Folks are litigious. They have no liability and can make whatever statements they want and reverse them tomorrow if they want. Anyone who’d try to “sue” them would be laughed out of the court.
They have no standing and that would be their basis for a motion to dismiss. Moreover, a business is allowed to make new decisions based on new facts which emerge in the marketplace. Even if the lack of standing hurdle could be cleared - which is cannot - the pleading would still fail since all businesses are allowed to make new decisions as time goes on…a the claim of a valid court case is patently absurd.
I’ve read thousands of US cases and represented myself in court on a number of occasions and have paid many attorneys hundreds of thousands of dollars as well. Know the law, otherwise [moderation edit by @daira: comment that could be interpreted as disrespectful of others’ opinions deleted]. If you think you have standing, go press in court. I get amused when people say, “sue them…” Sure, go ahead. This is off topic anyhow…
The real issue is the threat to miners’ privacy. If the very people have to chooses between their own wallet and their own privacy they are forced into a Hobson’s Choice and such an expectation is untenable when the very core of ZCash’s Principals is the assurance of privacy during the entire use experience.
@zooko and team cannot allow this encroachment, not even an inch. Fork now or forever regret it. Be assured you will be served a shit sandwich if you do not act, act now, and act with real purpose to demonstrate your true loyalty to the ideals of this project and to show you can lead and not just fret about problems.
These recent developments over time since the issue of ASICs came up show that some real professional leadership is necessary. Just because someone has talent in one area does not mean they have talents in others. If it were me, I would bring in a squad of some real hardcore corporate executives and run this thing like the business it is instead of some pseudo-feely-do-good-for-all-trying-to-be-a-business-too operation like it is appearing to become…
Siacoin’s approach could be paraphrased to, “let’s brick the ASICs that beat us to market to ensure profit for our customers who are suing us” shows everything that is wrong with that project. Further, what they are doing is not “open hardware”, it’s a monopoly on selling hardware for their centralized storage coin. Meanwhile they are also increasing their dev fees? The entire situation there is a clear money-grab which could end up crashing the Siacoin price. Zcash is above that sort of reddit-poll driven consensus. In my humble opinion, we shouldn’t use Sia as an example for anything.
What I believe Zcash should do is expedite and finalize research on GPU-only algorithms and see if it is possible to safely fork when a solid development window presents itself. I’m fully against trusting Bitmain further and I’m untrustworthy of other ASIC manufacturers at the moment as well.
@phakov I respectfully disagree, and yes it is off topic, so let’s leave it at that.
This really isn’t as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. You could still purchase from Bitmain through an intermediary. You’re actually better off doing that anyways, as you can usually negotiate better prices and shipment dates.
@paige When the Zcash Foundation Community Governance Panel voted against making ASIC resistance a priority, they also voted in favour of changing the PoW algorithm to one that was more energy efficient (not ASIC resistant) by the end of 2020. Here are the ballot results.
Thanks for clarifying the source. To be clear, this is a Zcash Foundation governance panel and has no relationship to any Zcash Company stance. There has been no public statement about the year 2020 or changing the PoW beyond the statement on ASICs published a couple months ago.
Anyways, this is getting off-topic but I just wanted to clarify.
Why are we still sucking at the tit of bitmain. Support the competitor innosilicon A9. The over priced so you can use coupons should not sheep us into the use of a centralised source when the competitor is offering a better efficient product for a competitive price.
You want competition to drive the price down so they compete, you want more makers then you need to like spreading the hash spread your cash.@vgm@phakov@root
We do have a choice and it isn’t going back to 30 cents on a 1080TI it is to stop being narrow sighted and see the forest behind the trees
What is done is done unfortunately. The important thing to take away from the recent events is the lessons learned, and I don’t mean “BITMAIN is EVIL!!!”, the KYC implementation could very easily be the Chinese Government forcing them to do so, or maybe even the US since they have/are opening mining operations in the US as well. We don’t exactly know what is driving this. I’m not saying every point made isn’t valid, they are, but lets not completely panic either. Capture what is really important, new risks that nobody saw coming have come into play, and they have some serious consequences if left unchecked (A list of every miner, and how much equipment they have, and where they are located).
