Another Monero (XMR) Hard Fork: What Are The Changes

Monero (XMR) seeks to differentiate itself from other cryptocurrencies, focusing on privacy and security. The Monero network update was primarily aimed at improving these functions. The update proved to be successful, as it was reported on Twitter:

The scheduled protocol upgrade went successfully!

— Monero || #xmr (@monero) 9 марта 2019 г.

Monero hard fork took place at a block 1788000, and four fundamental network changes were implemented to improve privacy, security, and resilience to ASIC mining:

• changes in the dynamic block size algorithm to counter the “big bang” attack;
• a third PoW tweak (CryptoNight-R) to curb the use of ASICs currently present on the network, as well as future efforts. Thus, miners need to upgrade their software;
• dummy encrypted payment ID is now added to each transaction;
• The development team has shrunk the size of the amount encodings and using deterministic masks.

Monero ResearchLab considered these changes to be safe for implementation. After the hard fork, users were also notified via Twitter that over the next 24-48 hours they should expect slower block times.