What other companies?
Can you buy ASIC for cryptonight now?
NO…nowhere in the world…how is that decentralisation.
And there are 5-6 coins on cryptonight and is 100% network mined by ASIC
They will sell few ASIC for equicash and then will just display sold out …and they will continue mining…people who are pro ASIC here are one who hope they are in tiny group who will have ASIC and that only them can mine.
THE CASE FOR ASICS
When asked Bitmain spokesperson Sharma about fears that ASICs lead to centralization he said that “this hasn’t necessarily played out in practice.”
“We are very conscious of this perception and take it seriously given our leadership position,” Sharma told me in an email. “This is why (when smaller crypto networks are involved) we have modulated our sales of mining rigs to ensure that no one customer gets too much of a new batch.”
Even if miners don’t want to take Bitmain at its word, however, other researchers argue there are objective security advantages to allowing ASICs on a cryptocurrency network.
Joseph Bonneau, an assistant professor of computer science at New York University, presented research at the Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference in February that examined the cost of a hostile takeover of a blockchain. One of the blockchain attacks examined by Bonneau is known as a “rental attack,” which involves renting enough computational power from a cloud service company, for instance, to dominate a blockchain network. As Bonneau notes, this type of attack is only feasible on blockchains mined with commodity hardware like GPUs.
“For ASIC-dominated proof-of-work blockchains, such as Bitcoin, the rent strategy is likely not possible,” Bonneau wrote. The reason for this, he argued, is that most Bitcoin mining hardware is already accounted for and not up for rent.
“Among proof-of-work systems, our analysis indicates a clear security advantage for ASIC-dominated mining, as rental attacks are not possible and existing miners should have more incentive to resist bribery attacks,” Bonneau concluded.
As far as Monero is concerned, there may also be a secondary security effect from adding ASICs to the network: Disabling massive Monero mining botnets. In the last few months, “cryptojacking”—wherein a website script surreptitiously uses your unused CPU cycles to mine Monero—has been on the rise. ASIC miners would render this completely unprofitable because they could drive up the network difficulty to levels that even thousands of CPUs working in concert couldn’t compete with.
Some even hold the view that centralization is inevitable, with ASICs or without. Software developer Philip Daian argued in a recent blog that centralized economies of scale in the mining space, exemplified by Bitmain, are bound to emerge. A range of factors, including unequal access to cheap electricity, cheap labor, and backdoor deals with regulators will give some large mining businesses a competitive advantage over smaller mining operations, regardless of whether ASICs are involved or not, he argued. In the long term, this may result in the same centralization of resources that anti-ASIC forks are designed to avoid in the first place, Daian wrote.
For example, there’s nothing stopping an ASIC mining giant from cutting a deal with a GPU manufacturer to develop specialized hardware. “Should we oppose those too, insisting on commodity hardware only?” Daia asked rhetorically.
Ultimately, Sharma argued that ASICs “demonstrate the mining community’s dedication and commitment to a particular currency—a basis for which participants can have long-term faith in the strength of a network,” Sharma said. “While GPU or CPU mining offers some flexibility in re-targeting toward different currencies, such miners have strong incentive to hop between currencies to their greatest short-term economic advantage.”
THE CASE AGAINST ASICS
In 2014, almost a year before Ethereum launched, Vitalik Buterin visited an “unassuming little building in Shenzhen, China” where he found a small stack of Bitcoin ASICs waiting to be shipped on the third floor. In a blog post, Buterin recounted how on the floor below he found stacks of ASICs that accounted for a quarter of the computing power added to the Litecoin network every day.
Buterin marveled at how this one small factory in China was producing this much new computing power everyday on its own. It was hardware centralization in action. The question for Buterin was whether the centralization of ASIC production was actually a bad thing for a cryptocurrency network. After all, the production of GPUs and CPUs is highly centralized as well, with a handful of companies such as Nvidia, AMD, and Intel dominating the market.
