One particular aspect of cryptocurrency which people love to talk about is mining. The process of validating transactions and minting new coins has boggled the minds of enthusiasts for some time now. As such, it’s always interesting to keep an eye on mining trends. Things are looking pretty solid for Ethereum in this regard, although there are some minor concerns as well.
EVOLUTION OF ETHEREUM’S NETWORK
According to recent statistics from Huobi, there are some interesting developments in the world of Ethereum mining. Despite the recent price drop, there is no shortage of people mining Ether. Whether this is because they expect the price to go up, or simply because ETH still remains more profitable to mine compared to other altcoins, is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the average Ethereum network hashrate has not declined in the slightest, although it seems to have flattened out a bit as of late.
From late March to early April, the Ethereum network hashrate increased by 0.72%. In the grand scheme of things, that may seem like a small gain, even though it further confirms people are still keeping a close eye on Ether as of right now. Some people claim that Bitmain has been mining massive amounts of Ether with its Ethereum ASIC miners over the past year and that it may soon begin to taper off. Those are merely rumors, though, and things may very well play out in a different manner.
On the mining pool front, things have remained largely the same for Ethereum. The distribution of hashpower is still unchanged, although ViaBTC has become a lot less popular all of a sudden. Again, this may be related to the Bitmain ASICs, although it is impossible to confirm such speculation at this point. We did see an increase in the number of blocks mined last week, which is rather interesting.
One worrisome sign is that Ethereum’s network saw as many as 43,005 unconfirmed transactions at one point. This is a lot higher compared to Bitcoin, although it remains a bit unclear what caused this sudden spike in the number of Ether transactions. It is important to note that this was clearly not a spam attack, as average transaction fees went down over the same period. Sending Ethereum still remains 80% cheaper than Bitcoin, which is a positive sign for this ecosystem.
Last but not least, there was a slight change in terms of reachable nodes. This applies not only to Ethereum, but also to Bitcoin. Both currencies sustained a decrease in the number of reachable nodes, even though Ethereum still has a lot more nodes overall. That situation is pretty interesting to keep an eye on, although there is no cause for alarm just yet.