Sapling and ASIC Resistance

Does anyone here know if Sapling will render ASICS on the current Equihash algorithm useless? It has been touted as a “major upgrade” which some believe equates to a “hard fork.” Curious to know your thoughts. Related, would a jump to 144,5 put the z9s out of business? I don’t care either way, just want to know for planning purposes.

Lots of posts here on that, the main thread is almost 4000 long if you fancy a really long read.

Short answers :-

Sapling doesn’t change anything regarding ASIC.

Switching to 144,5 would break the Z9 Mini.

There might be a decision on changing to 144,5 in October, if its decided to go ahead it may happen in March/April next year.

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I was thinking that a hard fork next year was off the table? The vote at Zcon rejected ASIC resistance and only approved a potential hard fork in 2020.

The livestream discussion from the mining workshop was that in order to ‘do it properly’ a decision would have to be made around the time Sapling deployed.

The vote decided PoW change was ‘not a priority’, which is fair enough IMHO as there are bigger things going on. Doesn’t mean it wont happen, I guess we’ll find out in October.

The Zcash foundation ballot results are non-binding, they are meant to be advisory, so everything is still on the table. See here: home - zcash foundation

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"The Zcash Company is going to choose a deadline and before that deadline we’re going to commit to what mining rules we are and aren’t willing to provide tech support for. And the deadline and decision will be when Sapling activates — October 28 — at the latest but hopefully earlier.”

I think that since the on-boarding of ASIC’s has been smooth so far and has actually lead to more decentralization that it won’t be a priority.

:tired_face: why you keep giving us hope while we accepted our funeral already

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I was a massive anti asic person until a realized how much more efficient they are compared to GPU’s… Setup is less of a headache ect… ASICs are the future of mining i didnt want to accept that but i have… Look at the difficulty with asics on the network its been rather stable… They hash at a way higher rate and are way more efficient on power… and let it be known i own BOTH asics and a fair amount of GPU’s so im not just someone who bought an asic and is looking for my ROI…

I guess it depends what you’re trying to do.

A big operation needs the efficiancy ASICs bring, curious newbies use what they have, enthusiasts build something flexible from GPUs.

Difficulty goes up, its inevitable and inexorable, its been a great year but I certainly didn’t expect returns to last forever.

I’m a GPU miner, holder, trader & coder - when it doesn’t make sense to mine equihash with my setup I’ll switch & get paid in ZEC.

(Edit: Just to add, if I had an ASIC it’d be hashing so fast you could make toast on it - no religious/tribal bias here!)

The Zcash foundation ballot results are non-binding, they are meant to be advisory, so everything is still on the table.

@bitcartel I vehemently disagree with this on principle.

What is the point of 64+ highly involved community members taking a vote if a smaller few in control will just do whatever they want anyway? Zcash should be pushing for greater decentralization of governance rather than reversing those steps forward.

I understand the idea of the enlightened few making the right decision when the overall group is confused, has a lack of information or has been persuaded for some other reason, but I don’t think that was the case on the ASIC resistance vote. It was a big surprise that 70% voted against being ASIC resistant and a majority like that shouldn’t be ignored.

Further, I’m fully confident that if research proves ASICs to be bad over time then that same community governance panel can be entrusted with another vote to make the necessary changes if ASIC resistance is somehow possible.

If the community governance panel’s votes aren’t respected, I will cease to vote due to loss of confidence.

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Thanks Everybody. Appreciate the inputs.

zcash are running with asics and its because bitcoin does it very well no other reason

The team is really ridiculous…
the major idea of zec is asic resistance
and then ???

4 days visited
14m read time

You’ve invested less than 15 minutes on this forum after almost 4 months of being registered.

You are ridiculous.

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