I have read the whole research and conclusion in the .pdf format.
I personally think it’s not really a perfect neither a very precise one. It relies on most part on the dev fee, not even bothering with the Mining Distribution Chart of Zcash which in my opinion is for hidden/secret ASIC mining operation the best indicator.
It was visible from the chart which Bitmains hidden pool is, and since some days we saw another way bigger unknown bigger pool, right followed by Innosilicons announcement of their 50k miner and i think someone is safe to put 1+1 together to get 2 and that is the miningpool Innosilicon is mining at the moment.
IMO in secret/hidden/private/stealth mining phases of the different Asic manufactures the mining pool chart of Zcash gives the very best indicators on what’s going on. The problem is after a given release when Asics get shipped because than the indeed other miningpools get the hashpower. It’s highly unlikely that any Asic Manufactor is using a known mining pool:
First of all, the miningpool owners would immediatly recognize the Asics and share info. It’s an easy task for a Mining Pool owner to from the hashrate per worker to see what’s going on there.
Second, fees and feedback. It makes 0 sense for whatever Manufactor to use a 3rd party miningpool, neither they can get inside feedback that way and have to pay fees as well. There is 0 logic behind to use a public mining pool at all for larger companies that can provide bigger hashrate power on a given network.
This said, i don’t think this research has provided any new info. Everything is just mentioned as a normal unbiased person can find out itself on whatching and analyzing the hashrate, price, difficulty, mining and other charts.
Even the Bitcoin Gold conclusion that it’s highly likely that it was done with Nicehash traffic and gpu traffic is just logical and common sense…
I personally have awaited a way more detailed, better researched paper/document to be honest and i hope the Foundation didn’t pay too much for it… Pretty sure their must be specialized organisations that can provide way more accurate researching, just my 2 mini-zcash…