“With ASIC miners, right now things are still not too bad,” Buterin wrote in the 2014 blog. “Although ASICs are produced in only a small number of factories, they are still controlled by thousands of people worldwide. Soon, however, that may change. In a month’s time, what if the manufacturers realize that it does not make economic sense for them to sell their ASICs when they can instead simply keep all of their devices in a central warehouse and earn the full revenue?”
Today, as in 2014, there are a handful of companies that make cryptocurrency ASICs, although a Chinese company called Bitmain has established itself as a clear leader in the field. Bitmain’s Antminers have become basically synonymous with Bitcoin mining, but the company isn’t just making these chips to sell them—just as Buterin predicted, it also keeps a lot in its own mines. BitFury, an American company, follows a similar business model.
When I spoke to Bitmain’s marketing manager Nishant Sharma over email, he said the company doesn’t disclose how many ASICs it is producing as a matter of policy. Furthermore, he said he didn’t how many Monero and Ethereum ASICs the company plans on keeping for itself in its own mines.
At the time of writing, Bitmain’s two mining pools account for approximately 40 percent of the total computing power on the Bitcoin network. Controlling this much of the Bitcoin network means Bitmain also has an outsized influence on the ecosystem. During the Bitcoin forking bonanza last year, Bitmain played a major role in the decision to fork Bitcoin into two versions: Bitcoin core and Bitcoin Cash. There is also the specter of a long-theorized “51 percent attack,” when one miner can hold Bitcoin’s hash power hostage and wreak havoc with the network for as long as they’re in charge.
Depending on one company for the majority of the hardware securing the blockchain also poses security risks. For example, in April 2017, anonymous researchers found a firmware vulnerability in Bitmain antminers called Antbleed, which was billed as an ASIC “kill-switch.” This vulnerability allowed Bitmain, a government, or other bad actors to remotely stop Bitmain ASICs from mining on the network, which could cripple Bitcoin. Bitmain denied it was malicious and issued a patch for the vulnerability a few days after it was discovered.
The proliferation of ASICs on a network also gradually pushes out miners running GPUs or CPUs, raising the financial barrier to entry. As these less efficient miners’ share of the network computational power shrinks, it eventually reaches a point where the cost of the electricity needed to run these miners is more than they’re earning by mining. These miners can either fork over the cash to buy an ASIC and keep mining, or switch to a different coin.
Jimmy Song, a main Bitcoin developer, told me he doesn’t see the centralization of ASIC production as much of a problem.
“It’s only a problem in the short term since Bitmain has the majority of miner manufacturing ability,” Song told me in a Twitter message. “Long term there are a lot of players that are looking at the margins Bitmain is making and licking their chops waiting to get in. I know of at least four startups trying to dethrone Bitmain and there’s also bigger players like Intel, Samsung, and Nvidia that have to be looking at this because the margins are so large.”
Given Bitmain’s domination of the mining industry and less-than-transparent corporate practices, Spagni and many in the Monero community hold the company in bad faith. But even beyond Bitmain and monopoly concerns, the tendency towards centralization in ASICS themselves has the community worried.
You are very bad informed. Especially in cryptonite Bitmain was the last that developed and shipped it’s cryptonite asics. The cryptonite asics are still available even available inhand on ebay for example…
Can you buy ASIC for cryptonight now?
Do you honestly believe Monero mining isn’t currently mined by just a few large players with massive GPU farms? I bet only <= 5% of Monero mining is done in households.
There is no difference between buying an ASIC or buying a GPU. People with money will always be able to buy more of whatever a normal household consumer can buy. Actually, they can buy them in bulk for much cheaper too.
No they ARE NOT AVAILABLE …you lie…and they are not for long time…go to their website…E bay not exist in my country and e bay sales second hand stuff
The feeling is bad because of only 2 reasons to me .
All coins created equally . That is no more a slogan .
How many % of any population will bother buying any asic .
How many unprivilaged will be blocked for good of even dreaming of having some zcash.
I have seen many online users mine zcash on youtube and other forums with shitty gpus getting 50 sols and they are doing it
Thats called adobtion , spread . Decentralization , opportunity .
The hashrate from gpus mostly legitimate widespread adoption that will increase massively over few years beyond imagination if we just hold it .
