Electroneum (ETN), a cryptocurrency payment project that targets smartphone users in the developing world, has made a peculiar U-turn in its tech policy, deciding to allow ASIC mining again. Many Electroneum supporters were taken aback by the move, announced at the end of last week, as a few weeks ago, the team performed updates through a hard fork to disable mining by expensive ASIC equipment in favor of household mining with relatively cheaper GPUs (graphic processing units).
https://twitter.com/electroneum/status/1014853567633674240
The trouble is that the Electroneum network had a very slow difficulty adjustment algorithm, and users had to wait for days until blocks could be produced based on the work of PCs and GPU miners. In the past, the Electroneum network greeted ASIC with optimism, stating the machines were also behind the growth of Bitcoin. Currently, many coins see the potential for mining farms as a claim on having a robust future, as compared to coins that remain mined by GPUs and with permanently low hashrates.
https://twitter.com/electroneum/status/987362261483311111?lang=en
Back in the spring, the Electroneum team even worked toward optimizing the code for ASIC mining. So the decision to disable mining and give advantage to small-scale operations also looked strange, but was hailed by the community. Curiously, the Electroneum hashrate has not changed significantly, but the difficulty has risen up to 100 times - resulting in a potential network slowdown. It is unknown how many ASICs are mining, or if they will continue to mine and produce enough blocks at the new difficulty level.
But now, difficulty has grown again, and apparently, some ASICs have been pointed to the network. In the meantime, the KuCoin wallet for Electroneum is in maintenance again. There is also a backlog of transactions on the mobile app.
The price of ETN remains depressed, and despite recovering by some 20% over the past week, it has slid again, down 8% overnight to $0.012. The most optimistic predictions for ETN see the coin costing a few dollars, but for now, the asset trades on very low volumes, and the lack of enthusiasm keeps the price depressed.
!ETN!
But perhaps the biggest advancement for the Electroneum project is that there is an iOS wallet open for testing by invitation - a step in the direction of reaching more users. Some believed ETN would never reach Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) users, especially given that the company warned against using mobile devices for mining. However, the app was accepted to the Apple store for testing.
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