“Another complicating factor is that the Zcash Company’s chief, Zooko, has signalled ambivalence about ASIC resistance.”
Everyone knows Zooko’s attitude.What the Foundation can do something?
Please do not give the GPU miner an impossible hope.
In essence watch the market and decide ad-hoc how to redistribute the efficiency. Punishing the most efficient miners will have the same effects of redistribution of wealth. All poor but al in the game. I won’t expect much capitalisation around your network if you take the role of controlling the powers of the competition.
Who’s going to invest and risk their time and money in such a hostile and arbitrary environment?
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You won’t have a community left by end of year. Are they really this stupid? Bitmain will control majority of zec soon. Not to mention now the limit on buying asics is 50 per person. Bitmain is literally laughing in the zec devs faces at this moment.
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We’re monitoring the discussion here, on the community chat, and on Reddit. You can also submit a GitHub issue: Issues · ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation · GitHub
Or email contact@z.cash.foundation.
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I think that the Foundation has highlighted some good points. My interpretation of it is
- Zcash Company (core developers) are not going to Fork in the near term because Overwinter and Sapling are the priority.
- Forking now would be premature because nobody knows how the ASICs work, do they have 1GB RAM? Or 3 or 6GB? Is it worth the risk of Forking only to find out that a simple software update nullifies the Fork a few days later?
- There are many different ways to change the PoW, which one is correct? This needs to be researched.
- The Foundation is going to keep the GPU miners in mind when looking for solutions.
As far as risks goes I think this adds risk to ASICs. Is it worth taking the risk and buying a bunch of Z9s knowing that there is active research into how to make them less effective?
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This is the reason why capital won’t form around ZCash if they are so arbitrary. Your fears aren’t different than a guy with 10M$ willing to research and develop a new machine.
The sooner the markets matures, the less risks. Forking away all the time is just delaying the development of the market and creating a deficient one.
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i’m half disagree, after they clearly states their intention for the community i’m willing to help to ‘restabilize’ the network when needed. yes it will be rough until the solution implemented(if it comes after sapling), but GPU miner still have option to do to keep supporting zcash like zokoo said, mine other coin and convert to zec or you can keep mining zec to help racking up the difficulty and hurt ASIC ‘lifespan’ (
)
i can’t disrespect the one trying to solve the problem with clear and good intention, why don’t we repay them back and show that the community have real support to zcash. Some solution might not be possible without the help of the community 
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I think doing any consensus algorithm change, no matter how trivial, would disrupt, endanger, and delay the Overwinter and Sapling projects. And, changing the PoW isn’t that trivial. (Although it is a lot easier than a major novel innovation like Sapling!)
The Zcash Foundation just announced that they are funding research and engineering resources immediately, so maybe we can learn exactly what it would take to change the PoW, etc. from their efforts.
BitcoinZ - Will Fork
Bitcoin Gold - Will Fork
Bitcoin Private - Will ForkZcash wants ASIC, why? because money.
I don’t understand why people keep saying this. The Zcash Company doesn’t make any money either way, except if the price of the coin goes up, because the Zcash Company gets a “Dev Fund” of coins directly from the blockchain as part of the Founder’s Reward. I guess people are just figuring “If I’m losing money, THAT GUY must be gaining money!” ?
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A commenter on Reddit asked whether the Foundation or the Company has final say on all of this. I think @acityinohio’s response is worth cross-posting here:
The network is defined by the miners and users that run consensus-compatible Zcash nodes. The Company currently maintains the reference client, and since most users run software based on the company’s implementation, the Company holds outsize sway in this decision. But that does not preclude the possibility of others developing their own implementations—or opening a PR and working through the ZIP process to get changes approved by the Company.
The Foundation intends to build its own independent consensus-compatible node as well, and if enough users run it then the Foundation will have more sway in these sorts of decisions in the future. Prior to that, even the possibility of a divisive hard fork may convince the Company (or in the future, the Foundation AND Company with their own node implementations) to implement changes.
Which is a long way of saying: The Company currently has more (but not ultimate) decision-making ability. However, the Foundation (and others!) can have a measurable effect on Zcash network policy through independent technical development.
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That all looks pretty accurate, Shawn. I’d like to add that I’m not convinced that ASICs are all bad. A lot of people have a lot of solid arguments for why ASICs are good in some ways. I find the sight of a whole bunch of people all loudly agreeing with each other that ASICs are 100% bad wholly unconvincing. 
Tomorrow there’s a presentation by a scientist about “hostile takeovers of blockchains”: Hostile blockchain takeovers with Joseph Bonneau - YouTube
For all we know, Bitmain already controls ≥ 51% of the Zcash hashpower. But, I don’t believe them controlling any amount of the Zcash hashpower gives them any influence over what the Company, the Foundation, or the rest of the community does.
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Sure, why not mine those other coins, then if you want to try out Sapling when it goes live you can trade some of those other coins for ZEC and make Sapling-protected transactions. Or, maybe those other coins will copy Sapling and add it to their own blockchains down the line.
Thank you for being clear about that. I well recognize and respect the fact that changes to the Zcash consensus algorithm can have tremendous financial impacts on various parties. We even have a solid, reliable measure of this impact on a global scale: Zcash mining is currently worth $2M every 24 hours: https://onchainfx.com/v/UsZtA6
Having any substantial degree of influence over who is going to receive such massive transfers of wealth is a responsibility that I don’t take lightly. In fact, I’d like to point out to the rest of the Zcash community that the decision and the responsibility for the consequences do not rest with me alone, but in fact with everyone in the community, who collectively have the ability to influence this outcome. I’d urge everyone reading this temporarily set aside their own financial interests and to consider carefully the specific facts (such as how the Bitmain Z9 works, and whether or not Bitmain already controls ≥ 51% of the Zcash hashpower), and the long-term social consequences for our mission of empowering everyone with economic freedom and opportunity.
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I did. Considering the ideas that you have been posting in the last few days/weeks (including bending math facts to justify your ideological position), you ought to resign from the Zcashco and from the Foundation (don’t know if you are a member or not).
Basically, you lost the trust of the vast majority of participants.
Perhaps, there ought to be a poll to finalize this.
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I still don’t understand the controversy
These machine run 1/10 of the power itakes to run a comparable rig.
This is what miners live for. More sol. Less electricity. It helps the planet.
I understand difficulty goes up. But you are getting more sol and paying less to run it. So if difficulty goes up, your offset on power cost and the extra sols received
So I would have to take my gpu’s and mine something different. Or sell em and invest in more z9.
I DONT SEE THE ISSUE
all the hate on Bitmain. Well…go start your own chip manufacturing and do it to…all the haters and jealous people. Otherwise stop whining.
In this space there’s always a place to make money.
Like zooko said. If you stand for zcash. Mine something else and buy zcash with it.
PROGESSION PEOPLE.
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This is nonsense. You have 2000 watts available. it is either 10-15 GPUs or 7 ASICs.
It does nothing to “the planet”. everybody always filling in to the brim. Bitcoin asics are 3300X GPUs in bitcoin mining. Did it decreased the electricity load? On the contrary.
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Ok in the last 2 days I stoped reading this thread. Felt like running in circles. By the way I can understand that sapling has highest priority. . .
Non the less i’d like to hear something about the time after sapling-rollout. What’s your stand, are you going to set highest priority on making the algorithm asic resistant again?
A clear statement on that would be fair to everyone pro- or con-asic.
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You can’t speak for everyone. Not true my friend. That’s unfair and grouping farmers in with a home miner like my self. I would not. I would buy 2-3