This handily also debunks another myth, that ASIC mined coins are more attack resistant than CPU/GPU mined coins.
If Bitcoin can quickly lose over half of its hashpower, it suggests that attack resistance is rooted more in economics than the method of mining itself.
the last thing we need is a flippening to occur with ZCash…
we dont need ZCash co. to turn out to be another Rhett, forking to gain and only to gain, one time after another.
I think a major concern of most miners, is how did @zooko comment on the ASICs just before they became publically available? were you tipped off by Roger Ver who is a ZEC Funder and buddy buddy with jihad wu and bitmain??? honesty would go a long way here
its a stretch for us to think this is a co-incidence
Technology is a double edged sword. I honestly feel like its pointless to fight entities like bitmain because you spent n amount in GPU mining. Tomorrow there could a new break through in computer hardware that renders all known mining hardware obsolete. If the only thing you care about is “decentralization” of mining because you’ve mined zec since inception, then demand a share of the founders reward for life and have the ASIC miners pay for it (if you can). There is an entire globe of humans and you miners are like less than .001%. If this is about being a GLOBAL payment network, you need to consider the network before your own interests.
I like the idea of 2 zec forks - I’m wondering if it can act like an SDR(special drawing right) and be a weighted basket of zec forks forming one unit…
Anyways one lesson from the recent Star Wars movie was “let the past die”.
There are many arguments against Asics (as of today), the main one for me and probably many others, is the obvious quasi-monopoly of one actor (Bitmain) on the Asic market, making it de facto the main source of the blockchain security. That alone should be enough reason to fork away from asics (whatever the strategy can be) when one of the most important goal is “decentralization”. Ideally, there should be enough competition to destroy that monopoly. But we must look at what is actually happening, and be pragmatic : there is no competition here, only one big cartel.
But on top of that, we now have a reasonable proof (thanks to what happened with Cryptonight algo and countless testimonies of used Antminers) that they used to mine with. That means that they will always mine with the best (new) Asic that they make, and always sell the obsolete one. This way, they are certain to always control the hashrate of the other miners (who are forced to buy the last Bitmain asic), and since they calibrate the price of the Asics as they want (since there is no real competition) they control also the ROI the other miners will have (just enough to make them happy, while they are mining with a ROI that is probably x100).
Another point, that is rarely said : Asics kills innovation in the mining software (for gpus and fpga) for obvious reasons. Thus, to see Asics as the natural “evolution” of mining is wrong : it is just the evolution when the algorithm is “easy” enough. One could have another position : make the challenge of mining dynamic so that the natural “evolution” is at the same time software (mining programs) and hardware (gpus and fpgas).
Yes I just registered to express my humble opinion about this so called crisis.
I can see why financial motivation would drive GPU miners to demand a POW fork, but to me this whole debate is utterly ridiculous. Simply put, those miners seem oblivious to basic economic concepts. Mining was never supposed to be a freeroll for everyone who owns a GPU. You are not entitled to make money through crypto mining. It’s not a human right to mine at a positive ROI forever, it’s supposed to be a competition increasing in difficulty over time. This is what’s actually encouraging the development of technological advancements. If you decide to invest in GPUs to mine crypto, that’s just an investment decision. There’s always a risk associated to such decisions. Energy might get more expensive where you live, it might get outlawed to mine at all, or god forbid someone just might develop superior hardware. If someone develops hardware solely to mine this coin that’s something very positive in my eyes.
I’m not even going to start talking about GPU mining farms. They do exist and it’s all the same thing. Someone made a smart business decision or not, and he got paid or he lost money. Nobody is forced to mine crypto, it’s your choice to risk your money on GPUs just like you could invest in one crypto or the other, or none at all.
