Let’s talk about ASIC mining

Why are you only concerned with them?

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Do you think we should Fork against these supposed equihash asics and if so why?

They will when you see a rack full of ASIC’s in their plants. The technologies are currently at parity between the larger and smaller operations. That will be centralization. Can joe/jane miner buy quantity of 100 or greater ASIC from bitmain? No. Can a larger plant? Yes. Once they do, being a small miner will be a money losing proposition and small miners will exit. A few small miners will buy their allowed 1 ASIC, but that wont be even 10% of the current small time mining pool based on prior ASIC implementations (based on scrypt, cryptonight).

Either way. Make a decision.

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There is a possible scenario that scares me.
Assuming the Zcash team has a defined position Yes to ASIC and They don’t speak up THEN
This is privileged possession of information (like inside trading).

No one else without sure ASIC is ok (even large farms) will order the Z9 because if a fork is coming you lose all the money.

But people with privileged information will order it and will be devastating.

If this scenario is happening so this is really non honest. It is a fraud I say.

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So it’s here

Any word on the way forward?

Wow, look @ the specs: Power consumption: 300W Hashrate: 10k Sol/s ± 5%

That would be equivalent to 25 GTX 1070’s costing over $9000, and power usage of 2500W.

No wonder it has been a pain in the ass to try to compete, they have been running these for months.

CHANGE THE ALGORITHM NOW until you figure a new plan . Let’s find out how much of the network hash Bitmain owns. Be different than Ethereum, please don’t just “do nothing and wait and see…”

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I’ve been mining Zcash the day it was released, i am at a cross-road.

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I know alot of users have just seen that Bitmain has opened pre-sales for ASICs that can be used for Equihash algorithm coins like Zcash. Some of you are disappointed with this news and have lots of questions.

The current state of the ASIC resistance conversation is: still being debated

Several Zcash Developers are for ASIC resistance and others like Zooko are trying to get hard facts/data about what is better for the coin long term. And there are different proposals (like multi-mining) or changing the Equihash parameters that need to be examined. One thing that seems to be a common conclusion is that the Zcash Developers don’t have time/resources or want to risk mistakes to add an extra hard fork before Sapling comes in: Overwinter - Zcash

This thread is one place where discussion is happening as well as on Zcash Foundation GitHub: Create asicresistance_ballot.md by amiller · Pull Request #1 · ZcashFoundation/Elections · GitHub

I ask that you please keep on-topic and remain respectful of others opinions that may differ from your own. The debate about ASICs with Zcash is ongoing, but has certainly become more urgent than before.

_It should also be noted that I do not work for Zcash Company and don’t represent thier opinions, I’m a Moderator, here to provide information for users and keep the fourm rules: https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/faq_

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A decision is what people are asking for. How many months will it take to make a decision? Yes, this conversation has been going on for months. Clearly the early on stated objectives for the Z project seem to be at peril based on the indecisive nature of current management. The miners want guidance. This is not unreasonable, nor something to be addresses at this late of a date without urgency.

The conversation here has been on topic, well the last few days of it. I think what you are seeing as people being disrespectful is those people realizing they have no vote or stake in this project, and that the goalposts have moved. Since you want to invoke respect, respectful is also NOT changing things on the group you are leading. Especially when you have made prior project goals and statements that lead that group to believe the exact opposite of what you are now contemplating. That is actually disrespectful, unless you have a very good reason for changing your mind.

Any leader would recognize what is going on right now is how you brew a mutinous bunch of people in short order. I will AGAIN say it. @Zooko should step down if he cant make a decision or enact a mechanism to allow a vote so we can have a decision.

I will also not relent until I get an answer on this:

Did you have or have you had any contact with Bitmain or any other ASIC manufacturer, any of Bitmain or other ASIC manufacturers subsidiaries or agents regarding strategy, implementation, timing, pricing, acceptance of any hardware based ASIC mining equipment?

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yep, looking for best solution is ok, but the one debated already proven, there’re indeed ASIC for equihash now, and bitmain don’t even clean it before they post the picture, look how dusty the fan on their pic, been running for months eh? and here we’re waiting for best ‘decision’ until we don’t know when, while bitmain got less and less to nothing to lose at the end because they mined enough zec to cover everything they spent

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Translation of the developer comments above, is “we don’t have time to deal with ASIC’s”. I don’t see a point of trying to persuade them as these coins are big business now and deem this irrelevant to their goals. Ethereum and Zcash are too big to do anything for the little guy that supported them from the beginning. Us GPU guys will just have to move on to find the “next big thing.” We’ve “raised another kid” and sent them off into the world…

On another note, for my GPU brethren: It took Bitcoin Gold less than 24 hours to announce they are changing algorithm & a list of coins to mine now that Zcash bit the dust:

(Non ASIC Mining Coins)
Zcoin, RavenCoin, Vertcoin , MonaCoin (I think), XMR (Monero) , BTG . Also, there is BurstCoin if you have lot’s of storage it uses hdd for POW. Please post/msg me any more coins you know of that are non-ASIC-ted.

