With Bitmain releasing their new CryptoNight ASIC miner, coin developers have had to make some tough calls. In the case of Monero, a hard fork was introduced to nullify this ASIC threat altogether. As is usually the case with hard forks, new currencies have popped up out of nowhere. Below are the four new “offspring” of Monero, although it’s doubtful that any of them will gain traction.
Monero Classic
It is only normal that we see a currency with “Classic” in the title. Ever since Ethereum hard forked and Ethereum Classic was created, this has become a rather popular trend. In the case of Monero Classic, the new coin’s developers dislike the algorithm change, as they fear it will lead to more centralization. Monero Classic claims that 80% of the hashrate of Monero will follow it in the future, although it remains to be seen how that will play out.
Monero-Classic
Not to be confused with the currency detailed above, Monero-Classic – or XMC – was developed by a group of people who have been involved in cryptocurrency for quite some time now. The main reason for creating this forked currency was that the team doesn’t agree that specialized mining machines are necessarily useless.
Monero-Classic wants to give equal airtime to both pro and anti-ASIC sentiments. It’s an interesting approach, albeit not necessarily one that will prove popular among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Its website claims Monero-Classic has a multitude of partners in place, although it is unclear how things will go from here on out.
Monero (Not the Real One)
There are now two GitHub repos for Monero, which will undoubtedly confuse a lot of people. The repository found on the XmanXU Github page appears to be a nice clone of that of the actual Monero, although it remains to be seen what name this project will receive. After all, it is still being called Monero at this point, a situation that will hopefully change in the very near future.
Monero 0
Pronounced “Monero Zero”, this new hard-forked currency wants to remove itself from the actual Monero development branch. The latest hard fork has been the proverbial last straw for the people backing the Monero 0 project. Their vision revolves around using Satoshi’s Proof of Work for the foreseeable future, which seems to welcome the ASIC miners causing centralization in the mining ecosystem.
It is also interesting to note Monero 0 doesn’t position itself as a hard fork of Monero. Instead, it claims to be the original Monero which goes back to version 11. There is no premine, and existing Monero holders will have an equivalent balance of Monero 0. The team will not implement replay protection, as they feel that doing so is up to the Monero developers. It’s an interesting stance, to say the very least.
