After reading that statement once again, it’s quite obvious you are actually discussing the development of a “specialized miner for a new algorithm… specific to ZCash.” So, what my friend told me might very well be true. Is he right?
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Is that supposed to make those of us who invested in GPU’s for an “ASIC resistant” coin feel better?
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Well that is interesting.
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Yes JKDC, very interesting…
An ASIC is an ASIC… Doesn’t matter if it’s made by BITMAIN - OR - by VIP’s meeting in secret to create an ASIC for their own personal gain and advantage. An ASIC is an ASIC.
That statement Zooko made only makes me feel he’s trying to warm us up and/or prepare us for what he, the rest of the developers and VIP’s who came up with the idea for for an ASIC “specific only to ZCash.”
Now I’m wondering if we (as a community) were ever going to be made aware of this? Probably were but after several months to a year had past. Cause they can’t just switch from GPU to an ASIC made for ZCash without miners having those ASIC’s. It would still have to be GPU mineable.
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I would have added extra emphasis (italics) to ‘once’ to highlight the point that @zooko clearly believes that it’s impossible to make a PoW that can’t be accelerated by an ASIC.
How long since the invention of Proof of Work? I think it’s now 26 years (original HashCash concept). There has been, since then, Cuckoo Cycle, Momentum, Equihash. Up until 2013 with the inception of SHA256 hashcash accelerators, there wasn’t enough systems existing to make it economic to build special silicon, with the 3-6 month time to market that is required.
Let me just state it plainly, again: ASICs run counter to the maintenance of decentralisation of the networks. To be complacent about allowing PoW to be mowed down by single use, very capital intensive silicon, that can be rendered virtually worthless with a few small changes in code, clearly either you are invested in ASIC fab stocks or you are… I’ll leave it to the reader to make some guesses about what the other options are.
There is another really big problem with ASICs that I don’t think anyone has mentioned, another element of their brittleness. What happens when an exploit is discovered that can even further shortcut the production of solving, things like MITM or replay or other various types of tricks. I know, when I was working with the small MineZ pool, there was clear evidence of miners feeding shares they knew would fail and then producing a disproportionate share of the payout while not producing the luck that the big miner should have been getting.
Investing in ASICs is very risky but having coin development teams and executive councils on the side of ASIC makers is just handing them victory over those who have already devoted a lot of capital and resources to helping build the network up, on a silver platter. To fail to defend the interests of a loyal pool of miners who have up to now been keeping the network operational, is disloyalty. I’m not going to express it in any more emphatic terms than this but I don’t think I really have to explain the consequences here if ZcashCo does not break their schedule and devote energy and resources directly into the issue of keeping the network decentralised.
I will just, for full disclosure, say that I have been mining exclusively zcash for most of the last 9 months. Equihash’s superior performance on Nvidia and Nvidia’s superior (up until 2 months ago) driver support for linux are the two reasons, despite the fact that I now have more AMD GPUs in my small urban-garden-plot-sized farming setup. If ASICs are hitting the network, and by the way the difficulty has not lowered in spite of a huge migration of AMD silicon to Monero CryptoNote7, and all the other equihash coins, I will have to switch my miners over. Until about 2 weeks ago Zcash remained the best coin to mine. This is changing and whichever equihash-based coin that does the right thing and changes the PoW is where all the currently mainly Zcash miner-userbase is going to go.
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There’s always a “reason” or an “means to an end” for everything. They (ZCashCo) would not be Pro-ASIC without receiving benefit in some form. It makes more sense after talking to my VIP friend and reading Zooko’s statement that they have plans within plans to create an ASIC themselves for ZCash and benefit at the expense of the community at large in a number of ways.
I’m thankful we’re having this discussion because what has been and continues to be done in the dark is coming to light.
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That’s nice, but 6 months later Bitmain has reverse engineered this small production run ASIC and where are we all then?
Who really has the capital and the will to move break this funnel of money going to a chinese company. I really can’t see ZcashCo having that kind of resources. The economic calculation here is lacking too many factors to think that this is any kind of long term solution, first it burns the GPU miners, and second, it’s a pyrrhic victory in 6 months time.
