What is commodity hardware to you?

Just wondering what people think is commodity hardware.

I will be doing some tweaks to the zcash pow (including replacing it) [this will not be a blockchain fork, it is just me playing with the code]

@hloo this thread might be of interest to you.

I would like to at least try to incorporate ProgPoW with its default settings. but I have been a lot more focused on RandomX - This imho has greater tweak ability whilst still retaining some of its asic resistance.

So anything really is welcome, it would be really helpful if you could include a format like

It could just be a single gpu, or cpu rather than an all in one type thing.

It could be scalable or not scalable. I intend to try to make the chains for a few of these different things (i have lots of hardware around)

Then maybe even some kind of cross chain interoperability. Havent even begun to think of the implications but it seems slightly better than harmony.
so say phone version has mined x% of its total supply and Pi chain has mined x + 10% of its coins then you 0.9 coins or 1.1 depending on which way you move (This is going to be more or less copy pasted from metronome and another couple of projects.) - idk, lets get the pow changes done first and some testnet/stagenets then see what I have inclination to do after that.

Its a fun thing I want to do. and may prove useful to someone in the future.

Make no mistake this will be a few just copy paste coins with minor tweaks, to see what actually happens. I like zcash. Monero have already decided on RandomX and most if not all of its parameters by now. (I think they did code freeze last month, I don’t follow the project too closely :confused: only the randomx bit - I really should check on that.)

Please heart responses you think are good cases for commodity hardware. Don’t worry about that hardware being asic friendly or not. That is something we can work out.

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On a Pi? Really? Millions of them out there.

It was just the first thing that came to mind that has various different aspects to it and I could google the specs quick. same with the pixel.

This is just an ideas thread really.

Not sure if i would use the word commodity hardware or fine-tune this a bit IF the propose is, what i guess, to have it as a fair mining hardware setup for literally everybody (even technically less advanced people).

  1. Pure Desktop PC’s and Laptop CPU’s, Cell Phones, eventually soon ioT devices

  2. GPU’s

  3. FPGA’s, Server, other hardware with limited availability, higher costs or need of more technical skill to be operated. Even a Pi would mostly fall into this category in my opinion.

  4. Asics, other very very special hardware

That’s my opinion and my thought about commodity hardware IF used for mining.

That may well become the outcome. but it is quite hard to balance a vega gpu against a cpu, and then again against a cellphone.

Any 2019 cellphone can and is quite different to a 2015 one. which is why I asked for make/models. so I can see what requirements would be needed for feasible mining on that platform. same for gpus, etc.

You can intentionally hobble newer hardware whilst not impacting old hardware (for example you could get a vega 56 and an old RX 6950 to produce similar results)

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pretty hard to balance things even more with more and more new hardware coming out.

I personally at best such approach can lead to make it as fair as possible when an algo or it’s software is based on hashpower.

I have given this my own several thoughts and the only possible solution that would allow a real fair mining approach without giving any hardware any advantage would be in theory making faster hardware “slower” as the reverse is impossible to make slow hardware “faster”. Replace slow and fast with less powerfull or more powerfull or whatever, you got the idea :slightly_smiling_face:

No idea how this could be made, but the idea is more to go toward per unit than the technical possibilities of given hardware. But than again, i guess such thing would get to complicated to given better hardware some penalty. Just a thought, nothing more.

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This is why I will have several version of the chains. just to see if I try to limit a Ryzen and encourage a PI then can a vega come in and stomp on it?

Does encouraging certain hardware make fpga and to some extent ASICs (my ASIC knowledge is a lot more limited than my FPGA knowledge) a better option for that particular set of PoW requirements. Should be fun at least.

Maybe it might even serve as a jumping in point to privacy coins. where the coins are worthless but you get to play with all the cool privacy features. no matter what hardware you have, there should be one chain you can mine and get some coins and send them to someone else, or use memo’s or whatever. Play with the features without worrying about losing money. (I would actually really like this. - I think this will be my over all goal)

This is so massive in scope I doubt I will finish, but I will certainly learn a lot along the way. It has been on my to do list for a while - I now have someone to learn from who knows how to do it quickly so things should be good.

My zip proposals are more or less done so I can get back to other stuff. like helping @Truly (see I haven’t forgotten about you :slight_smile: )

Have one sticking point with the foundation, but that is for another thread.

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