This is were vision comes in and above statement needs to be answered are you for ASIC’s or not?
I think you’re missing the point.
It’s much better to have GPUs do the mining because more people will be able to earn the coins. Having more people being able to get Zcash coins is a good thing for Zcash.
The network will also be larger because far more people have GPUs. A larger network is more secure and more decentralized.
There is no “benefit” to ASICs, only downsides.
Also, there will never be any legitimate company like Nvidia or AMD that starts making and selling ASIC miners for cryptocurrency because creating ASIC miners is not interesting to the very talented people who work at these companies. There is a huge amount of adverse selection when it comes to people who choose to get into ASIC manufacturing.
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There is no point debating this as it is farce made by the ZcashCo they have no intention of changing their POW as it appears 60%-80%+ of Zcash hashrate is provided by ASIC’s and as been that way since July last year, don’t know if they have contracts with Bitmain, but I can assume their is collusion as these ASIC’s were probably being developed for Zcash Equihash before the launch of Zcash with the help of the Zcash Equihash creators, these people are dishonest and there is Karma (you watch).
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No I think its important to discuss on this thread.
As I have stated before I am against ASIC’s as they lead to control via regulation (specialized hardware can be regulated, general purpose hardware cannot).
However, FPGA’s are a completely different story from ASIC’s. Anyone can buy an FPGA, they are widespread and general purpose. They would be impossible to control via regulations as they are even more multipurpose than a GPU. I would be in favor of ASIC resistant and FPGA friendly Zcash.
But I am just a greedy GPU miner, so what do I know?
The way things stand now, I agree with you. I’m speaking from a purely hypothetical point of view, where Bitmain isn’t the “only” game in town. The problem is we are not there now, and we haven’t gotten any closer to that in 4 years of them dominating Bitcoin. Unless that suddenly changes then ASIC in the current environment will always be the greatest threat to decentralization.
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@bentusison I summarized the current status of Zcash Company’s position and Zcash Foundation position about a Fork away from ASICs in this thread: ASICs in Zcash Software / Proof of Work/ Proof of Stake/ Fork Discussion (I recommend reading through the links provided)
My understanding is that Overwinter and Sapling are the priority for the Zcash Core team therefore the chance of a Fork before those occur are slim to none. But the Zcash Foundation has decided to take the question on and see what can be done. If you want to discuss PoW further please feel free to join that thread.
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I doubt you would be satisfied even than. Having so many demands can’t hold in reality. There are so many flaws and unlogical wishes that it’s even science fiction. But even if your demands would be in place you (the gpu miner) would find another one.
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Right now on cryptonite you have 3 known different Asics (eventually more), all available on the free market and most even available by resellers in different Countries like Canada, Germany, … There is competition. Same on SHA156, scrypt, x11, on each algo are at very least 5 competitors, again, nobody cares and all the hashrate these generate is are written to Bitmain, just to keep the anti-asic argument valid.
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There will allways a forrunner, i’am not aware of whatever new product where at the same time 3 companies arise at the very same level. This hasn’t happened, isn’t happening, won’t happen in future. There is always in the beginning a company that is ahead, takes the risks, invests millions in R&D and whatever, not. All others at the beginning are running ups. Damn even in cryptocurrencies it’s the same. There is one Bitcoin and all others are altcoins, just because Bitcoin was the first, not much different by the way. Zcash price at this stage is even dependent from Bitcoin’s.
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In the real world and life, companies are competiting, that’s how it works. NO company in the world will give profit voluntary to another one. No, the other company has make investments, better design, better marketing, better anything to catch up, and that’s even a good thing, hence it’s called competition.
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Watch that offer now from ePIC, they want to produce an ASIC but not wanting to take ANY risk. While i’am all for it, they want to produce an Asic on equihash, but do not want to take a single risk?
Here the original comment from ePic: " The foundation has control over forking at will making any investment into hardware risky hence ePIC would only supply the hardware to the foundation and not sell to the consumer." -
The guy from ePic even somehow hit the nail. Communities that all the time ask for resistan-forks are not really creating the environment for competition. How should/could a runner up even catch up with Bitmain if you fork away all the time? Actually thinking about it, you mostly hit the smaller Asic producers/designers like ePic that can not take the risk of that. And at the same time you call for more Asic competiton. One totally exclused the other, you can’t call for forks all the time and want asic competion at the same time.
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You even do not know IF there are other Asic producers on equihash. We all just guess it’s Bitmain, while after cryptonite we eventually should know better. Who knows who else is mining or testing there.
