Let’s talk about ASIC mining

I remember root saying at one time that gpu miners jump to the more profitable coin. Made zcash network unsecure. And with Asic miners here that would not happen. And no I am not going to go thru over 4250 post to find his post.

@chucky732 I never said it wouldn’t happen, just that there were less options for ASIC miners to switch and that when coins hard fork, those choices are slowly removed. ASICs give less flexibility.

Additionally the scale of switching should be much less with ASICs because there are GPU mining platforms that are used to auto-switch based on profitability en-masse. ASICs don’t do that, it’s all manual. One Z9 mini user trying to mine ZEN for a day is different than 10,000 gpu miners auto switching to mine ETH all at once on a weekly basis.

Just think there is over 11,700,000 gpu’s mining eth. And I think you can auto switch to more profitable coin with Asic on MPH. But not sure.

There are pools that switch coins (same algo) which work just fine with ASICs so a lot of hash could be sloshing around - its not just an issue for GPU mining.

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This could be correct, but usually when people take the greater risk with buying as ASIC they have a specific coin in mind. People buying Z9 mini’s are, on the whole, interested in Zcash, not Equihash.

I do see sha256 S9’s being used to switch between BCH/BTC, but the hashrate is so high that it doesn’t matter for security on those coins.

Of course it’s not, but it’s less. The nature of an Asic is just that it’s bound to the algo and it’s coins/tokens on it, which of course should be way less than somethning that is able to switch through 79 algos and 1800 coins.

As well we should have in mind that right now it’s some mixed mining here. We even do not know who when why is switching, all we see is the swings. I’am only aware of 1 asic mining pool that can switch for the Z9 mini, Miningpoolhub. Just checked and it has about 10-15% of the hashpower at most, so i doubt it’s the responsible one for that, but for sure some part is from there.

It’s pure speculating right now what causes the swings on ZEC, could be as well an asic producer turning off batches for shipping, no idea, seriously.

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well all this is telling me is there isn’t a difference in gpu or asic. asic was just a generational leap forward.

i said i was selling my gpus, well im done. right before the 1180s hit so great timing.

now i wtb 30 z9m!

I remember telling you that I was on another forum and there where these 10 guys talking about switch back an forth between coins on the same algo Equihash. Those guys but a bunch of Z9 mini’s. So saying that Z9 mini owners only bought there Z9 to mine Zcash is wrong. Both sides of the line are in for profit!

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Perhaps - although miners tend to be interested in a return on their mining rather than loyalty to a specific coin, the same applies to both ASIC & GPU miners when auto-switching pools are available.

Just looked at MPH, right now their stats page claims 47M pointed at ZEC but that could (and does) switch to any Equihash coin any time. With more ASIC hash that problem will get bigger and quickly.

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That’s what FPGA’s are for.

Actually it’s reverse, the more hashpower gets on, the less big swings we will see.

GPU’s too. Out of curiousity i do some tests on my home PC with 3x1080ti and on my awesome miner i left them today on profit mining on 7 auto-switch pools. So far, about 10 hours testing, it has switched me through 11 algos and 24 different coins …

It also depends on how the pool works out ‘profitability’, the market price of a coin can vary wildly on little more than good/bad news & trigger a switch. I guess we’ll find out.

(Edit: Smelling pistakes)

Well I am the rare one I point at one coin and leave it. That’s what I did with zec until they let Asic in. Now I am on another coin and have not switched.

no doubt on this one, but the more hashpower is on the coin, the less big swings you will see as it gets more and more balanced. Have in mind that right now there is no balance yet on equihash, hence why the difficulty is not really increasing so far.

This will change, the more asics on the network, the higher the difficulty, the less big swings. Just logical.

Absolutly believe you, even more as that autoswitching has so many flawes that it makes only in theory more profit, but in practice mostly less as it’s one thing when you mine it, another thing when it gets autoexchanged.

However, just because you, me and others don’t use auto-mining/switching doesn’t mean others don’t do else, we see it with the popularity of all these nicehash like services and auto-switch pools. Only good thing that with the latest Asics nicehash doesn’t seem to work, at least something, even by accident, positive.

So, 10 miners, compared to 10,000? The scale can’t even be compared.

Rumor was Nicehash was upset that Bitmain did not send them one to test. So now it doesn’t work there. You lose with auto switching because all the time wasted switching back an forth between algos. So much hash is lost.

No but you cannot for sure say that none of those 10,000 are not switching!

Thats interesting.

I’m feeling the need to do proper test of a switching vs standard pool. Identical cards on the same rig doing simultaneous mining for a month should do the trick.