Now you can try to force whatever political decision you favor for short term monetary gain, but the market is going to run you over long term anyway, especially if you keep making bad decisions. To make it completely clear, yes I believe any coin enforcing asic resistance is going to die to a fork or a competing altcoin. You would have to fork every time someone develops a smarter way to strengthen your chain security and each time you will leave behind a fork that’s going to be stronger, faster and more efficient than your own. At some point you have to lose because your hardware is exactly what it is, not specialized, and anyone can copy your idea and run it on more efficient hardware.
right, right, totally oblivious to economic concepts… like the economics behind backing 2 ZEC chains which would DOUBLE THE ZEC SUPPLY from 21 million to 42 million!!!
sure holders would get one of each fork, but the fact they just doubled their total cap on coins would greatly diminish the value of ZEC in the long run…
the economics for 2 forks point towards a decrease in the combined value for ZEC…
that is an economic outcome no one will want…
Investors would quickly realize Zcash co. can double or triple the total supply in the snap of a finger and market investors would quickly abandoned ZCash in favor of more trustworthy coins like Monero or ADA or ETH…
Not only can we not trust ZCash co. to keep their word in regards for forking out ASICs but we can not trust their max supply, and then the question would come in if we can trust them when it comes to creating ZEC out of thin air.
I for one am very happy that I dumped all my ZEC at the start of April when I said that ZCash co would be liable to lawsuits if ASICs were not eliminated. those coins that I traded for have appreciated dramatically where ZEC has done practically nothing…
2 chains would cause a lot of investors to immediately dump after the fork
and the question would then arise if ZCash COMPANY could be sued for purposefully doubling their supply, as they had stated a 21 million cap at launch… since they are a company… they should tread carefully… this isnt zclassic we are talking about here.
Here’s a secure network: 1,000,000 individuals mining on hardware that produces 1 hash per second.
Here’s a less secure network: 1,000 individuals mining on hardware that produces 1 gigahash per second.
The latter network has a much higher hashrate but it’s also far less secure because there are fewer miners and a much higher potential for collusion.
Now, here’s an even less secure network: 1,000,000 individuals mining on hardware that produces 1 hash per second and 1 miner mining on hardware that produces 1 gigahash per second.
This third network has a higher hashrate than the perfectly distributed network. In fact, some naive people may even say the new miner is improving the network security by boosting the hashrate. That is completely false – he’s able to easily attack the network.
It should be quite obvious that GPU mining is much closer to the first scenario than the latter scenarios. Fair ASIC distribution would approximate the second scenario. Unfair ASIC distribution approximates the third scenario, which is what we almost certainly have in every ASIC friendly coin.
questionable if the devs support development on both chains…
its not like monero where dev support was only continuing on the first chain… that caused inferior forks… where if zooko decides to support equal development on 2 chains, no chain would really be inferior… they would be equal
this would be deliberate inflation of the total coin cap…
I think as a company ZCash is more liable than any other cryptocurrency - to its investors… which are 1. holders and 2. miners. These investors should be able to sue for losses due to broken promises, which would be 1. not forking out asics, 2. increasing total coin cap.
its not about the market rejecting those chains, it was about the developers rejecting those chains… no one wants to hold dead development that has no future.
I don’t bet on monero at all, as I find zcash superior in all aspects. But that’s only my personal opinion.
And while I agree with your previous point about distribution of hashrate (Mining decentralization) and security, I don’t see your fears about a single big miner coming true that easily. There’s nothing keeping people from buying or developing Asics themselves. If it’s profitable to do so, someone will enter the market. Bitmain might be the first, but it’s not like there’s a license keeping other businesses from entering the market.
Also, what would keep GPU manufacturers from being bad actors just like you suppose Asic manufacturers are. If it’s so profitable they could just stop catering to gamers and keep all the cards to mine for themselves.
If you were right, any non-GPU coin would be doomed. We will see, I’m not saying I can look into the future.
Well that is not quite correct as the pool of available GPU’s is quite large compared to amount of new GPU’s entering market and they are quite distributed around the world, what you don’t understand is ASIC is limited to one country and manufacturer…mark my words Zcash will die if they don’t fork as it is no better than Bitcoin with mining centralization or gate keepers limited to ASIC manufactures…it appears the Zcash team leaders are not as visionary as first thought and are basically in it for the money for themselves.
Theory is all good and all but I look to real world issues and what is going to happen and not what might happen.
I should also add that ZEC representatives have unethically edited their previous posts in regards to the fact that ZCash WILL change the algo if ASICS are created. This post by @Shawn was edited on April 4th, right after I mentioned that ZCash co could be sued.
