Nonce Distribution Patterns Being Shown by Monero and Ethereum

According to a recent analysis, some interesting patterns are showing on the nonce distribution of both Monero and Ethereum. 

The latest report from CoinMetrics states that on applying the nonce analysis to Monero when the network’s difficulty and the upcoming hard forks were overlaid, it was made clear that all three PoW updates led to a decline in difficulty.

On top of this, two of the upgrades prevented the pre-existing nonce patterns but another significant factor is the introduction of the same nonce patterns that were also associated with a notable rise in the difficulty of the network.

The study highlighted:

“Simply by observing these nonce distribution patterns against difficulty and PoW-adjusted forks, we can potentially see the effectiveness of the first fork in stopping the first generation of dedicated hardware. Additionally, we can see the rapidity at which some miners came back with a second generation of hardware after the second fork, which was again thwarted with a third fork.”

Ethereum’s nonce space is different to Monero and has hardly indicated any nonce patterns or irregularities. However, after looking deeper there is a different story completely. 

As per AMB Crypto, Ethereum’s histogram shows some darker horizontal lines at the bottom of the area following the 7,000,000 block number and slanting lines showing up originating from the bottom of the space between numbers 2,000,000 and 4,000,000. 

According to the analysis, these lines were likely the “signature of a simple nonce-picking strategy: starting at 0 and incrementing the nonce at each try.”

“Starting at around block 1,380,000 the middle bits of the nonce started to get set to 0 much more often than the other bits. Over time, other bits started having non-random uses too. What makes this interesting is that a cursory glance at the overall nonce distribution or histogram doesn’t reveal this pattern because tweaking the middle bits doesn’t visibly affect the nonce’s histogram.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!