Let’s talk about ASIC mining

Mining
804

ASIC : GOOD thing BAD thing

  • Community/user-base. If it were not for miners, a coin would never get exposure. Thus the more miners, the more exposure. A coin may have a superb technological innovation. No miners, means no adoption. Asic is slimming down that community. Bitcoin does not need that community anymore. As it has a lot of use cases and wordwide adoption It’s big enough now… Monero needs it, and therefore has an aversion to ASIC.
  • Technology : As (most of) crypto is open source. There is no real “company” behind it to steer and finance its development. So it needs a community. Asic mining is slimming that community down. And hereby slowingdown the implementation of technological innovations. Hence, for example, the split of Bitcoin Blockchain. Monero is innovative and must be very flexible because it depends on its community. Hence their aversion towards ASIC. Zcash does not really need that community. Its basically Bitcoin with Zksnarks. There is, as of my knowledge, no android wallet that implements z-addresses and anonymous payments YET. You need a daemon and a blockchain on linux in order to do a zksnark payment. So,to my opinion, the viewpoint of @zooko towards ASICS is understandable. And in the long term, will be the demise of Zcash.
  • Price : Asics are putting a pressure on the price. At first (when competing with GPU) they are more effective, so are ming more coins for the same electricity/investment price. Once CPU/GPU eliminated, profits are evaporating. And if there is no “real-world” implementation (like with Litecoin) or technological innovation (DASH), there is obscurity forever (sia, decred, …).
  • Mee-too effect / split : In the beginning there were a lot of bitcoin-mee-toos. Few of them exist as of today. Still existing ones are mostly are asic-mined. They still exist because they added functionality to the Bitcoin protocol AND thus have real-world use cases (Dash, LTC). The PU/CPU mined ones still exist because of their ASIC aversion. Monero at first was a hard-fork split too.
  • Ethics : On the other hand, there is for example Karbo, Monero, PASL, TRON that are “amateur” - initiatives that have strong ethics and “believers” and “followers” They are ASIC-aversive, and that is NOW (not in the future) their only reason of existence. This underscribes my viewpoint that, in the beginning, miners are your only user-base.
  • Exchange : Exchanges became the second most profitable source of money and real-world use case of crypto. Listing on an exchange became prohibiting expensive. If your coin is not listed or not popular on an exchange and it’s starting to be ASIC-mined : farewell.
  • Attacks : The fear of centralisation due to ASIC mining is real. It happened to ETN. They do not have a community an is a marketing-stunt. They have no answer to the ASIC, no technical answer. They will not stay
  • Waste of energy - Pools : mining is essential a waste of energy and computing power. ASIC are the sheer prove of that. Once an algoritms changes, you’re left with a brick. If tomorrow’s coin come with a mining algorithm that really DOES something usefull, and not just competing with each other. Like for example calculating solutions to an AI-queeste, then the question of pools becoming too big, or ASIC-mining will simply cease to exist, just like as of today nobody is talking about the profession of coachman anymore. The drivers became their own coachmen.
  • future : watch for algo’s that do what I came to explain in my previous point.
3 Likes
805

There are many ways to go about creating a robust network that can be mined by everyone. There will never be a network that is “fair”.

Those who feel personally attacked by the equihash ASIC and are looking for a quick resolution from the Zcash Team to keep you in business mining zcash, you are being as equally greedy as Bitmain. Instead of making threats to stop supporting zcash, why not make a suggestion.

The truth is, Zcash was not ever “guaranteed” to be ASIC resistant. There are multiple discussions about it PRIOR to release. I think the Zcash Team even hired Solar Designer to review and submit his opinion about it. If you are unfamiliar with Solar Designer (Alexander Peslyak) , he is one of the finest in the business. He is the creator of John the Ripper. Here is the link to the review.

http://www.openwall.com/articles/Zcash-Equihash-Analysis

As you can see, he pointed out that it was only a matter of time.

My team and I have been working on a way to level the playing field for ALL Zcash miners. We are in the early stages and hope to present it to @zooko at the Zcon0 conference.

2 Likes
806

oh REALLLLY? how about stealing is not sutainable? you steal, you steal and one day nothing left to steal ??? GAME OVER :smiley:

807

so … you have enough capital to buy ASICs !!!
again … ideological based resistance !!!

1 Like
808

I want to tell you that I mine ZEC from the first second.
I’ve heard of ‘zerocash’ a long time before it’s has benn released.
I think I have a ‘medium’ farm(120k sol).
All my investments have been made from close to 0, just for this coin!!!
I invested in the equipment(GPU’s) for 2 reasons: a) for having faith in this coin and b) because I understand it will be AISC resistant.
If the ASIC’s(I’m not saying that are bad for a network) are coming, all I have to do is to move my farm to another network(this is not my desire) otherwise
all my investment for this farm will colapse.

