Hi NiceHashers!

Last week we added Autolykos to our Hashpower Marketplace. We are grateful that many of you loved this new addition! In this blog post we will take a closer look at Ergo, the cryptocurrency you can mine by purchasing Autolykos at NiceHash.

What is Ergo?

Ergo (ERG) is a cryptocurrency that supports the creation of smart contracts in its transactions. It aims to provide an efficient, yet secure and easy way to implement financial smart contracts. These smart contracts allow Ergo to support different dApps which will execute in a predictable manner and with known costs.

Because it utilizes Proof-of-Work (PoW), Ergo can be mined. However, in contrast to Bitcoin mining, Ergo miners can use GPUs instead of ASICs. This means that anyone with a powerful enough PC can contribute to the network, by mining. In fact, if you chose to mine its algorithm, Autolykos, with NiceHash, you are supporting Ergo’s network!

Initially, Ergo’s PoW algorithm was designed to be pool-resistant, meaning that it was very difficult for miners to mine together as one. However, this unpopular non-outsoursability feature was switched off in a recent network upgrade.

In Ergo, the coin supply is capped at under 100 million ERG and that unlike many other PoW cryptocurrencies, the block rewards steadily decrease after the first two years, instead of in a big “halving” event. The block rewards started at 75 ERG, falling to 0 in a period of 8 years, after which a fixed supply will be reached.

Interestingly, by collecting storage fees, miners return lost coins to circulation preventing a steady decrease of circulating supply due to lost keys as is the case with Bitcoin.

The recent Hardening Upgrade

At the block number 417,792, Ergo had a hardfork, meaning that modifications were made to the rules of Ergo’s blockchain. The most drastic change brought by this upgrade was probably the PoW algorithm switch to Autolykos v2.0. This improved algorithm allows miners to gather up and mine in pools.

These algorithm changes proved to be beneficial for the short-term profitability of the coin, with many community members speculating that Ergo will fill the void Ethereum is going to leave, once it finally adopts Proof-of-Stake. At this point in time, this is hard (if not impossible) to predict!

Do you think that this will be the algorithm to overtake in the long run? Discuss this and many other cryptocurrency topics with our community members in our official Discord Server and Subreddit.

Note: At the time of writing, Autolykos is not available on NiceHash Miner and there is no ETA for when this feature will arrive. You can still mine Autolykos by connecting your miner directly to our platform and using our Stratum Generator to generate the stratum addresses.