I’ll trust them more if they accept reality of ASICs and find a efficient way not change algorithm time to time.
how you got “shareholders = miners”?
I think the best way is PoS which Zooko already mentioned, very clever idea, good for community and also future of Foundation. for short term we can change some parameters of current algorithm, but for long view we need some basic change in rewarding system. Miners have to accept technology innovation in mining industry.
In light of the planning for Overwinter and Sapling (see end of discussion
in Issue: Plan how to change the proof-of-work that @Shawn linked to), a good way to expedite a post-Sapling change of Equihash parameters may be for current miner authors to add support, and advertise performance, for (144,5) parameters.
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oh so thats your argument? you called it a “reality”? wow, it must be true then. Pack it up people, lets all sell our GPUs and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. lordfeo called it a reality even though it has been proven beyond the shadow of the doubt, several times in this thread, that its completely nonsensical to argue “fighting asic is a lost battle”. In reality its the other way around, but i don’t wanna repeat that again, read my previous comments as well as comments made by other miners here that clearly show how Bitmain&Co will not even attempt to attack ZCash again when they see the community/developers take a stand the first time ( as other coins are showing and leading by example).
Clearly you are not a miner, and judging by your utter disregard to the millions of dollars spent by the thousands of miners who are the soul and heart of the network (and ARE the shareholders of the company that can destroy it in one day if they all go mine a different coin), i don’t think i need to waste my time explaining things to some random “investor” who bought some ZCash coins because he thinks it will moon in 3 months and now is actively voicing his opinions on what miners and programmers should and should not do.
Sorry bro, don’t take this personally, but your opinion on this matter counts for nothing. You hold no power of any sort. Your couple of coins will be worth nothing soon without the support of the miners. Without hashing power, you have no say in this mining thread at all and should stop crating confusion and posting comments void of any real knowledge or experience.
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I think so, Just google “respect others opinion”, result is something like:
- Try to understand their view. People come from different backgrounds and are brought up to believe in different viewpoints. …
- Don’t be rude or arrogant. Arguments are more likely to happen, not because you have different opinions, but because of how you put them forward. …
- Don’t dwell on it. …
- Respect their right to an opinion.
Good luck
I don’t know about all this technical stuff. However, since there’s a lot of talk about mining pools, can ZCash be enhanced so that miners don’t need pools to make the same money they do with a pool?
No pool = no centralization.
Yes, I understand the practical significance of needing a pool now. But maybe there’s a way so that pool mining becomes unnecessary for ZCash.
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how is that “not respecting other opinions”? All i did is point out that your “opinions” provide no arguments, completely disregard the millions invested by thousands of people, and hold absolutely no weight at all since you are not a miner and this is about resisting asic mining.
Respect is earned not given, and when you voice an opinion on a matter that you have no experience in, no investment in, and provide no arguments, then no, sorry, i will not blindly just accept your opinion.
You can have all the opinions you want, that doesn’t mean you should be voicing them in the wrong places, nor does it mean i am forced to accept them.
Ill give you an example, i could buy all the BMW cars i want, that would still not give me the right to go the BMW meetings and tell their engineers and designers how to make their car. My opinion in that case holds absolutely no weight or value since i am neither a manufacturer of any part of their cars nor an engineer working on the team nor anything. If i go there and start demanding they “respect my opinions”, they will throw me out the door in 2 minutes.
Please don’t take this personally, i am countering your invalid comments on this matter, not attacking you personally.
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Two 51% attacks in two days. Is the bigger problem with Verge the fact that there were bugs in the code or the fact that they were able to get 51%?
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If they adopt P2P mining like Vertcoin it will reduce centralization. There aren’t many pools at all for Vertcoin since just about everyone solo mines or does P2P. That coin has actually changed the algorithm twice because of botnets and ASIC’s. Vertcoin and Monero are the coins I trust most when it comes to battling ASIC’s.
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From the article…
"On Wednesday April 4, “ocminer”, a regular poster on the Bitcointalk forum, announced that verge (XVG) was experiencing a 51% attack. "
However, another article states…
“… a bug that allowed a malicious miner to exploit the network’s mining algorithm for a seven-figure payday.”
Above my pay grade. Many more smart people on this forum who would likely know which.
12 hours until the monero hard fork. Then we shall see some interesting stats.
@tromp Regarding timeline, Sapling is scheduled for September 2018. That would mean a post-Sapling change to the proof-of-work would be at least 6 months from now. Based on conventional wisdom that would be enough time for a manufacturer to produce an ASIC and/or update an existing design to the new parameters.
Given this timeframe, if there are ASICs already being used to mine in secret today, those miners would have plenty of time to continue mining and use the proceeds to build an entrenched position which is later defended, leading to a split in the community. This is not breathless fan fiction…
In less than 24 hours, Monero will execute its scheduled hard fork. However, the ASIC mineable chain will live on as “Monero Original” supported by AntPool (owned by Bitmain, who also create the ASIC miners) with readily available exchange support.
