[ad_1]
Monero (XMR) does a great job by hiding from prying eyes. It's a private currency, after all. But even if it is expected to be one of the big winners in 2019, new evidence suggests that Monero's business is declining, partly due to last month's hard blow.
The data collected by Monero Blocks, a block explorer for the XMR network, found that the growth rate of the blockchain was significantly slowed. While the network grew by around 3.2 GB in December 2017 – the all-time high – it managed to reach only slightly above 1.2 GB in October. It was also the slowest blockchain growth for Monero since February 2017, more than 20 months ago.
In the previous nine months of this year, Monero has normally managed to grow by more than 2 GB. The average growth rate of the blockchain has so far been around 1.79 GB. February and March were the only two months – in addition to October – in which the growth of the blockchain fell below 2 GB. Nonetheless, it grew at around 1.7 GB, almost 400 MB more than in October.
Monero activity
A familiar source with the matter said Crypto Briefing that the decline in the growth of the blocks indicated a "Definite" decline in trading activity. Part of this, they explain, was due to strong market corrections from the start of the year. Networking is down because prices are low; no coin has escaped unharmed.
The source also suggested that a reduced activity could be the result of Monero's continued hostility against ASIC mining platforms. Last month's fork changed the hashing algorithm, preventing ASIC XICs from processing transactions on the network. "The forks of Monero to extract the miners ASIC drastically reduce the hashrate of the network and often the price follows the hashrate" the source said in an email exchange.
The XMR newsletter, Monero Moon, has covered the decline in blockchain growth in this week's issue, which was published on Monday. The problem also highlighted the milestone that Monero exceeded 1.7 billion blocks, four and a half years after the launch of the chain.
Monero Moon suggested that the "Remarkable" The decline in the growth rate is the result of Bulletproof, a protocol that simultaneously improves privacy and reduces the size of a transaction. This helped reduce "blockchain bloat", meaning that individual transactions take up less space within a block.
Is Monero bifurcated?
Another possible cause was ShapeShift's decision in mid-September to introduce Know-Your-Customer (KYC) controls. The trading platform, popular among Monero users, was forced to implement basic controls to continue operating in the United States. "Monero is often the winning currency for transactions of anonymity and Shapeshift has been a popular exchange for the exchange of value in Monero," the source said. "However, Shapeshift is moving towards KYC and Monero users generally do not like them."
A move away from a very popular XMR exchange source will probably have a knock-on effect. A decline in ASIC activity that increases block growth, as well as the extended bear market, will also have an impact on the number of Monero users.
The growth rate of XMR blocks is 361 MB for the first half of November. At the current rate, the Monero blockchain could grow by just over 700 MB for the whole month: far from where it was in December, and even lower than last month's performance.
Monero may have been swollen before the fork, hopefully it will not be reduced in November.
Disclaimer: the author is not invested in any cryptocurrency or token mentioned in this article, but holds investments in other digital resources.
[ad_2]Source link
