The Dash network’s mining hashrate has reached a new all-time high, outpacing relative growth by key competitors.
The total hashpower securing Dash’s network of miners reached a new all-time high today, attaining 4.097 petahashes at time of writing. This new high has been steadily increasing this year after April’s record of 3.2385 petahashes surpassed the previous high set in November of 2018. Today’s high also represents a 170% increase over the hashrate one year ago of 1.5163 petahashes. This represents significant growth in investment and security for the network, particularly over a time period where the coin’s price, usually a correlating factor with hashrate, has not gone up proportionally.
Slower growth with Litecoin, negative growth with Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV
Dash’s hashrate gains stand in contrast to its closest payment coin competitors over the same time period. Litecoin reached a hashrate of 454.943 terahashes at time of writing, up from 278.421 one year ago. This represents a growth of 63.4%, a notable increase during the bear market, however still significantly lower than Dash’s 170% growth over the same time period.
Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV have fared worse over the same timeframe, and have actually seen negative gains in hashrate. At time of writing, Bitcoin Cash’s hashrate rests at 1.893 exahashes, which is down from 4.7701 exahashes a year ago today, a decrease of 60.3%. This decrease, however, does not account for the chain split with Bitcoin SV, which significantly affected the hashrate. Counting from the clear divergence of hashrate on the 18th of December of last year, Bitcoin Cash is up from 1.0205 exahashes, an 85% increase over that time period. Counting from that same date, Bitcoin SV has seen a decrease from 930.7924 petahashes on the 18th of December to 746.76 petahashes today, a 19.77% decrease. While both Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV saw a downtrend in hashrate since the beginning of April, Bitcoin Cash saw a net increase since the chain split due to a previous hashrate bump, which SV did not experience. Both Bitcoin forks noted relative downtrends in contrast with Litecoin and Dash.
Also worthy of note is that both Bitcoins Cash and SV share the SHA-256 mining algorithm with Bitcoin, in contrast with Dash and Litecoin’s X11 and Scrypt, respectively. This means that ample hashrate exists on the Bitcoin chain to attack Bitcoin Cash at any moment, while both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash chains may be able to muster enough hashrate to attack SV. While a 51% attack is unlikely due to miner priorities, this further compounds concerns of decreasing network security on both Bitcoin forks.
Dash’s security model increasing on both fronts
The security of the Dash network is increasing across both angles, mining hashrate and total masternode counts. The current active masternode count stands at 4,866 at time of writing, showing a consistent uptrend since the beginning of June of just over 4,700. With the recent activation of ChainLocks, using the masternode network to lock in the first-seen block on the network. This makes the Dash network imprevious to 51% mining attacks. A growing masternode count combined with a growing hashrate continues to improve on Dash’s security on two separate fronts.
