Monero and the Battle for Decentralization: from CryptoNight to RandomX

In 2013, the CryptoNote protocol introduced CryptoNight, an algorithm built to democratize mining: anyone could mine with a regular CPU or GPU, avoiding the ASIC dominance that centralized Bitcoin’s hash power.

#Monero adopted it in 2014, but by 2017–2018, manufacturers like Bitmain had developed ASICs capable of breaking that balance. The community fought back with regular hard forks and variants such as CryptoNightV7 and CryptoNightR, defending decentralization through constant adaptation.

The real breakthrough came in 2019 with RandomX, designed by the community (led by tevador and hyc). This new algorithm uses random code execution and memory-intensive operations, making ASIC development economically unfeasible.

As of 2025, Monero remains CPU-friendly, proving that #privacy and #Decentralization aren’t slogans — they’re coded into the protocol itself.