I’m more interested in knowing “What is going on for this to happen” right now. I’m the first person to call out Bitmain for doing questionable things…but even I have a hard time believing they would do this without someone really pressuring them to do so. One of the “cons” regarding ASIC somewhat comes to fruition with this…the majority of the equipment comes from China, could this be the government exerting their influence as some have suggested already?? This was one of the concerns during the debates.
Good find, gives some explanation as to what is going on…but unlikely to apply to ASIC mining since they don’t appear to fall into any of the restricted categories.
I dont pretend to know what the PRC thinks
Bitmain knows if theyre applicable because their actions would basically say that
And the penalties are so steep that nobody in their right mind would want to find out maybe or not
Ill fix those links up there (I thought there was another one)
It does list “electronics and semiconductor”
Those PDFs are basically the same, one is just a more current version closer to the final draft and the other is basically commenting on it
Don’t worry, we probably disagree about the timeline. I still think due diligence should be done before a PoW algorithm change. I just think there is actually a reason to make it happen now aside from GPU owner conflicts of interest.
Yeah I saw that, but I think it’s geared toward components, not a finished product. The US has export restriction language along the same lines as well to cover down on components that are sensitive for national defense/security (along the lines of dual purpose items (military/commercial value). Not surprising really to see roughly the same language in the Chinese version(s).
Either way whatever it is for KYC the IPO means to me something is wrong that they need outside money and I never liked them and their market saturation idea nor the manipulation of currency to effect their own end goal. That is why we got away from banks in the crypto world.
So why would I support the bitmain enemy? Oh because with a coupon I can save a $100 on the upfront price when over 4 months I would have save more than that on power just a complete no brainer than people have not sat done and done the math. For about $100 more I would gladly aid to help another maker gain a foothold which will help spread the cash like we try to spread the hash but also create competition.
Just in generally: For buyers that paid in US$ (for sure the majority) so far actually nothing changes. All the info they require for the KYC is allready provided by the bank the transfer is made, even more as it includes the bank account as well.
Means for these customers nothing really changes. I personally don’t have any problems with KYC and gave out that info anyway by now to 30+ exchanges, ebay, paypal, wherever not. But i agree, others may have a problem with it for whatever reason.
Thinking about it, every custom office has that info as well as for sure there is a database that includes all packages received from a given foreign manufactor when custom fees/VAT are paid when importing.
Having in mind that all mining equipement is produced in china, no matter if asic or gpu. When i buy GPU’s i as well have to fill out the guarantee and give some personal info, expect the photo of ID.
If someone wants really privacy than POS should be the solution. No hardware, no KYC, available to everybody, not shiffting money to china only, more independent, just the best solution for real privacy. Zcash should put its effords toward a fair POS solution and forget slowly but surely about POW, Asics & gpu, just to be ahead of others and not behind others. Including securing maximum privacy with POS as well.
How do I get the coins in the first place to use to stake with? let alone enough of them to actually make a stake.
PoS is not a solution it just transfers the point of failure, it is still keeps a single kyc failure point.
This is probably not relevant. cryptographic hardware is one of the most regulated import/export industries there is. (it is up there with biohazard/nuclear waste) if govt wanted to stop import/export, it would be stopped. I think Shawn’s post is the most realistic. They are probably doing it to appease the usa.
As much as I love this idea, and am a solid supporter of it I don’t think that it is realistically feasible anymore.
Also this cannot be done by a central body like zcash co. it would introduce the exact same point of failure. It would have to be an open hardware standard. And as someone else pointed out hardware is not a good business for zcash co to be in. it is to specialised and too cut throat. The best software engineers don’t make the best hardware engineers, in fact it can be more of a hinderance than a help.
There really is no easy answer. I would love to hear the conversations they are having about this at zcash co. it seems again @daira is the people champion and the voice of reason. thank you!
