Topic: How is algorithm's review of currently popular? (Read 186 times)

Thanks for the correction about LBC.
And yeah, fasteness of SHA256 is main reason mining now so dominated by ASICs.

The Large Bitcoin Collider is searching for private keys that contain a balance, not a SHA-256 collision. One of the good things about SHA-256 though is that it's used a lot outside of cryptocurrencies as well, so the vested interests in knowing whether SHA-256 is still safe to use stretch beyond the crypto community.

Also worth noting is that different hashing algorithms serve different purposes -- depending on your point of view and use case, SHA-256's fastness is arguably also its downside.

I think main reason SHA256 is still popular is because it was tested through and through. No collisions was ever found (and there a lot of efforts were put into it, check out Large Bitcoin Collider), it is safe fast and known and what is most important - serves it's purpose well.

In general you can use any cryptographic hash function as part of your PoW scheme. "Cryptographic" being the important part, as there are also hash functions that are not cryptographically secure.

So what's being used? Let's take a look at our top 10 PoW mineable coins according to Coinmarketcap:

1) Bitcoin -- SHA-256, obviously

2) Ethereum -- Ethash (note: Is planning to switch to PoS)

3) Bitcoin Cash -- SHA-256

4) Litecoin -- Scrypt (note: Is already overtaken by ASICs)

5) Monero -- CryptoNight

6) Ethereum Classic -- Ethash

7) Bitcoin Gold -- Equihash

8) Zcash -- Equihash

9) Verge -- Multiple hashing algorithms: Scrypt, X17, Lyra2rev2, myr-groestl and blake2s

10) ByteCoin -- CryptoNight


Most alt coins try to select PoW schemes that would be hard to implement as an ASIC. In especially ambitious cases they try to select algorithms that make it hard for GPUs to gain an edge over CPUs as well. In many cases this is achieved by requiring a lot of working memory / RAM, which especially for ASICs represent a challenge. Given enough financial incentive though, even those PoW schemes sometimes get broken (eg. Scrypt).

So it's not really a question of pros and cons, but rather a question of how ASIC resistant the PoW scheme really is, which is hard to gauge without in-depth research of each particular hashing algorithm. If you feel particularly fancy you could even look for hashing algorithms that are likely to be quantum-proof, albeit that might be still be a bit too premature to evaluate for sure.

Note there's also a case for ASIC mining making a cryptocurrency more secure due to the requirement of dedicated hardware. However that's a different debate.



Thanks for the lulz :D

There are a lot of algorithms out there!
If you want to read more about SHA-256: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2
It is an hashing algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function




Pros and cons?
Please.. really read those two links: SHA-256 and Hash




I like Bubble sort (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_sort) and euclidean algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_algorithm) the most.

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You should ask clear questions.
'Algorithms' aren't just tied to cryptos. There are algorithms for everything.

Bitcoin uses hashing (SHA256) and signature algorithms (ECDSA).

I'd suggest you read yourself into cryptos a bit. Your questions are somehow odd. Googling helps a lot.

So from Bitcoin's SHA256, there are many algorithm out there so far.

What is those's brief overview features, pros, cons?

What is best algorithm and why?