Ethash
Ethash was Ethereum's memory-hard proof-of-work mining algorithm before The Merge; some Ethereum-family chains still use variants.
- Also known as
- ethhash
Ethash is the proof-of-work algorithm Ethereum used from launch until The Merge in 2022. It was designed to be memory-hard, making mining depend heavily on memory bandwidth as well as computation.
Ethash derives from Dagger-Hashimoto and uses a dataset called the DAG that miners must access while searching for valid blocks. The dataset grows over time, which historically made older low-memory GPUs unsuitable for mining.
Ethereum no longer uses Ethash because it now uses proof of stake. Some Ethereum-family networks, such as Ethereum Classic with modified parameters, continue to use Ethash-like proof-of-work algorithms.
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