Monero hard forked to version 12 of its protocol yesterday. The upgrade is a hard fork but it will not affect your XMR in any way.

At block number 1546000 (08.20 UTC on Friday), the software upgrade of the cryptocurrency went live, according to data from blox.minexmr.com.

The first change will be a twitch to the proof-of-work (PoW) system in a move to curb any potential threat of ASIC’s (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) and preserve ASIC resistance.

The fork will also increase the current minimum ring size from 4 to 7 increasing the security of the network. Ring size relates to the total number of possible signers to a ring signature. For a ring size of 7, this means that there will be seven cryptographic signatures seen in the group, but only one of them is correct.

Following the example once set by Ethereum Classic, some users are continuing on the pre-hard fork Monero blockchain… though in this case not as a single project. Now there is Monero Classic, Monero 0(XMZ), Monero Original (XMO) and a second project by the name Monero Classic (XMC)

Monero-Classic

Led by a guy named PZ who calls himself an early Bitcoin evangelist and blockchain eco builder. They accept the existence of professional mining machines, specialized ASIC mining machines, which has become a common phenomenon in the industry. They think that having a professional machines doing the mining in Monero will greatly increase the network security.

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Monero Classic

The main message of Monero classic is that they believe that the developers changing the proof of work creates more centralisation and harms decentralisation. They clam that around 80% of the current Monero hash rate agrees with their stance and refuses to follow the POW change. That is why they declare in advance that they will maintain the original software which follows the original rules.

Monero 0

They are an organization that have decided to break off from the Monero Project to start Monero 0. They’ve decided that the Monero Project’s strategy to continuously hard fork is no longer a stable or a sane strategy. They believe that Satoshi’s Proof of Work is the only mechanism for decentralized consensus.

The so-called “network upgrades” that are centrally mandated by the Monero Project are a trojan horse designed to compromise the effectiveness of Proof of Work in the Monero network. Monero 0 is not a fork, it is the original Monero.

Monero Original

Not much is known about Monero Original or the people behind it.

The project has a GitHub, and it sent press releases to several outlets. This press release did not contain much information, but it did include a statement from the “lead developer of Monero Original team”:

“Monero has always been about freedom of choice, about diversity and about the strong community behind it. We are providing the Monero fans [with] a possibility to support the iconic coin and stay on the original chain. Monero Original team stands for diversity, which is a logical marker of evolution. We are excited to see our favourite coin mature, and we are even more excited to help [in] keeping this diversity,” says the lead developer of Monero Original team.