They know they are criminal in what they are doing or not doing in this case and have attempted to cover up their tracks…
SInce this forum makes edits visible… due to the fact they were not smart enough to edit their SQL database directly… i recommend that users search though all previous posts and document all changes with screen shots now. These screen shots may be very useful in a class action lawsuit against ZCash co. if this ASIC fork nonsense does not play out as it was originally promised.
notice that in the last paragraph he changed “will” to “will likely” as to potentially try to avoid any legal actions against the company… sorry shawn… that’s low buddy… would be best if you stick to your original word rather than try to weasel out of it… we are not stupid here. The edited was done on April 4th 2018, my post calling them out for potential legal liability was created on April 3rd 2018… see where our funding reward goes… towards lying to us.
I do not appreciated being played as a fool.
However, it is nice to see that the proposed idea of a class-action against ZEC co. was taken seriously. It Should Be.
People will not develop ASICs if the proof of work algorithm is tweaked regularly. They would lose money by doing so.
There’s no guarantee that AMD or Nvidia will not go rogue, but I think it’s far less likely than Bitmain going rogue. Actually, it’s very easy to argue that Bitmain has already done so by promoting Bitcoin Cash, sabotaging Bitcoin’s block times, and spamming the mempool, which forced users to pay enormous transaction costs and has permanently damaged Bitcoin’s reputation.
Are we sure we want to hand Zcash over to these guys?
Die to a fork ? - Tell that to Monero, or Vertcoin, or many other coins that have been around for years. The Monero forks are worthless for example. I don’t see any evidence to back this claim.
Stronger? - ASIC’s do not strengthen the network unless they are distributed fairly - and even then they don’t strengthen your network anymore than distributed GPU’s do. This debate is mostly centered on the fact that there is and will only be one ASIC producer for Zcash for the foreseeable future - which decreases security. I don’t think most of us are opposed to technological advances.
ASIC’s make the network faster? - Mining doesn’t work that way. There are specific block times. ASIC’s increase hashes which isn’t necessary for anything except competing to solve blocks. This is mining 101. The blocks would get solved just as fast by 100 GPU’s or 10 really fast ASIC’s - doesn’t matter.
Efficiency? - Besides saving some floor/server room space temporarily, there is no efficiency gain. Miner’s will ramp up to the same amount of watts they were previously using. The problem is that hardware becomes obsolete faster, and can’t be reused for much but a landfill, so it’s actually worse for the environment. Yes H/s is better, but see above, doesn’t matter. Everyone just competes at a higher hash count. It’s all relative.
Secure? - Turning over control to one company increases centralization, and ASIC machines have closed source mining software. Bitmain machines have been found with kill-switches and phone home capabilities just for starters.
I could go on, but we aren’t crying about losses. Read many of the posts above about Bitmain, and other miner’s concerns and educate your self on the mining process. We are just trying to keep a coin we all like, and have made it clear that if ASIC’s take over at this point in time, we are gone. It’s kind of like trying not to lose a friend you like.
I might have gotten carried away about the network being faster but I’m glad you saw my basic ideas.
Yes I don’t have any evidence for a fork dying (yet), that’s why I said ‘I believe’. Vertcoin isn’t something I can take seriously and we’ll see how long it takes for the crypto market to come to a point where most of the so called shitcoins finally disappear. In my economic understanding there’s no possibility of useless coins surviving in the long term.
For technological advances to occur, you can’t fork your coin everytime the first participant brings any innovation. This kills any development on hardware and encourages that money to develop for competing currencies. I don’t see why a GPU manufacturer or anyone else for that matter wouldn’t develop a competing Asic, except for fear of a fork with developers being unclear about the integrity of their original POW implementation.
You don’t seem to understand POW, if a POW could be made where 1 man 1 vote that would be perfect no one entity could gain a monopoly…developing faster hardware is irrelevant to securing network, diversification of POW is the aim.
How exactly are ASICs a “technological advancement” when it comes to improving a cryptocurrency network?
In what way do they make the network better?
More electrically efficient? False, as I’ve explained many times.
More secure? False, distribution is what matters.
Faster transactions? False, network hashrate has no effect.
Improve network effect? False. GPU mining is far more interesting to more people than jet engine ASICs. Far more people already have GPUs too. People are eager to show off their GPU rigs and introduce their friends to Zcash. I think people with ASICs would be embarrassed to show them to their friends.
ASICs are not useful to the network and have many undesirable elements. It’s perfectly reasonable for a cryptocurrency network to adjust its proof of work algorithm to prevent them from taking over.
