Monero: Hard Hashrate Cap Not Feasible — Use Decentralization Instead

I don’t think developers can enforce a hard 5% cap on any single Monero miner at the protocol level. Mining is permissionless and anonymous, so a miner or pool operator can split hashrate across many identities or endpoints to evade any cap.

Any mechanism that required miners to identify themselves (signed miner IDs, registry, IP-based limits) would undermine Monero’s privacy and decentralization and would be trivial to bypass. Protocol rules can’t reliably prove “one miner” versus “many miners.”

A more realistic approach is to encourage decentralization: support P2Pool-style mining, maintain ASIC-resistant PoW, promote client features that discourage huge centralized pools, and use community pressure and incentives rather than an on-chain hard cap.