To the rest of you, good luck in the Bitmain arms race. That game is no fun to play, and they always win. Been there, done that…

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What it boils down to is … asic resistance or not … This is the reason I went for my Nvidia setup … Equahash Zcash Asic resistance… basically these few in control at zcash are keeping all us miners on a little line of hope that eventually they will keep to their word of being asic resistant. To be honest the longer this talking and thinking and trying to prove this or that go’s on the more I’m thinking abandon ship… rather jump on the x16r/s bandwagon, or even on the monero at least they looking after their community, those that brought them to where they are now, with good fast and open minded decisions to the benefit of their coin and also their user-base.

Saying we have no time or to busy to keep to our word is no excuse in my opinion

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Monero recently forked to remove ASIC miners.

Is anyone here going to contend that Monero network is somehow worse off without ASIC miners?

I think most would agree that it’s much better off. The difficulty is much lower, which makes it profitable for more people to mine. Moreover, the blocks are being found by public pools, instead of private pool. This implies that mining is a lot more decentralized now.

I also disagree with Zooko’s assertion that fighting ASICs is impossible in the long run – it’s the quite the opposite. All it takes is adjusting the proof of work algorithm slightly.

I see very few reasons to oppose a fork to preserve ASIC resistance. Zcash would be more decentralized and block rewards would go to more people. Moreover, I believe it would be much harder for GPU miners to form the kind of cartels that we’re seeing in Bitcoin, wherein miners will manipulate the block times and transaction costs to increase their profits at users’ expense. We see a disturbing example of this in December, and it’s reasonable to believe that Bitmain played a role.

It really seems like a clear cut issue to me: Zcash should modify its proof of work algorithm to prevent ASIC mining.

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Totally agree with you new coins to watch will be raven and even pigeon, though pigeon very fresh still but also on x16s I will be switching my rigs over to them as of today do believe zcash don’t care where their founders fee comes from.

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10k Sol with 300W is too OP for every f#cking miner
Milions invested from the lower class just thrown out the window. We are not talking bankers or people that can lose money… but youngsters (mostly under 30) that have invested month after month all their savings.

the question here is not asic resistant or not, but more: why sapling release can’t wait more time if there IS a priority.

What is so important in releasing sapling in Q3, why can’t it wait for another year(example)? Movies that come out later are usually better, wouldn’t more time on sapling release give a better impact?

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Just want to record my voice. I will quit mining zcash from today and will mine other algorithms and will never pay bitmain a dime to buy their ASIC miners after they started dumping them.

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Just got more respect for these guys will support them too https://twitter.com/bitcoingold/status/992085020142723073

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People do or don’t do anything for two reasons: One reason is the one they give to others to “justify” their choices. The other reason the is true reason for their actions. At this point, I am tending to consider there are reasons for @zooko’s resistance-to-asic-resistance posture that we are not being told. I find that to be unpalatable if it is true.

Home, hobby, small and indie miners - whatever you want to call us - will be shut out from using ASIC’s unless we are somehow lucky enough to get our hands on any. We’ll be the ones who have to move on, like others have said, to something else. When I am forced to do that, I’ll be left feeling that I’ve been told by zooko, “thanks, man…I appreciate you helping us along and contributing to us making millions, but piss off now…you can’t feed our greed fast enough now…”

While I have faith in ZCash as a crypto, the lack of support and respect for the very ones who got it this far is simply a kick in the crotch.

Here’s what I tell people helping me: “I got you”. I do it right away and I don’t mince my words and I act immediately. All this debating is just noise. Either do what others have done and say you support the ones who are mining it or just simply be real and admit that your agenda isn’t helped any longer by us and that we no longer serve your purpose.

For a guy who putatively “lived in in his car for a time”, you’d think you’d be a little more connected to the little guys who are just trying to better their own lives, too.

/end rant.

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seems awfully coincidental how it just kind of popped up today and also how I can find no other news stories about it

well i want to share my vision about what to happen to me at least

1.my gpu rig, my lifetime investment will stop producing
2.all coin mined will lose a lot of value due to dumping
3.my family lose their trust to me, because i’m the one convinced them to choose this path (asic resistance value)
4. i got no support left to even mine other coin despite all times spent mining zec and it ends badly

this is frustrating looking at how hard it is for zcash to take a decision while others already on a solid decision, well regrets never come at the beginning tho, got to deal with it no matter how hurts it is.

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