithms. So question 1 has two parts: 1a) How does the CryptoNight PoW ...
villabacho's user avatar
  • 1,205
6 votes
Accepted

Is Monero susceptible to botnets?

Botnets do not have magical ability to affect Monero more than any other hash source. As other PoW based currencies, Monero is vulnerable to 51% attacks, and any adversary who is able to sustainably ...
user36303's user avatar
  • 34.8k
6 votes

How does CryptoNight "depend on all the previous blocks"?

I think the CryptoNote website's page about the egalitarian proof of work is about the inner working of the hash function, not about how the hash of a block is computed (which is basically ...
glv's user avatar
  • 3,334
6 votes

CryptoNight Algorithm Keccak1600?

The Cryptonight description by the Cryptonote team states that First, the input is hashed using Keccak [KECCAK] with parameters b = 1600 and c = 512. In the primitive family Keccak, b is the ...
Clement J.'s user avatar
  • 3,339
5 votes

What is the difference between CryptoNote and CryptoNight?

Worded differently (on Reddit): CryptoNight is the (hashing) algorithm. CryptoNote is the protocol.
dpzz's user avatar
  • 4,519
5 votes
Accepted

Energy consumed to protect the Monero network

Generally you can simply look at the value of the current block reward as an indication of how much electricity it takes to secure the network. At 8.7 XMR per block it costs about 78k USD in ...
ferretinjapan's user avatar
5 votes

Where can I find a description of the CryptoNight hash algorithm?

The algorithm is described in Cryptonote Standard 008.
Clement J.'s user avatar
  • 3,339
5 votes

Is Monero amenable to ASIC mining?

Monero is not immune to ASICs in the future, but the costs of manufacturing ASICs is offset by the block rewards such that it would not be profitable. ASIC manufacturing would need to get cheaper, or ...
ferretinjapan's user avatar
5 votes
Accepted

Monero Pool job contents, blob length

Mining Blob The mining blob is the block header + merkle root + number of TX-es. It's similar to block identifier as defined in CNS003: Calculation of Block Identifier The identifier of a block is ...
JollyMort's user avatar
  • 19.9k
5 votes
Accepted

How is Keccak calculated in Monero?

The keccak1600 function used by Monero is based on Keccak-256 (b=1600, c=512, r=1088 and output of 256 bits, not 1600 bits), but it returns the whole internal state (1600 bits) instead of the first ...
glv's user avatar
  • 3,334
5 votes

What's the difference between the CryptoNightR and RandomX algorithms?

Quoting SChernykh (one of the CryptonightR authors): CryptonightR is a modification to Cryptonight whereas RandomX is done completely from scratch. The main purpose of CryptonightR is to be the ...
jtgrassie's user avatar
  • 18.9k
5 votes

What PoW hashing algorithms did Monero historically use?

Monero's genesis block dates back from April 2014. The first PoW change was in 2018. The full history is: | block | date | PoW algorithm |---------|------------|-------------- | 0 | ...
user36303's user avatar
  • 34.8k
4 votes
Accepted

Can a CryptoNote coin be merge mined with a non-CryptoNote coin?

If the cryptonight algorithm was replaced with say, sha256, could it be merge mined with bitcoin, for example? That would certainly be possible. The requirements for merged mining basically boil down ...
dEBRUYNE's user avatar
  • 15.1k
4 votes
Accepted

How significant is the number of threads when mining? (I7-4790K)

The correct answer is a combination of what you've read. The maximum number of threads you should ever try to use is the number of CPU cores. Each thread uses 2MB of RAM, so your best performance per-...
hyc's user avatar
  • 4,233
4 votes

Would this be a good hardware setup for Monero mining?

GPU mining configurations often use the cheapest CPU. Thus, your CPU should be powerful enough to work with 3 Rx 480. Yes, PCIE x 1 should work for mining but you have to buy a riser (recommended to ...
Gundamlancer's user avatar
  • 1,026

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