Just few years .
The project started only 2 years ago for god sake . And we cant keep this promis longer than that.
Its not even a micro term in a currency that should live hundreds of years to come .
Second reason is the entity that produces the asics .
In the coming couple of years samsung and other real innovative companies will jump in and creat their own asics and it will be then wide spread and available to more people .
Cant we hold this back only till the first halfing .
It amazes me we cant hold the promis for just 4 years .
As for me i have zero problems getting asics or even a farm .i can play this game with no sweat .
I might be little idealistic but still i can give up to asic but not to the people that I know who are they and what they are going to do witb it .
Anyone can with a recent GPY can mine monero…i have 8 AMD 550 rx 2 gb cards and mine monero…they are very cheap card (90$ each) and they are totally silent .
I don’t lie. The lie accusement fits more yourself as you did not make any effort to even check it. Here a link to the first cryptonite miner that is STILL available:
https://www.baikalminer.com/
since day one available, still on promotion and they never stopped selling them so far, not a single day.
Now i await at very least that you excuse yourself for calling me a liar and than accuse yourself to be a liar!
Are you seriously call that a sale??? 3600 +shiping and taxes and PSU for 40khs...which today will give you 5 a day? And when ETN forks in end off this month will give you 1$ a day the best…but probably less then electricity.
They put in on website but no one in with IQ>70 would buy and they know it no one will buy it but they dont care…because mining for them self is first priority…unit probably cost them 200$ to produce.
Samsung has stated they are going to manufacture crypto mining ASICs. I would assume other companies will follow. Unless of course coins keep forking. Then only Bitmain will produce them and they will mine in private.
Actually the price is for 5 miners, so for 200 kh/s on cryptnite or 400 kh/s on cryptonite lite (they are the only asic that provide this). I didn’t check if it’s US5 a day, but as you made the calculation with 1 machine only than correctly it would mean 25 USD per day. If it makes sense to buy that bundle of 5 for that price, up to everybodies own mind.
However, this was NOT the point. You accused me being a liar and you said they are not available but they ARE, simple as that. You can turn it around as you want now with the price, your statement was plain wrong that they are not available, they are. It’s a different story if it makes sense, but your comment wasn’t about that.
So i still wait for the excuse for the liar.
Mining a coin for profit is not the kind of adoption we need. We need the coin to be used for the purpose it was intended. Private transactions.
Anything a small miner can do for $90 each a larger miner can do for $70 each by buying in bulk with cheaper electricity.
GPU mining does not equal decentralization of mining.
I think it seems to be reasonable to assume that most/all participants are trying to maximize their profit.
If this assumption holds true GPU-only-mining has a larger potential to destabilize the network.
According to the assumption a GPU-miner will switch to the most profitable coin because he is able to switch easily.
ASICs are much more restricted in respect to this - investment in ASICs seems to be much more mid/long-term oriented - this seems to provide incentive to act constructive.
Fair enough. I read it as a reverse criticism, if that was not your intent and you meant it as a hypothetical then I stand corrected. I offer my apology for my own misunderstanding.
Not totally agree . But when more people have coin they tend to think what can they do with it . Where to spend it and use it . Which is another thing the company imo should focus on . Bring more shops to adobt it and use it in their payment system .
I like sapling and overwinter because it will help in that . And i am againest postponing them .
But the front of adabtion needs concentration fromthe zcash company .
Wow - I guess Bitmain is OK, because they care.
This is essentially saying they entirely control the market. THEY decide who gets machines and how many.
I had to chuckle at that a little bit, but I get your sentiment. It’s like Bitmain is saying “It’s ok, we will tell you if you have too many of our ASIC!!” Imagine that, a company saying "I’m sorry but we are making too much money at the moment, please come back in 6 months to a year. LOL
It could definitely be done in a subsequent Network Upgrade, which could activate as few as three months after Sapling activates if we get started soon deciding on it.
Does that mean that even if the Zcashco team agree on changing algo for Asic resistance, the Z9 mini will be able to mine for at least until december 2018 (3 months after the mid-september sapling activation)?