Modern trends and the future of Monero mining
The phenomenon of Monero (XMR) lies in the fact that interest in its mining is driven not by speculative hype, but by the resilience of its ecosystem and the growing demand for privacy in the crypto market, especially amid the widespread introduction of KYC*, including in the DeFi market.
* Know Your Customer (KYC) is the process of verifying users' identities before providing them with financial services.
How Monero mining works
Launched in 2014, Monero (XMR) became the first privacy-focused cryptocurrency in the Web3 industry, aimed primarily at user confidentiality, unlike other public blockchains that displayed all transaction data and their addresses.
In the Monero protocol, mining is based on the RandomX algorithm, optimized explicitly for mining cryptocurrency using a central processing unit (CPU). The Monero protocol is designed to make mining on a graphics processing unit (GPU) or specialized device (ASIC) inefficient — this helps protect the network from centralization.
This makes solo mining Monero accessible, since users can mine XMR using home PCs without having to purchase expensive equipment, unlike Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Bitcoin Cash.
According to MoneroStats, 78% of the Monero network's hashrate is generated by central processors, 18% by graphics cards, and less than 4% by unknown devices (possibly FPGA* or hidden ASIC miners).
* FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) in mining is a programmable chip that can be reconfigured for different mining algorithms.
Monero mining methods in 2025
Monero mining pool
To mine Monero, most miners prefer to join pools. This is due to the constantly increasing requirements for computing nodes, which makes the probability of mining cryptocurrency solo decrease over time. Solo miners find it difficult to compete with large pools whose hashrate is hundreds and thousands of times greater.
Pools distribute income among miners according to their share of computing power, while charging a small fee. As of August 2025, the total Monero network hashrate is 5.41 Gh/s. More than half of this figure (2.95 Gh/s) belongs to the three largest mining pools.
According to Poolbay, the distribution of Monero mining pools is as follows:
- SupportXMR — 1.24 GH/s;
- Nanopool — 1.16 GH/s;
- HashVault — 0.55 GH/s;
- P2Pool — 0.27 GH/s;
- MoneroOcean — 0.25 GH/s;
- C3Pool — 0.24 GH/s.
Despite the strong dominance of large Monero mining pools such as SupportXMR and Nanopool, experts forecast growth in the number of small pools.
Monero solo mining
Solo mining implies mining XMR alone without participating in a pool. In this case, when a block is successfully found, the miner receives 100% of the reward.
However, if a solo miner's hashrate is too low, it will be unlikely to find a block on their own. For example, according to MoneroHash calculations, for a miner with a hashrate of 10 KH/s (less than 0.01% of the total Monero network figure), the chances of finding a block are approximately once every 73 years.
As a rule, solo mining is practiced by owners of large CPU farms built from modern processors totaling more than 100 cores. According to expert estimates, in 2026, the share of solo miners in the Monero network will be less than 0.4%.
Mining on VPS and cloud servers
Some users, instead of buying their equipment, rent virtual private servers (VPS) or use the computing resources of cloud services such as AWS, Hetzner, or Microsoft Azure. Rented servers can be used both for Monero solo mining and for pool mining.
Geography of Monero (XMR) mining
According to TokenInsight analytics, European and Asian mining pools lead the Monero network, accounting for more than half of Monero's hashrate. However, in the event of tighter regulation shortly, the picture may change significantly.
Due to cheap electricity and light regulation, experts expect the share of hashrate to grow in regions of Africa and Southeast Asia.
Monero mining trends 2025–2026
Developers continue to optimize the RandomX algorithm further to reduce the efficiency of GPU and ASIC devices. At the end of 2025, the release of RandomX v2 is expected, with improved protection against specialized mining hardware.
By optimizing software, developers also aim to reduce the energy consumption of Monero mining, which will have a positive environmental impact. As of 2024, the energy consumption of the Monero network per XMR mined was about 6.2 MWh, and by next year, it is planned to reduce this figure to 5.5 MWh.
Experts also predict the development of mobile and ARM mining: the emergence of mining applications on smartphones (for example, Monerujo CPU miner), as well as on specialized hardware such as Raspberry Pi and NAS devices.
Analysts note that this method is inefficient, but it may become a future trend for micro-mining. Also in 2025, analysts expect growing interest in micro-mining in IoT* networks.
* The Internet of Things, or IoT, is a set of physical devices combined into a single network.