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Next thing, while you all call for decentralization you use pure protectionism, you are against a totally free market, you even are fine with excluding a small miner like me with 1x Z9 that would compete with Bitmain to protect your own business. Hypocrisy at it’s best.
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You guys might want to fight against Bitmain, fine, but Zcash, or any other currency/project has competition. The fight for them should not be with Bitmain but with their very own competition. There are a lot projects focused on Privacy, it’s a tight market as well and only a view will survive at the end. While many of you are engaged in protectionsim battles, personal energy wasting anti campaigns and whatever not, you lose the focus on real developement and in my opinion even drive zcash into by trying to force zcash into delay of winterover/sapling.
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We miners are all in a risky business. Everybody should know bevor he buys his first Rig, Asic, FPGA, whatever, that things may change it lightspeed. GPU’s are indeed a good tool to keep a project going, no doubt, as no asic manufactor will jump on to a new algo with 1 new coin, that’s for sure. But someone can not protect that forever. I personally compare it always to real life infrastucture. It’s ok to have a road for a city, but if it gets a bigger city you need highways.
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There could be many more said, but seriously, slowly but surely someone gets tiered of again and again dealing with pure protectionism. By having read all posts over the last 14 days or so, even on gifthub which is seriously time consuming, i only can come to the conclusion that a lot of energy/workhours are wasted, either by the community it as well as from the zcash team.
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There are even rumours that the X3 is mining on the new Monero algo. We waste currently a lot of resources without even knowing what’s happening exactly, how these new Asics are build, capable to do, whatever, and still a lot of folks here are calling for an immediate fork without even knowing if that would solve the problem or only big resources are wasted.
My conclusion:
As a small/mid miner with just some rigs and less than 70 Asics, as an investor that holds and strongly believes in projects with good teams, technical inventions and strong developement, as a small/mid trader on the exchanges and as a strong believer that crypto is (or could be) the future i come to the conclusion:
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that projects that waste too many and too long and too often resources will lose ground (pretty sure Monero will be a good example for that losing ground in future if they concentrate only on forks)
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that only about 5% here are really interested in the project having their best in mind and not own personal best interest.
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that i learned that decentralization for many is perfectly compatible with protectionism, closed markets, exclusions, restrictions, you name it …
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that it might be better to focus on projects that are a bit more centralized but focus ONLY on developement. I’am afraid that long term projects that truely try to focus on psyeudo decentralization, 100% community confirmity, will lose the race technically. And as well do not plan/rely on POS as this is my personal nightmare (not as a miner, but crypto believer).
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I appreciate your community engagement on this subject @Howardscottj. It shows a high level of professionalism.
We have a seperate thread dedicated to this topic at: FPGA Equihash Miner (developed for Aion network)
Since the community want to discuss your proposal more in-depth, I will merge these posts into that existing thread for continued discourse.
EDIT: posts above have been moved.
Thank you, that’s why we are here. The Z-Cash community is one of the best in the blockchain community overall and we are keen to partner. One note, the AION Equihash version is different that Z-Cash’s. Lot’s of overlap to be sure, which can benefit Z-Cash, AION, and ePIC. Our goal is to be as transparent as possible. Thanks @howardscottj
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The only thing I take issue with in your statement is you bringing it back to “Your a GPU miner”. It doesn’t matter if I use a GPU, a CPU, or an ASIC. My main concern with ASIC (which I have stated over an over) isn’t the ASIC itself, it’s that it is dominated by Bitmain. Name one GPU or GPU manufacturer in this space that openly competes with it’s own customers?? When I say competes, that’s kind of misleading, they are dominating bitcoin. You honestly think they are not currently doing the same in the other spaces?
I would much prefer a situation where a company like EPIC designs an ASIC or FPGA for a coin team and that coin team owns the IP and can ensure themselves no one entity puts the project in a choke hold by monopolizing it. If ASIC/FPGA miners were as prevalent and easy to access as GPUs or CPUs then I seriously doubt there would be much to debate to be honest. But as it stands currently, and has remained for the last 4 years Bitmain rules. Yes there are competitors out there, but pound for pound they can’t compete, which is why Bitmain still leads the race by a hefty margin.
But let’s compare apples to apples just for a moment:
Bitmain D3 17Gh/s price $311 current price
Innosilicon D9 2.1Th/s for $6800 last price (sold out)
Looks like Inno wins as their’s is WAY faster right? Not really. Bitmain just adjusted their price down to beat them overall. You can buy 21 D3’s for the price of the D9 which nets you ~ 3.71Th/s for the same price. Guess who is winning that battle? It’s going to be Bitmain, because they know the lower entry point is going to sell, and overall at that price point they can deliver more hash for the same price. If you can’t compete at the same level as Bitmain, they will crush you out of the space. They know business, and they know how to keep competition out, and the Chinese Government has no interest in stopping them.
