The dev community and the Core Team agree that the protocol is stable and mature enough and biannual hard forks are not necessary anymore. Furthermore, the ecosystem around Monero has grown exponentially during the years and frequent protocol changes would be increasingly hard to coordinate, could be detrimental to the growth of the ecosystem and to the user experience. Cherry on the top, the new algorithm @RandomX is ensuring long term ASIC-resistance, so regular changes are not needed anymore. Network upgrades will still be used to add important protocol improvements and consensus changes, but at a lower and less strict frequency (every 9-12 months). The last hard fork was on OctoberAugust 183th 20202.
The dev community and the Core Team agree that the protocol is stable and mature enough and biannual hard forks are not necessary anymore. Furthermore, the ecosystem around Monero has grown exponentially during the years and frequent protocol changes would be increasingly hard to coordinate, could be detrimental to the growth of the ecosystem and to the user experience. Cherry on the top, the new algorithm @RandomX is ensuring long term ASIC-resistance, so regular changes are not needed anymore. Network upgrades will still be used to add important protocol improvements and consensus changes, but at a lower and less strict frequency (every 9-12 months). The last hard fork was on August 13th 2022.
During the years the community has created a vast amount of informative content like articles and videos. Most of these videos are publicly available on platforms like YouTube. On this website we host a few videos that explain the fundamentals of Monero. To optimize their effectiveness, they should be viewed in sequence:
Don't worry, your coins are safe. To be able to spend them you only have to download and run the latest Monero software. You can use the @mnemonic-seed you previously saved to restore your wallet at any time. Note that hard forks in Monero are scheduled and non-contentious. Which means no new coin is created.
The Monero community has created a series of videos called "Breaking Monero", where potential Monero vulnerabilities are explored and discussed. There are 14 videos, with each exploring a different subject. Check out <a href="https://www.monerooutreach.org/breaking-monero/">the videos on monerooutreach.org</a>.
ASICs are basically special computers created to do only one job, contrary to normal computers, which are made for general purpose. This characteristic makes ASICs very efficient for @mining.
The problem is that these devices are very expensive and can be afforded by few. This leads to few entities owning a big amount of the hashrate of the network, which is a serious threat to the security of the network itself. For example, if big ASIC operators collude and manage to gain the majority of the hashrate of the network, they could arbitrarily reject transactions.
Monero fixes this problem by being ASIC-resistant: it uses an algorithm (@randomx) that strongly reduces the efficiency of ASICs, making them not profitable to build. Miners can use common consumer hardware, which allows them to compete fairly. The Monero network is currently protected by thousands of miners using 'regular' computers. This results in a network much harder to attack, no miner having significant advantage over other miners (they all use more or less the same hardware).
