No, @jamest is right. I fear you’re missing part the DAA dynamic.
Think of it this way: let’s pretend that everyone who mines Zcash was able to swap out their equipment with new hardware, right now, that produces 10x more sol per watt than whatever they currently have.
Suddenly, the whole pool of miners is producing 10x more sol… blocks come flying in… the DAA (Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm) cranks up the difficulty to make it 10x harder - the blocks come back to the normal rate. This is the normal function of the DAA - adjusting the block time.
The system is now drawing the same amount of electricity, despite producing 10x as many hashes.
What has happened? It’s just as he said - the power consumption of a crypto network always moves towards the cost of the power consumed.
Raising difficulty is a problem for everybody. I doubt you had last year the same difficulty on equihash than now (without Asics), right? Because i don’t have the same difficulty.
The electricity will stay the same, it will waste whatever difficulty is just it’s 300W, your rig will waste just it’s 2.500W, no matter of the difficulty, easy as that. The only thing that changes is the profit, not the electricity bill.
About maintance, it’s up to you if you believe me my absolutly unbiased answer. But an Asic is 10x easier to maintain as a GPU rig. Less is broken and normally it works perfectly. From 58 Asics i have NONE arrived broken and none of them has broken so far. Means 100% success rate. While on my GPU rigs things are different. 10x times more work needed for setup, maintance, failures, whatever else. It’s all up how you setup an Asic. If you maintain the machines as someone should do there is not much of a chance they fail. Not saying it won’t or can’t happen, of course it will, so it does with GPU’s. But i have no total failure at GPU’s as well, to be honest.
I wouldn’t waste my time here if I thought that, not affiliated with zcash company, truth is I don’t have many friends and my job is fairly menial so it affords me a lot of time to think about it and come here
And after thinking about it a lot, I think that there’s a better solution for what you all think is so black and white a situation, potentially better for GPU miners than forking, the theory is sound just need to look into the depth of its soundness
I included you in that because I value your input on this a lot. You have a thoughtful approach and while we may not see the environmental and centralization issues the same, you do spell out your thoughts in a very clear manner.
Strange, you mention it in your own post but so you miss the point.
Same amount of electricity but 10x as much hash rate. This is call more energy/electricity efficient, and nothing else i have said. Even if the same power might be used, it’s 10x more efficient, get the point?
In Theory you would even need only 10% of the mashines to maintain the same network capacity/hash rate, again. So only 10% of the energy needed to have the same network running on the same level.
There is only one formula if it comes to energy efficiency of a given tool, easy as that. What happens later with miners has nothing to do with the machine itself. This Z9 miner is just that, more energy efficient as any gpu on equihash so far, period.
Come on man. The community has been “talking to you, and the rest of ZcashCo” for over a month here and on the github thread(s) trying to make it known ASICs are a clear threat. You don’t seem to care or simply don’t want to hear it, that’s fine, your opinion and your choice. Others on the development side seem to listening, possibly also agree. The device exists, and has probably been on the network for 2-3 months in “batch testing”. It’s time to stop with the stalling and the wait and see mentality. Get together and actually make a decision. YAY or NAY on ASICs. People have investments into this space and need to make decisions to protect themselves and their investments. That doesn’t mean have a solution in hand right now, but make the decision so people can plan accordingly.
So you don’t think the total network power consumption in equilibrium will be the same under both ASIC mining and GPU mining? This is econ 101.
And yes – mining is a ruthlessly competitive market. That is a big reason why we want to fork away from ASICs. Our desire to preserve our mining profits at Bitmain’s expense is no less legitimate than Bitmain’s desire to enhance their profits at our expense.
I do happen to sincerely believe that GPU mining is much better than ASIC mining, so I’m not just promoting a fork to secure my mining profits. And again, the biggest reason that GPU mining is better is that far more people will participate in securing the network and earning block rewards. It’s really that simple. A secondary reason is that ASIC mining results in centralization and the formation of cartels, which is very risky to the security and reputation of a cryptocurrency. For instance, after Bitmain’s antics in November and December of spamming the mempool and dramatically increasing transaction fees, many people have come to believe that Bitcoin transaction are inherently expensive when, in reality, they cost pennies. A mining cartel would do similar damage to Zcash.
