Bitcoin Forum

Hi,
I just read this academic  paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.02466.pdf), authors are suggesting that Bitcoin is in danger of being compromised by Chinese government because of ASICs and pools.

I have been championing against ASICs and pools for a while and as of my experience when it comes to any serious improvement to bitcoin and it has to be done by a hard fork an army of 'legendary' shills are ready to make it almost impossible to discuss anymore.

But we have hard-fork-wishlist, discussing an issue won't fork the chain, actual forking does! So, I politely ask these guys to give us a break and let us to have a productive discussion about whether or not we could do anything, any technical improvement obviously, to deal with what the authors are pointing out?

@ETFbitcoin, appreciate your comment (and the merit by the way), let's wait a while and have more ideas shared by other guys, obviously I have a few too  ;)

As of your last comment, yes, I read as much as I could find, especially when it comes to critical issues, no choice.

Skimming it, it seems like a good summary of stuff that's been discussed around here for years.

AFAIK a lot of mining has moved out of China geographically due to Chinese government crackdowns, though a lot is still owned by Chinese companies. That said, the specific country doesn't matter much: I don't distrust the Chinese government all that much more than the EU in this area, for example. The main issue is geographical centralization and mining centralization in general.

The location of the physical mining hardware is more important than pool management location, since miners can change their pools. I don't know much about the distribution of mining hardware, though.

If a majority of mining power tries anything, then the only correct response is an immediate hardfork to change the PoW. I don't think that anyone disagrees with that.

Some notable people have long advocated changing the PoW preemptive to any actual attack because of too much centralization already. However, there is no known long-term solution to mining centralization. (This has been discussed to death on the forum and elsewhere.) It's not clear that an anti-ASIC algorithm is possible, and even if it is, that'll probably just allow for different monopolies (eg. Intel, botnet operators, or others). Changing to a different ASIC-friendly algorithm may well increase centralization after a while, since the big mining companies (eg. Bitmain) are big because they're the best at making mining chips, so they'll probably end up having a first-to-market advantage on new ASICs. You can prevent trustless pooling, but that'd mostly just force people to use even-more-centralized trusted pooling, which isn't preventable AFAIK. So preemptively changing the PoW will temporarily fire the current miners, but at best it'll make the problem no better long-term, and it'll almost certainly result in a persistent fork which will do a lot of damage to Bitcoin.

Currently we have a sort of mutually assured destruction situation. If there's a preemptive PoW change, then that'll make a huge, not-worthwhile mess (though survivable). But if miners do an attack, then there will be an immediate PoW change, firing them and at least forcing them to start over from scratch hardware-wise. This MAD situation could maybe be considered quite solid if all actors were rationally self-interested, though authoritarian regimes can get in the way of rational self-interest. Still, I think that this is reasonably stable, and the best we can do for now. To strengthen the MAD and prepare, I encourage people to be as ready and threatening as possible in case an immediate PoW change becomes necessary: for example, I've said several times (and I mean it) that if the Bitcoin Core devs fail to respond adequately to a miner attack, I'll propagate the necessary hardfork myself. But I oppose a preemptive PoW change unless there's some sort of new long-term solution.

I still think that my 3-way hybrid PoW (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1654457.0) could work, but a lot of people disagree.

This runs both ways though. With the majority hashrate presumably being located in China it may very well be that using increased block weight as a weapon would merely lead to an increased orphan rate in Europe and the Americas, further strengthening China's position.



Is there any agreement on how such a PoW change would be implemented and what code of conduct would be followed? For example how a new PoW scheme would be selected. I presume some thoughts has already been put into it, beyond merely considering the option.

I have translated a similar and more complete response by theymos in the local Portuguese board.
If anyone ia interested. This is the original https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7zvit8/cobra_miners_are_evil_we_need_to_get_rid_of_them/dus9tuq/

And the translation
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5047678.new#new

@theymos, thanks for the contribution (and the merits by the way). I'm seriously delighted seeing prominent bitcoin figures are so much concerned about this issue.  :)

Actually, I was somewhat disappointed and confused if not frustrated about why the situation with ASICs and pools is simply overlooked or its severity is underestimated at best.

As I understand you are more concerned about ASICs and although I share a lot in this regard with you,  I'm sure you know far better than me how sophisticated would be an Anti-ASIC hard fork:

From a pure technical view point, unlike what most people in bitcoin ecosystem are used to say, implementing an Anti-ASIC algorithm and integrating it into bitcoin, is not impossible or that hard. We have ProgPoW and a few talented people who could offer even more effective alternatives. But for bitcoin such a transition is not feasible overnight. Nobody would be happy, security will drop, price will drop, ... a lot of chaotic consequences are predictable and should be addressed. Nobody is interested in following the path bitcoin Gold went through.

I have this idea for a long time, a 2-way concurrent PoW algorithm with a 2-3 years smooth migration from ASICs to the alternate cpu/gpu PoW method e.g. ProgPoW. I'm thinking of starting with a 10:1 ratio in favor of sha2 ASICs and a gradual transition to 1:10 ratio against them.

But as we have already experienced with SegWit reaching to a consensus and adopting above or any other hypothetical solution raises another challenge: Pools.

I have written too much about pools, among them in An Analysis of Mining Variance and Proximity Premium flaws in Bitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4687032.msg42296802#msg42296802), I have mathematically proved that as long as we are trapped in bitcoin's winner_takes_all approach to mining the resulting Bernoulli distribution pushes miners toward pooling.

Pools are evil but when they are concentrated in China, you have serious problem. I have drafted a framework for improving this situation, Proof of Collaborative work (PoCW) (http://), based on a new implementation of PoW which is no longer winner_takes_all.