I would also just add that while it probably makes no difference over medium term (1-2 weeks) you can see easily by looking at the whattomine.com profitability figures that clearly a lot of hashpower has jumped into the Equihash pool, and not only that, it’s chasing it’s tail, going from Komodo, to Zencash, to Bitcoin Gold, to Zcash, on a pretty much daily basis. There is no question in my mind it’s ASICs because prices of GPUs has slumped in the last month after a big run up to almost 4x what they were at the beginning of the year, even with the christmas rush on. This hashpower cannot possibly be from GPUs, simply stated.
Making a new ASIC and customised solver 1) will be about 6 months coming and 2) in the meantime equihash coins are going to be subject to wildly varying hashpower rates and other dev teams will also be making their own assessment of the situation and applying different solutions.
Note that in earlier posts people have mentioned Monero and Cryptonote 7, this hard fork on april 6th led to 4 other coins spawning, most of which stuck with the old PoW. Does anyone really think Monero Zero, Monero Classic, and the other two, I forget, and they are very forgettable, present any real competition for the original?
I can see a situation emerging where a lot of tokens existing just to prop up Bitmain will come to be referred to collectively as Bitmaincoin.
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I’m curious: Do developers have an issue with the fact there are more coins using the Equihash algorithm than just ZCash?
Is there an argument to stand on to support ASIC’s simply because more coins are using the same algo?
I have figured out ZCashCo is considering and possibly currently working on a change in the algo to make ZCash it’s own algo specific to ZCash while also making a miner (ASIC) for that algo specific to ZCash.
An ASIC is an ASIC regardless who makes it. Other manufacturers will get their hands on one and reverse engineer it to mass produce for themselves without making people aware. That was proven with Monero and BITMAIN.
Does ZCashCo have similar plans to create an ASIC in collaboration with other investors, engineers, etc… WHILE keeping everyone else mining with GPU’s non-the-wiser for their own personal gain at the expense of the GPU miners who supported ZCash since the genesis block?
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As I’ve said in older posts, “The majority of ZCash holders are miners and speculators.” ZCash or any other Equihash coin HAS NOT been adopted by retailers or have ATM’s made for it the way Bitcoin has."
The way to get a large following (adoption) of a coin is to offer excellent utilities, POW that’s ASIC resistant or both. If ZCashCo chooses to support ASIC and/or make ASIC’s themselves, they will lose more followers/adopters than gain in my opinion. Most of their adopters will be speculators and the monopolies of ASIC’s by a few people/corporations mining the coin.
Zooko and other developers with ZCashCo have me concerned by how they are NOT coming out FORCEFULLY with motivation to maintain ASIC resistance. They appear to be leading us more towards accepting ASIC’s and probably trying to get us to by the ASIC’s “THEY” create for THEIR coin. Cause that’s what it would be: “THEIR COIN…” NOT THE PEOPLE’S COIN. It would only be more centralized and under THEIR control.
It’s looking like I need to get involved in forums with other coins using the Equihash algorithm to see where they stand to make a decision as to whether I should simply sell all my graphics cards and resort to trading/speculating only. Cause right now, it looks like that’s all ZCash will end up being: A coin simply for speculators and ASIC monopolies with no adoption. The big boys make their quick buck while draining the life out of a coin all in the name of self gratification with no focus on something much bigger than themselves.
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That would explain why Zooko couldn’t see the obvious and was making statements that made no sense. Now he asks us if a “special” algo can be created for Zcash. I guess he thought we would take the bait. The decentralization community will pretty much despise Zcash if that happens. I guess they only care about institutional and big money investors/users and centralized control. They are taking an old money approach to this and satoshi’s vision be damned in the process. There is definitely not “one CPU one vote” with this coin if private ASIC’s are coming.
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Memory utilization is not determined by the cycle length but by the graph size.
The recommended size of 2^30 nodes requires 2.3 GB for CPU mining and 6 to 8 GB for the fastest known GPU miner (Equihash requires only 144 MB for CPU mining).
The ONLY way I will be CONVINCED they are on board with maintaining ASIC resistance is by increasing the required memory for mining to be MUCH higher than 144 MB.
If they keep the memory required at 144 MB, while making changes in the algo to “supposedly” become ASIC resistant, CHANCES ARE they are going forward with making an ASIC of their own OR getting kickbacks from a group or corporation who makes ASIC’s specific to this new change they make.