Perhaps this is an obvious question with an obvious answer, but is it possible to do something with the current POW system for ZCash that stops ASIC miners but does not require a hard fork to do it?
The total network power consumption is one thing, call it the peaches, the power consumption of a given tool is another thing, call it the apples if you want. I said it from beginning, you mix apples with peaches.
All is said is that this Z9 is way more energy efficient than the same gpu power needed. And this argument is just true. While your argument about the whole network power consumption might be as well true, but does not make mine wrong.
And i personally have made for me the decision to better have 1x Z9 than 12x 1080ti’s to save at least 2kw/h while mining.
I indeed agree with some arguments about bitmain, while some are mostly just rumours or wrong, some of your arguments are for sure valid. However, nowadays you have about 10 different asic producers, while there are only 2 GPU producers.
I’am personally upset that the more cards are used for mining the more expensive they get. So if you want or not, you as well support 2x extreme monopolist companies on the back of every PC owner, gamer, miner, whatever uses GPU’s.
One more thing, if you really think that Bitmain, or any other Asic producers keeps over 25% of the ASICS for own mining you are simply wrong. There is no such facility that can take such power usage at one or some places, not even talking about maintance of it.
One more thing, and here i’am absolutly sure that long time coins on an asic algo are better fitted. Why? Simple due the reason that an asic can NOT move on another algo to a more profitable coin. This makes ASIC a network supported FOREVER. I’am a gpu miner myself too, now how many of you stay on this algo with Zcash if tomorrow a coin on let’s say lyra gives you 3x the profit zcash does right now? Come one, we will switch the rigs in lightspeed expect some <10% true coin believer and enthusiasts. That’s the question why i question most peoples loyality here asking for DEVs/Teams loyality but unable to give the same back! Fair? Don’t think so, but that’s the game. Hence 1 important point an asic algo has good use for a given coin on a given algo…
There is NO competition in the ASIC space. Show me 10 REAL competitors to Bitmain and I will send you $1000. Most available ASICS are sold ONLY from China (geographically centralized) and most “competitors” look to be selling secondary market Bitmain rebranded units, or their equipment is crap, outdated and inefficient. We all can buy video cards ANYWHERE, that’s the difference.
"According to business data site companies, Bitmain’s co-founder, Jihan Wu, is the sole governing person behind Ant Creek, which was founded on June 28, 2017 and is registered as an active for-profit entity in the state. “While the company does not have a listed address, the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin reports that the Port of Walla Walla, a city in Washington, is considering a land-use agreement with Ant Creek. Under the terms of the agreement, Ant Creek would lease land from the beginning of 2019, with an option to purchase up to 40 acres. If approved, the Union-Bulletin reports, this land would be used to develop and operate a cryptocurrency mining facility.”
I don’t “miss the point.” I get it. The problem is you get stuck at that point instead of seeing the big picture.
If it were as you think - 10% of the machines to maintain the same hash rate - then mining would ten times as profitable. You’d have 1/10 as many miners, which draw 1/10 the power, earning the same mining revenue that is earned by everyone today.
You might be right if you are the only miner who can make this change by buying this machine, and everyone else had to stay the same. But that’s not the reality. Do you think the other 90% let those 10% get all that mining revenue?
No, more people buy the machines. Ten times as many machines.
This drives up the total hashpower, and then the DAA drives up the difficulty and brings the profitability back in line in terms of $$ earned per watt.
And then the same amount of power is being consumed to maintain the network as is being consumed today. The network produces the same amount of coins per day from the same amount of electricity but is doing it with 10 times the hash and 10 times the difficulty.
10 times the hash, divided by 10 times the difficulty, puts you right where you started.
The DAA doesn’t care how much power you draw or how efficient your equipment is. The DAA just adjusts the difficulty so that the block time is right… and the consequence is that your power efficiency is irrelevant, because when all the miners are using the same equipment as you, you all have the same efficiency.
"To heck with the so called, “community” (mostly GPU miners) who invested in your venture; among which was “ASIC - Resistance.” Zooko is more or less saying “To heck with GPU Community; I’m going to the ASIC community; who might even give me kick-backs.”