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@Moordrik If you add electrical usage per unit it makes more sense to buy the Innosilicon. Buying D3’s at an equal hashrate would cost you about 12x as much electricity as running one D9.
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About: I would much prefer a situation where a company like EPIC designs an ASIC or FPGA for a coin team and that coin team owns the IP and can ensure themselves no one entity puts the project in a choke hold by monopolizing it.
- Wouldn’t this mean again that one monopoly is trying to defend itself? How would this be decentralization?
About: But let’s compare apples to apples just for a moment:
Bitmain D3 17Gh/s price $311 current price
Innosilicon D9 2.1Th/s for $6800 last price (sold out)
Looks like Inno wins as their’s is WAY faster right? Not really. Bitmain just adjusted their price down to beat them overall. You can buy 21 D3’s for the price of the D9 which nets you ~ 3.71Th/s for the same price. Guess who is winning that battle?
- This is not a calculation that can hold. First of all you have to calculate some ~USD 50+for shipping for each D3, so here we go with an extra 1,000 USD
- Second, you need 21 PSU’s for 21x D3, so let’s say we get one for USD 125 we have another USD 2.625 for that.
- Third, Innosilicon D9 DecredMaster is mining on Blake256R14 and the D3 on X11, so i guess you messed it up by accident, but you shouldn’t compare 2 Asics on different Algos.To make it even worse, Bitmain has no Asic for the Blake256R14 algo, at least i’am not aware of one, but i could be wrong of course, not an algo i follow to be honest.
Forth, someone must calculate as well the final power consumption which you did not in your example.
I admit you tried your bet to show Bitmains dominance, but failed in that example. Same is mostly as valid for many other Algos where someone only does the calculation and writes ALL hashpower to Bitmain, not even admitting that there are huge ASICS on SHA256 that mine X times better than thei S9 for example. It’s just easier and a better argument. ALL hashpower is Bitmain, see, they have 100%… Monopolist. Most even fall for such milkmaid calculations…
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you forgot as well the 21 PSU’s, 21x shipping costs, if you want even 21x ethernet cables, some extra switches, another room for the 21 Asics and and and… It’s not that easy as it may sound. Beside that both are on different algos which makes the whole compare and argument invalid anyway.
Your right…I clicked the wrong Innosilicon miner, that was a DECRED miner, not a DASH. My mistake.
Innosilicon A5+ 65Gh/s for $2360 without power supply
Bitmain D3 17Gh/s price $311 current price also without power supply
You can’t buy half a Bitmain miner so let’s call it 7 (rounded down). So 119Gh/s for the same price. Yes you have to buy some cables and a switch…but who mines with ASIC’s and only ever planned to buy “one”. Argument invalid. You have to buy the PSU for both. Same cost, twice the hash. My argument still holds true. Bitmain is not going to lose market share, no matter how you want to split the hairs.
Let’s try another pair since I’m not a ASIC guy, could be I got lucky with that pairing:
SiaMaster S11 3.83Th/s for $3200, plus power supply
Bitmain A3 815Gh/s for $490, plus power supply
So say we only buy 6 of the Bitmains that’s ~4.8Th/s. Nope still winning
You say shipping for X units == X shipping charges. True, if we are buying them 1 by 1. But If I can come up with the money to buy the more expensive Innosilicon…then I can buy multiple Bitmain in one order, and pay one shipping charge, and one import charge…so no idea what you are getting at.
Even if I was a entry level miner, buying one at a time…I would still go this route because it is far easier to afford $311/$490 than $2360/$3200…even if I end up paying more for shipping and import over time. It’s a cost that is absorbed gradually, yes it means the ROI ends up longer, but in the case of a miner with a small budget that is the only route available to him/her in a ASIC world.
Let me make some corrections to your calculations as they are not correct again, at least the pairs are 
your calculation:
Innosilicon A5+ 65Gh/s for $2360 without power supply
Bitmain D3 17Gh/s price $311 current price also without power supply
So say we only buy 6 of the Bitmains that’s ~4.8Th/s. Nope still winning
Corrected calculation:
Innosilicon A5+ 65Gh/s for $2360 without power supply + 1x Power Supply 125 USD + 1x Shipping 100 USD = $2.585
vs.
