Yeah I get that. I’ve never been a fan of making payments with my phone. But let’s go ahead and dispel the mining pool notion - that’s a choice of the pool operators. They choose to not support it due to the higher memory, calculation and tx cost. I think there are a couple pools that do it, but charge you a fee on each Z_addr payout
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That wasn’t directed at you @root. That was at the Foundation. We went into the weekend expecting a actual statement, and in the end they had to edit their own statement…because it actually suggested a position…and they didn’t want to have a position at all…which they don’t. They will study it, think about what it means to be ASIC resistant, and then, maybe…do something…possibly…or not. Really?
If you think that Bitmain hasn’t ALREADY been mining with all of the ASICs they are selling in the first batch, you are mistaken… I don’t think the jump will be as large as you think - it has already jumped in recent weeks without explanation at the time - now we know why.
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I track the difficulty daily and have for a year:
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/difficulty-price-zec.html#3m
The facts don’t support your assumption. Moreover, the difficulty has dropped markedly in the past 60 days.
But not to take the thread in a different direction, my concern is for the long term good of ZCash.
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We (the Foundation) understand that some of you want a definitive decision right now. Frankly, that is not going to happen. We’re gathering more information and weighing the options, which is what the statement was intended to convey.
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I don’t like hasty decisions, a planned and executed response is far more effective. Battles are not won by over-reacting to every threat.
I would like to see updates on how the ASIC evaluation/response is going but its still early days.
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Sapling should be the focus in my opinion. I believe the development momentum is more beneficial for all of us than switching the focus to purely combat ASIC resistance. We need to consider zcash as a whole, not just the mining, and I think Sapling is more important looking at it that way.
For GPU miners - it was nice while it lasted, but we all knew ASIC would eventually be cracked for Equihash. We should be able to mine as the ASICs come on line, but eventually GPUs will probably need to he pointed elsewhere. Let’s hope the development really drives up the price and usability to make us all the true winners.
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Sapling . 20 char needed to post
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Not accusing anyone, just sharing my thoughts:
Someone on this forum wrote something along the lines that if Zcash devs we’re to choose to not honor the asic resistance promise (or however it was called), then it would be in the interest of devs to string the GPU miners along for as long as possible so as to not have a sharp drop in hashrate. Stalling for time citing deliberation would be one of the ways of implementing such strategy.
On the other hand, a genuine weighing of the options would look very similar. There could be some signs though, which would allow to see the real intent, such as timing of the communication to community of current state, future plans and reasons why certain things could and couldn’t be done and/or why some things were prioritized over others.
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This theory just doesn’t fit if you look at the discussion going on here and in the Zcash chat.
The Zcash company and Foundation are trying to figure out the best course of action to take. Jumping to one side (ASIC-resistance) might not be what is best for Zcash. That is exactly what ASIC-resistant miners want, who may or may not have Zcash’s long-term best interests in mind.
Further, the Zcash Foundation is dedicating resources to researching all of the possibilities before making an informed decision. It might not be fast but I’m confident that whatever they come up with will be the best route forward.
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I don’t think so, ZEC difficulty adjusts extremely quickly so no need to string miners along.
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The difficulty algorithm does adjust quickly (and very quickly compared to e.g. Bitcoin), but not extremely quickly. Based on a couple of qualitative observations of experiments I conducted just before Overwinter activated on testnet, the difficulty algorithm can handle the network solution rate dropping “instantly” to 1/2 of its current value (IIRC it didn’t take more than a dozen blocks to adjust), but not a drop to 1/10 of its current value (resulted in very long block intervals). This roughly matches what we were seeing in simulations before launch.
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Good to know, thanks for the detail.
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I think we all figured that out awhile ago @sonya. That being said, at the present rate of progress any statement the foundation can/will make will be moot and pretty much pointless by the time you get around to actually making an actual statement. Not an attack on you personally, this will be an inevitable fact. Far too much time is going to pass and the GPU miners (the ones that make Zcash Zcash today), will all get crushed out. It’s a shame every other equihash coin seems to at least understand this (barring one? Two? at this point?) and are making plans to protect their communities from it.
It’s great that the ZcashCo and the Foundation both acknowledge how important this is to the existing community. It’s almost criminal how easily we are just being simply disregarded. No amount of politically correct lawyer approved speech can fix this simple fact. You are setting a precedent for every coin that comes after you right now. Miners are going to be pressing new coin launches hard to put it in absolute terms their stance on ASIC. If they try to waffle back and forth on the issue, they will probably find support exceptionally weak no matter how great the tech or market segment might be down the road. Nobody wants to invest time and effort to be treated like we don’t matter at all. That’s the precedent being set right now folks. You can only burn the support structure so many times before they stop showing up.
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Can we stop with that please? I’ve heard about enough of GPU miners (now Anti-ASIC miners) might not have the coins best interest at heart. We mined when it was worthless, we mined when it was next to worthless, we mined when it was breaking even, and holy cow we mined when it was profitable too!! That’s how a community ceases to be. It starts off with a debate, and slowly erodes away. Now we have a moderator towing the (Anti-ASIC folks might not have the coin interest at heart)…you mean your current community? Really?
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I think this discussion would be better if everyone stepped back on making assumptions about other people’s motives. Conversations and communities are more productive when all participants maintain an assumption of good faith.
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easier for anyone, including japanese to conceal the nature of a 300watt power consumption vs. 3600 watts need for same hash on gpu
I agree and disagree. I agree communities operate best under the assumption of good faith. But it is rather difficult to do so when you spend an increasing amount of time posting defending the integrity of the GPU miners who have been labeled “Selfish, greedy, short sighted, behind the times, and only in it for the money” more than a few times across the ASIC debate threads. Not a word is said when those comments are made (officially). But I call out a Moderator for towing that same line and I’m making an assumption?? That quote was “his” words, not mine. There was no room for interpretation, it literally suggested “ZcashCo or Zcash Foundation or Both” don’t think it’s own community has it’s interests at heart.
Again I say Really? The coin didn’t go to “0” hashrate did it? A lot of us have been around since the very beginning or very shortly after launch. We stayed, we supported, we told people about Zcash, helped new miners get started, did what we could to keep the momentum moving forward. We held coins through the tuff time, spent coins to keep things going on the mining front. Some went WAY above and beyond to try to make it happen.
If you don’t like me calling out moderators, then they need to stay impartial in their comments and not casting baseless shade based on a narrative the Pro-ASIC group(s) have been repeating over and over again lately.
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There is no issue with you replying to anyone, including myself, but please do so professionally/respectfully. I’m a volunteer moderator and I do not in any way represent the Zcash foundation the Zcash company or any of their specific opinions other than by coincidence. I’m here to try and keep the discussion productive and non-toxic.
In terms of “toeing the line”, my personal belief is that Zcash should stay ASIC resistant, but only if doing so is actually possible - which seems like a very big if. This is something the Zcash foundation is going to have to figure out. This outcome needs to assert that privately held gpus can’t be developed, or if they are possible, that they will be significantly more equitable to consumer grade hardware (cpu/gpu). After reading the The State of Cryptocurrency mining, an ASIC-resistant outcome seems less probable. Public ASICs are much preferable to private ones.
This topic is about priority. In my opinion Sapling is an order of magnitude more important than an ASIC fork. General advancement of the protocol is incredibly important at this stage of Zcash’s growth.
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This doesn’t make much sense at all. It’s a nice try to build up some pressure on Zcash, but it’s a wrong argument in all of its aspects.
The gap would be nearly immediatly closed by other miners, profit switching pools, multi-pools and such. So the effect would be so limited for a short time that it’s even not worth to mention in my opinion.
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