o ok, than again, a user is a user. Stakers just replace miners, at least more or less. A user who wishes to use his funds will just use them. I don’t see why someone wouldn’t pay for his coffee or online purchase from a given coin, no matter on what consensus it’s based…
About visa level, again good luck with POW coins that struggle allready with 20 transaction/s, lol. What’s left for Visa and above level with POW at it’s current state… Actually we are lucky there is no second 2017/2018 winter or we would still wait for our transactions, lol.
When the the autopsy of Zcash is done it will be noted the moment they embraced ASIC sealed their doom. Prediction, please save comment, Zcash below US$ 10 by August 2019, ASIC bills are due.…the founders reward as corrupted the developers.
The only good thing that will come of this is; probably will integrate the technology in another PoW ASIC resistant block chain. Also word of mouth, being able to mine on own system and other intangibles contribute to success and just plain trust and integrity.
Full disclosure when this ASIC debate started and I saw the equivocation of the developers I immediately offloaded all the Zcash I had for about US$500-600 per ZEC I just lost faith in it and it appears I was right, too bad.
I agree that the moment of not taking action against ASICs was an important turning point, and not for the better probably; I don’t think though this is related to being corrupted by the FR - which I still think is a very good mechanism for moving the/a project forward.
First, resisting hashing software optimizations or ASIC development is historically a losing battle. It also greatly distracts developers from improving mission-critical protocol features.
The natural state of proof of work is continual innovation and ruthless competition. It’s a zero-sum game. To intervene and declare an artificial winner - in this case that would mean reverting to GPU mining - would remove the inherent nature of proof of work. Like evolution, mining devices need to be allowed to mature in order to ensure that your coin is actually secure from governments and well-funded entities.
Allowing ASICs to exist was the best way forward. GPU mining has shown to be very insecure. Zcash has rarely been the most profitable coin to mine, and with opaque addresses it’s likely that Zcash could have been a target similar to ETC, had we reverted to a “GPU-only” algorithm.
Further, GPU miners lack dedication to any one coin, claims otherwise are an attempt to have more coins to mine. GPU mining is just as centralized as ASIC mining: there are massive farms benefiting from economies of scale with lower electricity rates.
For those like myself who purchased and still have many GPUs, mining was always a large bet. Profits in mining are never guaranteed.
I bet you there was more individual gpu miners then there are big mining farms. So who was more centralized?
And it is not more secure from governments and well funded entities. Who do you really think has their hands into some of the biggest mining farm out there!
Where you been? Jan 07, 2018 - $955.27
These big ASIC mining farms are mining more then just one coin. They have many hands into more then one basket!!
@root is a like a teacher he just quotes books and has no real world understanding; ASIC embrace was the death of Zcash, I like teams that keep to original launch premise stating ASIC resistance but it is a matter or character which is obviously lacking here, hence the phony justifications.
I personally have some problems with some of the mentioned arguments:
mining devices need to be allowed to mature in order to ensure that your coin is actually secure from governments and well-funded entities.
I’am not really sure if this is currently granted having in mind that the majority of hashpower is concentrated in china, as well as the mining pools. Leave alone the well-funded entities that produce their own hardware in this case…
Allowing ASICs to exist was the best way forward. GPU mining has shown to be very insecure. Zcash has rarely been the most profitable coin to mine, and with opaque addresses it’s likely that Zcash could have been a target similar to ETC, had we reverted to a “GPU-only” algorithm.
Yes and No in my opinion. ETC is indeed a good example how things can turn out even for a top 20 coin. But than again, there are other ways how to secure a coin, for example some options would have been:
switching to dPOW with gpu-POW and using BTC to secure the network like KMD.
switching to a hybrid gpu-Pow/POS design, eventually only temporary with some centralized secure nodes until a better solution is found or designed.
switch immediatly to the harmony proposed mining with 2 algos
Further, GPU miners lack dedication to any one coin, claims otherwise are an attempt to have more coins to mine. GPU mining is just as centralized as ASIC mining: there are massive farms benefiting from economies of scale with lower electricity rates.
i agree more or less, but than again, if both (Asic/GPU) are as centralized as the other than it’s clear that centralization isn’t an issue at all anymore. The roadmap for the next 2 years backs this up, no intention to do anything against mining centralization…
I’m an early Bitcoin user (since ~2012), developer and have direct experience running my own hobby-farm. I’m not sure what experience or knowledge you’re referring to that I’m lacking?
The ideal situation for any cryptocurrency is to have single-purpose highly optimized ASIC. It forces miners to commit to the coin long-term, rather than just when it’s profitable. Otherwise you have oscillating hashrate with troughs that make the coin insecure. If multiple coins use the same algorithm then you want your coin to have the most hashrate.
Just to put another sound argument against GPUs, consider that there are a large number of centralized AI/ML farms that don’t currently mine crypto. If a well-funded entity wanted to attack Zcash, these systems could be repurposed to attack any GPU-secured network.
The quick rejections of my comment reminded me of a quote by Plato, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.”
Ethereum was actually more profitable to mine than Zcash at that time. Everything was higher, not just Zcash. The bull market of 2017 and now bear market has effected all coins in the exact same way.
Majority of the hashpower is where the low electricity is nowadays… Many of these that moved outside China allready closed the doors or will soon close the doors … All the shifting is going towards china, former soviet republics and that’s it all over … No rocket science at all, mostly the reason why the top 4 ZEC mining pools with 75+% are chinese, makes some sense at all …
You just proved my point again, with dogmatic sayings or quotes.
There is no ideal situation in anything, many crypto coins use the same PoW, you do know what the original intent of PoW is? and the idea’s surrounding it to block-chain security, hash rate as no effect on security, you do know that.
I think that is enough for now my advice, Zcash can still be saved as it still as a lot of tokens to issue, my advice look into “Progpow” PoW and the ideas and concepts around it and implement it ASAP.
Your ideas here are factually incorrect. There is an ideal situation outlined by the objective facts I’ve listed. You’ve given no sound or complete counter arguments.
my advice look into “Progpow”
There is most likely already an existing ASIC for ProgPoW, or one in development. On a separate note, Nvidia is pushing ProgPoW hard on ETH to remain relevant in the mining space. I once thought that ProgPoW was promising but have since learned that it’s a bad path to go down.
