Ergo miners approve EIP 37

Ergo's miners have approved adjusting its difficulty adjustment algorithm (EIP 37). Consequently, the chain has hard-forked at a block height of 844,673.

#Ergo miners have passed EIP-37 and the hard fork has taken place at block height 844,673 ~ Ergo Foundation

The hard fork seems to have taken effect immediately as Ergo's hashrate dropped significantly.

Ergo hashrate drops after EIP 37 hard fork

This drop was only natural following the difficulty adjustment which resulted in a drop in Ergo's network difficulty from 16.61 to 8.31.

Ergo network difficulty drop after EIP 37 hard fork

This change should offer relief to Ergo's miners who have been operating at a loss in recent days. Ergo's mining difficulty saw a sharp rise during Ethereum's merge. In a space of 6 days (September 15th ~ 21st), Ergo's difficulty spiked from 3.42 to 21.67.

Ergo network difficulty spike during ETH PoS merge

Zooming out over a longer period (i.e 1 year), the current difficulty for Ergo is still high. Taking into account the prevailing bear market and uncertain macros, Ergo miners may still be in for tough times.

Ergo's difficulty long term trend, courtesy of (2miners.com)

Nonetheless, there is joy among the Ergo mining community about the implications of EIP 37. Some of them have expressed their relief following the rediscovered profitability.

Congratulations ERGO @ergoplatformorg for a successful EIP launch. So happy to see you back in the top 4 again. ~ @DiscoCryptos

Ergo's ERG token price seems to be doing well on the daily, registering at least an 8.1% increase over the last 24 hours. It rose from below $2.61 to a high of $2.98 on early Tuesday. ERG has experienced a sharp correction since ETH merge, resulting in over a 25% drop in price. Wiping most of the gains it had seen leading up to the merge.

Other than EIP-37, the Ergo community is exploring ways to make ERG mining more friendly. One of those ideas is developing a way to incentivize miners' loyalty to the chain. Miners commit their hashpower to Ergo for n consecutive epochs would receive bonus rewards.

These rewards would shield such miners from losses they face when other miners hop to other profitable chains when the difficulty spikes and rewards take a dive.

These ideas are still young and the community is chiming in to evaluate & improve them.