No sense of urgency to stand behind the “community” who invested time and money just as you invested time and money. I “respectfully” request you address this community with an “emergency” measure to first do something small to see how big of an impact ASIC’s already have had. I believe many here would agree with doing that at the least… No?
Two technical ideas, one of which seems to fix the worst risk with commodity mining, and one of which makes ASIC mining produce more value for the ecosystem and the world.
The idea is simple: the coinbase doesn’t give the miner 10 ⓩ right then, instead it gives you 10 time-locked ⓩ, and 1 ⓩ will unlock each month for the next ten months.
This seems to fix what I think is the worst issue with commodity mining: that the miners could profit by betraying the coin, such as participating in a 51% attack or some other kind of attack in return for a bribe, or while shorting the coin, and then re-use or sell their hardware for some other use. With this “time-locked coinbases” feature, miners have an economic incentive to protect the value of the coin for ten months after the coinbase. (Even if their hardware is multipurpose, or could be sold for a different use.)
I love it! It seems easy to understand, fairly straightforward to implement, and it seems like it ought to have positive ecosystem effects.
This means it is economically desirable to hardware manufacturers to invest tens of millions, or perhaps even hundreds of millions, of dollars to design and build custom hardware that mines Zcash. What sort of calculations do we want there to be high-performance custom hardware for? Zero-knowledge proofs! We could make the PoW be “generate a SNARK proof of a random challenge”. Or, since it will probably take at least a year to get anything like this into the mainnet, by then we might want it to be a STARK proof or a Bulletproof proof or something else. But anyway, I love the idea that multiple companies would then spend at least tens of millions of dollars producing high-performance ZK prover chips.
(Both of these are ideas that I’ve heard — I think — years ago, but they both came back to me today and now that the world has changed, I’m excited about the possibilities.)
@phakov I may be mistaken but a user activated hard Fork could fulfill that role which essentially is a consensus rule change at a specific block regardless of who or who isnt mining
You would lose the Asic miners but also invariably would lose GPU miners
And then the problem just starts over, hell of way to live; on the run
I’m not sure, We have to think of power cost, the value of power. Some may think performing PoW for other coins is more reliable. The good thing about PoW is that you trade power with a coin, this can be used for arbitrage. For example that’s why bitcoin was cheap in china a year ago.
Another issue with Equihash is that capital cost for producing ASIC for it is very high. Probably that’s why it came last. Meaning the game will be for giants to play their big moves, startups for manufacturing such a thing is dead, unless with VC fund.
All I’m trying to say keeping Equihash as is, is a mistake.
The singular comment on that article effectively debunks the solution to a imaginary problem. The “incentive” to support the network is the reward from the next block. What exactly does escrow in Zcash solve? Make the ROI on mining investments 10X longer? Yeah that might work actually. Nobody will but the deepest pockets could fund out, not that they would bother at that point. Just mine at a loss for 10 months miners, pools, everyone…seriously? On paper that probably sounded like a really wonderful idea…in practice…that is untenable.
To be honest your point 1 read like a massive troll. I’m assuming it wasn’t, but I could be wrong.
Point 2. Yeah we already get your totally down to essentially licking Bitmain’s boots. That’s your choice man, don’t much care one way or another how “you” feel. What everyone is waiting for is ZcashCo and Zcash Foundation to sit down and make a decision…unless your trying to say your make “the deicision” and the board etc outlined in the white paper was also more lip service like ASIC resistance seems to be sounding (also assuming your position is “the” position).
What you “should” be saying at this point is we will be meeting on X date to formalize Zcash’s position on this very important community issue. The decision will be announced on X date. Leave the trolling out of this space. This is supposed to be where the “serious” discussion happens.
Until @zooko states otherwise, I assume they can’t do anything about it until at least December and by then there will be 6 months of purchased ASIC’s out in the wild. At that time it will be too late to change the POW because if most of the GPU miners are driven out there will not be enough miners after the fork to keep the network going.
The original statement was that we selected equihash to be ASIC resistant now they are kicking GPUs like this?
As soon as they say they will support ASIC I am out of here for ever. All my holdings converted to XMR and my GPU pointing somewhere else.
Never imagined ZCASH will end like this, It hurts to see it die centralized with no option to vote and selling theirs souls to only one company BITMAIN…
