Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Grin token has executed the project’s first backward-incompatible upgrade, commonly known as a hard fork. The hard fork was executed at the block height of 262,080 on Wednesday, July 17.
As per the official announcement, the executed hard fork is targeted towards promoting miner decentralization and discourage Grin mining via Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC). The latest upgrade also packs a new version of its Grin Wallet supported “bulletproof rewind scheme.”
Commenting on the hard fork, Grin developer John Tromp stated that the hard was planned even before the launch of the token. He further added that as per the pre-launch plan, the project would execute four hard forks in two years, one in every six months from launch. He further added,
In a classical fork, the chain can split into two mutually incompatible continuations. In Grin, there is no way to continue growing the ‘old’ chain since the old code refuses to accept any blocks past the [hard fork] height.
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The latest back upgrade didn’t cause a network split, he added, while the old network halted, compelling users to update software. Tromp, who is also the author of Cuckoo Cycle, also said that “no sign of any ASIC mining” was recorded in the 133 days of Grin mining.
We do know of several ASIC products planned to come out in summer. To the extent that any such ASICs have built-in support for Cuckaroo29, we want our tweak to brick that support.
Despite its plans for the upgrade dating prior to launch, the network first officially proposed the mainnet hard fork in the first week of June. After the network is hard forked, any transactions prior to it will not be recognized once a new mainnet version is launched.
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The Grin Token was launched in January 2019 and was based on the Mimblewimble protocol. This protocol was named after a witchcraft spell from the famous Harry Potter series of books and movies, which was used to tongue-tie the opponents.