Bitmain D3 17Gh/s price $311, 4x Units, not 7!! makes, $1,244 + 4x Power Supply $500 + 4x Shipping $400
= $2,144
Now the Bitmains D3 seem to be still cheaper, even not much, BUT
the 4x D3 need 4x 1350W = 5,400W
vs
one A5+ needs only 1,500W
At the end you pay about 450$ less at bitmain for the same hashrate but use about 4x more electricity. I personally can not see any advantage here for bitmain. Less price vs less electricity use, seems fair.
P.S.: About the shipping coasts, there is no way bitmain can put several units into 1 package, each comes with it’s own package, own tracking number, own shipping price. And to be absolute fair in my corrected calculation i even lowered the amount of D3’s!
Now your 2nd calculation
SiaMaster S11 3.83Th/s for $3200, plus power supply
Bitmain A3 815Gh/s for $490, plus power supply
So say we only buy 6 of the Bitmains that’s ~4.8Th/s. Nope still winning
SiaMaster S11, 1x $.3200 (price with PSU) + 100 Shipping =
3.300
vs
5x Bitmain A3, 5x A3= $2.450 (price without PSU!!!) + 5x PSU $625 + 5x shipping $500 =
$3,575
And now again the Best part,
Siamaster = 1,350W
5x A3 = 5x 1275W = 6,375W
Not only the Siamaster is CHEAPER , but uses as well about 5x less electricity, where do you see Bitmain as the winner?
P.S.: I gues you again made a mistake without intention with the PSU as you see it below the A3 when purchasing, but it’s shown there only as an option. As soon as you mark the PSU another $105 are added to the shopping cart!! I again corrected the amount of A3 in your favor from 6 to 5!!!
Conclustion:
Both Innosilicon are superior vs bitmain, even cheaper, and way cheaper to run. Your argument does NOT hold that bitmain is the winner! We should be fair, shouldn’t we?
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Either way you look at it, you have strong networks, with plenty of Asic hardware for purchase. Just as the z9 will soon enough.
Progression. Still decentralized.
I mean it’s not like you can’t still mine with gpu’s. It’s just profitablity.
Even if there are a lot of competitors in the ASIC industry…
It is still better to have GPUs do the mining.
A GPU mining network will always be more secure and more decentralized because more people have GPUs, they are easier to buy, they are cheaper, and they are more or less equal to each other in terms of efficiency,
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Yep just need to have 4-7K in funding to get started, versus, $311 to 450. You keep wanting to just ignore that part of it all. The small guy is going to take the avenue he can afford, and that is why the competition loses. Only the Mid to Large guys can just cough up large sums of money on a whim like that…or are you trying to say everyone else doesn’t matter at all?
I don’t think even Bitmain is that foolish. They will charge what they can get, but if there is “competition” they will ensure their product gives the best value for dollar. Even if it means using more electricity it’s kind of a moot point if you can’t afford the expensive one now isn’t it??
Before you even mention a mining rig costs that much…these same guys buy their GPUs one or two at a time. But that isn’t an option with ASIC obviously, can’t buy a hash board at a time, although that might be an interesting option.
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I agree.
Collusion seems likely given the nonsense excuse making that comes from Zooko Wilcox for not quickly forking away from the ASICs with a POW change like Monero quickly executed to maintain ASIC resistance. The attempts by Zooko to censor this forum thread is telling.
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I said it some posts ago that there won’t be any perfect solutions that ever fit your needs as long as you are finding always new demands. I was right, it’s going on and on and on. I will again proof you wrong now and you will gain come up again with something further, other, new … just to hold your argument somehow…
So your new argument is that a gpu miner begins with 1 or 2 cards in the beginning. ( i did the same buy the way with 2).
So with the price of 2 or 3 1080ti cards today, all the other stuff you need (psu, mainboard, ram, SDD/HD, OS, CPU, risers, others) you are allready at the same level of that Innosilicon A5 and near the SiaMaster …
No big deal at all.
But actually your main argument was that Bitmain is the winner in these pairs but drivted away after your 3 calculations so far couldn’t hold anything… What’s the next drift away after this price argument again doesn’t hold?
And as a side note: The times where someone with his low end gpu and cpu can enter this business, yes, it’s a business now, are moslty over. The entry point is higher with the higher gpu prices nowadays since last year and i would go even so far as saying that the gpu miners building big rigs hurt most to newcomers and set the entry point for new gpu miners that hight… Something to think about as well by the way. It’s your colleageaus that set the entry point that high now for gpu miners.