If I knew it would not be 100% ASIC resistance over time, I do not know if I buyed so many Gpu’s, I probably kept money to invest in ASIC’s…

I have a little bitter taste, because I’m a straight man: IF I SAY ONE THING, I DO THAT!!!
Correct business is done with transparency and honesty.

PS:I also own a data center in Europe for hosting miners(capacity of 4MWH, now in socket 1,2MWH) with good price for electricity. For those intrested PM me. Thank you.

Wish to you all a good day!

4 Likes
809

I totally agree with this statement, most just have not the nuts to admit it honestly but hide behind some conspiracy theories, rumours, wrong info, you call it.

The fact alone that some here say that this Z9 unit using ONLY 300W but hashing like 15x 1080tis with near 3.000W is not energy effiecient says it all.

I have said it in my first post on this forum and will repeat it, 90+% of the gpu miners do not care about a given coin and switch rigs as soon as another coin algo gives them some 2% more profit. Be it due greed or due the high cost of a mining rig nowadays, just a fact. Very very view are dedicated indeed to a given project.

And this mimi mimi “i will sell all coins, switch rigs”, and so on just underlines exactly this, even trying to generate some childish pressure on the devs and teams.

The myth that gpu mining is for the small people is no more valid since about half a year anyway. Even reverse. Nowadays it’s cheaper for the private openminded miner to use an asic like the Z9. It costs only about 1/8 of the equivalent of 1080ti mining rig and uses only about 10% of the electricity the rig uses. Every average miner can buy it, while i’am personally even still not able to buy more 1080ti’s as i’am not willing to pay fantasy prices for a graphic card. Such Z9 is a perfect solution for many miners and having the issue discussed with a lot of gpu miners i know on some channels most are switching to this Asic on equihash, just logical.

Again, i see no difference with a small miner having a mining rig or having 3 asics at home is any different.

Saying that an Asic, constructed and build exactly for a given task, is a piece of junk is just wrong. It’s build exactly for that purpose, to be very efficient (price, hashrate, power consumption) for exactly this task. Technology nowadays is advancing in lightspeed, easy as that. History has shown, that these staying too conservative and not advancing with technlogy soon will be out of game.

About other coins forking away from Asic, sure, there are some. Monero forked away, i’am even not sure if they do not regret that move soon or late. How ethical is it to move away from an asic but support criminal bot nets? Bitcoin Gold first announced they will fork away from Asic, indeed this makes perfect sense to them, it’s a more or less dead coin in a downtrend. It’s it only chance to get out of the crisis. If all coins on equihash would fork, they will be the first moving back to be mined by an asic. BTG is a bad example when talking about forking away. It’s a downtrend coin while Zcash is an uptrend coin. The motives behind each coins move are totally different.

Many say that a coin mined by asic will go down, that’s simply wrong. A coin without a good project, real life use will vanish either way. Eventually it’s supported some time by the community behind the project but that’s it. For coins with whatever real use cases and good projects it has about zero impact how it’s mined or mined at all. There are enough examples of coins not even be mined nowadays to proof, at least short to mid term, being successfull.

While i agree that there is some kind of danger of centralization with Asics i have serious doubts that in reality it’s like that. I’am pretty sure that more asics are hold private than by bitmain itself. And at least there is some competion upraising on the asic market while on the gpu market there are just these 2 NVIDIA/AMD. Right now there are for example enough options someone has not to support Bitmain on a lot of their main algo machines like Sha256, Scrypt, cryptonite, Blake*, X11 and others. Enough producers available that produce even better miners than bitmain, at least there is competition on the raise and the argument of centralisation becomes less valid with time.

Personally me thinks that several algos for a given coin are a good idea, for example verge, they have algos for GPU and Asic. I’am not a dev and i admit i have no idea at what price such “setup” comes, but it’s interesting and may have it’s advantages and disadvantages.

However and whatever, i hope the team and devs make a decision only for the good of the coin, no matter if it’s pro gpu, pro asic, anti asic, pos, whatever.

3 Likes
810

I am chinese.
As an experienced person, I have to show you that asic is devastating to the market.
Take asic（SHA256）as an example, the asic manufacturer presells asic with full payment and then puts the product in its own mine for several months before it is sold. Price of asic is extremely unstable, in a bear market, the price of Bitmain S9 is 9000¥ (1400 USD) .In a bull market, the S9 will not be sold publicly, but is sold to the middleman at a high price, and then the middleman will sell them to individuals with the price of 30000¥ (4700 USD).
As the market changing dramatically, the middlemen also face huge risks. Usually, middlemen have experienced the price collapse before the arival of the high-priced futures, like the price of thousands of asics falling from 20000¥ to 5000¥. In this food chain, both consumers and middlemen are not winners. There is only one winner.