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Only 11 hours to go. Then some interesting numbers should start to be seen on the monero network .
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Re: Monero Original. Wow, I hadn’t heard about this until now. This whole scenario should be setting off alarms in the minds of Zcash users and Developers 
. Bitmain is only out to get a return on their investment and doesn’t seem to care about the risks to users Privacy that having/spending/claiming coins on both sides of a fork of a privacy coin causes.
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Yes, I realize if Zcash commits to an end-of-year Equihash parameter change, then ASIC manufacturers can have ASICs ready. But regardless of how you feel about ASIC resistance policies, the parameter change is still a big improvement over the current status quo. And it doesn’t preclude makeing further PoW changes early next year if that is deemed desirable.
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I was wondering why there needs to be a hard fork to slightly change an existing algorithm. Do you have a link to an article or blog where I could read about it? I was under the impression it could be changed in some ways without necessitating a hard fork. For example, is it possible to make a new software program that simply used more memory and was more efficient to where an ASIC would need a massive amount of memory and be less cost effective?
I, for one, appreciate Zooko’s pragmatic approach here. There’s not enough of this in the crypto world.
One question I have for everyone/anyone is what the advantages of allowing ASIC mining are. I understand that there are (network wide) efficiency advantages, but are there any others?
Abstract comparison:
swords and guns
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Zooko, it is very simple. ASIC mining acceptance would mean that every single miner that has supported the Zcash network will be displaced and forced to either switch coins or invest in new hardware. By not outright supporting the current GPU mining community for your own coin you are positioning yourself against the very people who provide the coin’s existence. In a way you are biting the hand that feeds you.
I understand that from an objective perspective like one that a dev should be taking, what do you care between GPU and ASIC, either way the coin is going to get mined and the network will be supported. Some may argue that ASIC mining efficiencies would provide a more stable network overall when compared to GPU mining since it is less sensitive to cost-constraints.
However, because ASIC mining is hardware-to-algo-specific, this reduces the supply of possible hardware available to be used for any one coin by bottle-necking the manufacuring of these units (Bitmain). Unlike GPU mining that has numerous manufactures, the ASIC mining hardware supply can be controlled by less entities, thereby increasing centralization by reducing the ease-of-entry into the market/network.
Mining without ASIC machines would allow more people to mine because the ease-of-entry is higher than with ASIC mining. More individual people mining = less centralized, you don’t need data to support a theory as broad as that. ASIC machines benefit from economies of scale, which is more easily achievable by a large corporation than for an individual person.
The other “hypothesis” you mention are IMO smoke and mirrors to distract us from the issue. At the core of the argument is: ASIC mining would mean less individual people mining and more firm/corporation based mining. As more entities control more hashing power, the network becomes more centralized amongst a few large players instead of being decentralized and spread out across the world between everyone that wants to support the network.
Again though, either way this is all pointless because ASIC or GPU mining centralization debates are all eventually made moot by the overall centralized nature of the PoW system and the pool-based mining structures in place. After the war of ASIC vs GPU is over the pools will still be there not only taking payout/mining fees, but undermining the centralization of the network by putting all the power in the hands of few. No pools, no mining, no network. So who controls the pools? Questions to ask yourself Zooko.
Other than a possible PoS migration, one potential solution of the top of my head: Require miners to run a full node, while also updating the node software to allow for GPU mining. Right now I can launch my full node on Ubuntu via Windows 10 and enable mining with my CPU by setting ‘gen=1’ in my configuration file. If you were to incorporate GPU mining software (look at EthOS, linux-based operating system with miners, drivers, etc.) into the node functionality, you could in theory have a Zcash core-pool. No more individual pools that feed the network. Instead you have everyone’s rig running a node and hashing directly to the network. Mining rewards are sent to the node account and the network is not only benefiting from more nodes but from true decentralization.
In conclusion: ASIC vs GPU centralization arguments are entirely undermined by PoW pool-based centralization. A PoS migration would be best though maybe through some clever re-working of the Zcashd software we can both eliminate pool-based centralization problems, while strengthening the network overall. A potential combination of both (PoS with full node requirement) could be an end-all solution that may prove to be the best for the network.
If anyone needs help getting a full node on Ubuntu via Windows 10 I can help them it is very easy.
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Asic mined zcash would dispell any of your pesky fears of decentralization, also you probably wouldn’t have to worry about all this annoying development, hype would be the new song. Plus, since you can’t fork (because then all your asics would be trash), you’re stuck with the current zcash Merkle tree and it’s max limit of (correct me if im wrong) 2^29 or 536,870,912 possible transactions nor can you fix the diminishing privacy value. I don’t like this thread.
Absolute
Superior
Irrevocable
Control