The developers can conclude I’m here only to create trouble for them. I honestly do NOT care. I’M HERE TO KEEP IT REAL. I wish THEY would keep it real with us too.
How do you know they haven’t already been made and that is why the hashrate has gone up? If they keep the mining software proprietary it could delay the ASIC being reverse engineered. If we get a sales pitch soon we will know. 
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I don’t know. I have my thoughts simply from talking to people I “KNOW” in places the developers are not aware that I “KNOW.”
I already see the sales pitch. I can read between the lines. They’re warming us up to it; trying to gradually lead up to it.
Yes, my mentioning my “friend” who will be a VIP in June at their Montreal Zcon event are getting exposed by me to a certain degree. I’m not saying their name in public or private. My mentioning it may or may not keep them from making BIG money with this ASIC they have in the works. I honestly don’t care! What I “DO” care about is “THE COMMUNITY” of GPU miners who supported this coin for a reason from the genesis block. The MAIN reason being “ASIC resistance” in the white paper.
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How would the people that bought these ASIC’s even be guaranteed that they would work for a substantial length of time? They may decide to change the algo again or move to PoS. That is the hardest hurdle for me to get over with ASIC’s is they can become useless/worthless overnight.
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That’s my sentiment exactly.
ASIC’s ARE BAD NEWS… PERIOD…
How do we know they don’t have or will make a substantial number of ASIC’s to benefit themselves while screwing everyone else who purchases the ASIC(s)???
How do we know they don’t simply make them and KEEP IT TO THEMSELVES (Stay quiet)???
That’s why I want TRANSPARENCY to discourage CENTRALIZATION in ANY form. Whether it be centralized mining or centralized developer control.
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I pretty much have to agree with @ProwdClown on every point, but at this point I know I also am going to be looking for a new alternative. Monero’s devs have opened a clear path for anyone with AMD gear, and I’m gonna have to suck up the work it’s gonna take to make my flaky RX 580s behave themselves while running the algorithm. I need the more immediate income with the much lower minimum payout from flypool right now but once I hit my target and have next month’s expenses covered I’ll be on board with monero’s cryptonote7 unless I hear about another equihash coin that can’t be mined with this new ASIC that is clearly on the network already. As some have mentioned, parameter changes alone may be enough, though what impact this has regarding the solvers is another issue. 7 out of my 9 cards only have 4Gb memory but I’d guess that’ll be the target.
In the meantime, I will continue the journey towards my own design for a PoW, and I don’t know for sure whether I can hit the target with linearising memory access and minimising cache misses, but I’d hazard a guess that for sure, the Ryzen7 microarchitecture will make this a lot easier, and in any case, these processors are a pleasure to work with as a developer for those times one needs to compile a very large application. I don’t know why I am seemingly the only one talking about how ASIC resistance requires a SWOT on what exactly makes an algorithm implementable at a significant benefit on ASIC versus CPU.
Anyone have any ideas for where we jilted miners can pool our knowledge and help each other get off this new equihash rollercoaster?
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For equihash I would talk to Zencash and Komodo. I don’t think the other coins devs would change the algo for ASIC resistance. For pure ASIC resistant coins I would go with Monero and/or Vertcoin. Vertcoin is making a AMD miner, but is primarily Nvidia right now and Monero is of course better with AMD.
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I’m “assuming” you were also aware of the quote from Zooko below? Hence, your statement in bold???
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It might be worth creating a new forum on bitcoin talk just for that. The developers here are appearing to be less transparent while seeing no need for damage control and having the backs of those of us who have supporting them all this time.
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Yeah, and I would have been here from the genesis block, you can even find my posts dating back to the time before, but unfortunately I was living on the street at the time and my whole compute resource was a 5 year old sony laptop. I started mining with Nicehash and then after a few months managing my rigs remotely from bulgaria that were sited in serbia, I got the rigs back, sadly a bit damaged from the heatwave of last summer, and shortly after switched full time to zcash as it was hard not to miss that NH was telling my rigs to mine it pretty much 80% of the time.
I will go check bitcointalk, guess I’ll see yas there 
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