12 Likes
811

life of a zcash miner:

pay fees to mining software devs.
pay fees to pool operators.
pay fees to zcashco.
mine during the most boring part of zcash’s life. never get a big obvious pump to sell on.
sold most zcash mined @ sub $300 just to stay in business.
cheap, efficient ASICs announcement comes a couple months before major upgrades that could mewn ZEC to levels nobody even thought possible.

4 Likes
812

**Can we have a vote ? **

Or we can only vote by foot?

Talking is cheap

1 Like
813

It seems this debate boils down to small miners feeling betrayed if ZeroCoin Electric Coin company bends the knee to ASIC.

Why not give smaller “loyal” (I’m sure there’s a way to see which miners have contributed most to the network) and offer them a very small percentage of the founders reward.

Win win.

1 Like
814

Since you registered …your only posts are about how ASIC are great…so 99% is that you post straight from Bitmain factory …yes for Bitmain are great…for others who want to mine need to puy that 200$ junk for 2000$ and wait for months 2 have it while Bitmain allready has something much better for them ASIC is game over for 99.99% off miners …Yes its better to 100 people mine with ASIC then 100 000 with GPUs .
In my country i can buy GPY in 10 000 different shops…THIS DAY RIGHT NOW and anyone can buy and have 2 or 3 year warranty …and i can buy ASIC in ZERO (0) shops .

5 Likes
815

Very true, I’m not miner but I understand.

Time to have some big change, this decision is Turning point of zcash, I expect some expansionary policy from ZcashTeam to make zcash mining wide, open and decentralise.

Combination of PoW (multi algorithm) + PoS is solution in my personal opinion.

Don’t forget any contractionary policy lead bitmain and other ASIC producer become behind the scenes enemy, and we (all) are loser in this fight.

1 Like
816

I will wait for few days if devs are announcing some fork to make Zcash ASIC resistant then i will continue otherwise i will sell all my ZEC and will point my rig to some other coin, best i can do, it was a great journey with ZEC unfortunately ended sooner than i expect.

3 Likes
817

Man Bitmain is one of the worse companys in crypto, they sell you used miners, no real 2nd option to compete with them, they been mining hidding for months, tomorrow they decide to raise the price of asics to $4000 and what will be your answer? stop mining? as a result regular guys would buy less miners due to the increase in price forced by them and only big warehouses will have control. I dont see how this is any good.

5 Likes
818

In my opinion, this is all about the founder’s fee. Gpu miners (although I have over 30k sols mining equipment invested ) we’re still very slow compared to what asics can output.

The faster the hashrate is, the faster the founder’s fee gets accumulated, the richer Zooko and his team gets…

Sorry Zooko… for being a gpu miner that provides a very low hash output compared to your new ASIC friends. I hope you don’t forget us and kick away asic mining by forking your coin that we helped to get to where it is at now…

1 Like
819

It is currently unprofitable to mine Bitcoin with S9 miners. Do you think that is stopping Bitmain from mining?

You might as well give away your entire coin to Bitmain if you accept ASICS.

820

I am mining ZEC from Last one year and today i feel it’s gone all the trust and faith on dev team is gone, its like you plant a tree took care of it and when it will give you fruit somebody will come and take over you, we helped ZEC to grow this much from bottom and now ZEC is abandoning us, as soon as Z9 arrives there will be huge dump All the best guys, need to find a good coin again in a hope that they will stay with me for a long time.

3 Likes
821

I been saving ZCASH coins for the last 6 months paying electricity out of pocket I really believed in this coin and its future. All that is gone now!

Yesterday I sold all my holdings for Monero.

I dont belive in the zcash team anymore.

I invested $50,000 on GPUs which I will point somewhere else and still make money thats not a big deal, the sad part is that I lost all the trust on this coin.

4 Likes
822

Mining for more then a year Zcash now.
Made An account here, Just because of this matter. I think there are ASIC on the network since november 2017, why ? Don’t know, but the rise in hashpower since, made me Think, same for niet dropping when we had the low two months ago. Many of my Friends toke a lot of power to the after the fork monero, and i Read about many more, still no drop. But now there are here for real, what Will Zooko do ? What Will Zcash do ? I wait it out, don’t know realy where this Will be going.

1 Like
823

you’re going to regret that one! should’ve waited until ZEC hit +$500 …probably only a week or so to hit those levels.

if i were a miner: about a month of mining left. would continue mining ZEC until i couldn’t anymore, and hoard. GPU miners will most likely be scared away so difficulty should be favorable, also market’s bullish. would take profits no less than $500, then point workers at some shitcoin that hasn’t pumped yet like BTCP.

ragequitting will lose you money!!