Conclusively speaking, I believe we are able to fix the issue with Chinese by a double attack: getting rid of pools and imposing a gradual transition to an ASIC-resistant algorithm.

How about start by prepare guide/reference client in-case hard-fork is needed? Reflecting from Bitcoin-Qt 0.8.0 accident (which is accidental hard-fork due to different DB version), that would help community/developer where to start solve the problem.


I think that won't happen since IMO Chinese miners would rather connect to pool outside China rather than let block orphan happen which could hurt many pools and potential FUD/price crash due to high block orphan.


ProgPoW already exist (https://github.com/ifdefelse/ProgPOW (https://github.com/ifdefelse/ProgPOW)) and looks like developed well from commit/contributor number, but the hardest part is making sure existing miners won't do anything crazy such as boycott or attack network knowing MAD situation.

I absolutely support this argument.
Although rationally calculated self-interests of players is a vital theoretical support for security of bitcoin, we should be aware of complexities involved.
Things change so fast and, as the paper correctly has established it, adversarial incentives are getting stronger while centralization of mining is reducing the collusion costs to dangerous thresholds. SO, WE SHOULD BE PREPARED.

Miners would go after their profits if bitcoin mining scene was decentralized and it is possible to improve this factor significantly. We need ASICS for at least  next 2-3 years and I don't think we are in a deep antagonistic contradiction with miners, it is rather about pools and pools, my friend, should be extinguished..

My suggestion is a double attack simultaneously being triggered against pools and ASICs but with different approaches regarding each of them:
Pools should be eliminated from the very first day of the fork but ASICs should be retired with a very small sleepness.

Elimination of pools, sets a huge amount of mining power free and distributed and ready to choose their profits against politics,  they should not be slaughtered by a preemptive anti-ASIC fork, instead I suggest a long term mutual co-existence of both algorithms using a double algorithm/double difficulty system which in long term is biased against ASICs, strictly defined by a constitutional rule.

If Chinese are the ones who create the ASICs and the ones who run the biggest mining farms, then of course they are the ones who more power over the coin, but i don't see it as something bad, i mean, at least someone needs to do it. The bitcoin mining complexity grows day by day and it was a challenge for the engineers to create those mining machines with more than 10Thz of mining power.

So, the mining will not stop, and if China doesn't take the control of this business, someone will do it, that's a fact.

Obviously, we are not aligned.

I afraid your argument is vague and in complete contradiction with bitcoin axioms. If centralization is inevitable, then the whole cryptocurrency agenda is doomed. It has always been and should be considered an anti-bitcoin discourse and sounds like some ideological point of view rather than a concrete technical perception.

Bitcoin is in the first stages of its journey, I strongly believe that after the upcoming hard fork evidences that now temporarily support your claims will be cleared out and we will have another decade of glorious developments until the next fork, perhaps in 2030 which is highly possible to become necessary for newer challenges that we have no clue about them right now.  ;)

It's not good to have an exact algorithm planned out, since then someone could make an ASIC for it in advance.

Current consensus seems to be that in case of a miner attack, something based on SHA-3 would be used, since it's very similar to SHA-2 and therefore a minimally-significant change. There's an old sample pull request (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7410). It should be modified slightly at the last minute to ensure that there are no stockpiled ASICs for it, though; for example:

That's just an example of how you'd try to do something a bit different to ensure that nobody has any stockpiled, maybe-somewhat-configurable ASICs hidden up their sleeves.

It'd be nice if there was a defined procedure for selecting one quickly. The exact algorithm isn't that important as long as nobody knows it in advance and it keeps the necessary properties for a PoW, but you don't want to waste time arguing about it. Maybe you'd have the interested devs write down their suggested algorithms, confirm that they all look reasonable, select two using verifiable randomness, compose or mash-up the two selected, and then fill in any random constants in the algorithm with new verifiable randomness.

Some have proposed automatically generating new PoWs, but then it's still possible to design ASICs which can adapt to the general random scheme. For example, you could have the PoW be sha3(concat(random_salt, sha3(in)) where random_salt automatically updates every year or whatever based on the hash of a block 1000 blocks deep, but then people would just design an ASIC which can accept a configurable random_salt.

Preparedness could be a lot better. I especially advocate for the creation of a clear set of criteria which indicate miner abuse so that they don't get away with something very incremental like freezing "obviously stolen" coins.


I've heard that before, maybe on the mailing list. Not a bad idea IMO. IIRC it can also be done as a softfork if miners are cooperative.

Smart move, though I don't believe in hypes regarding magical power of ASIC designers to crack every algorithm. A well designed memory hard algo won't be an easy piece of cake to bite, imo.

Well said.

I'm with theymos. If there is no miner threat from Jihan Wu and his cartel, then there should be no POW change. Hard forks are already bad enough for the network because it would already be isolating some nodes. If Bitcoin hard forks because of a POW change then it would be isolating nodes and hash power, threatening the security of the network.

I am more disappointed in the fact that no other country stepped up, <Silicon Valley are you listening?> to compete with ASIC hardware? Yes, we saw some GPU manufacturers jumping onto the mining bandwagon, but they cannot compete with ASICs from China.

Are the rest of the world so far behind with ASIC development or something similar, that they cannot develop something that would be able to compete with the Chinese? Why should software be changed to slow them down? <I specifically said, "slow them down", because they eventually come up with something new, as soon as changes are done>  ::)

No, but "the rest of the world" cannot compete to make ASICs as cheap as the Chinese, both the chips and the miners. I believe that's because of their less strict electrical safety regulations in manufacturing electronics.

Bitfury's latest ASIC https://bitfury.com/hardware/asic is pretty competitive with Chinese designs...

Agreed. I think it would make sense if such a selection process would be formally defined -- and agreed upon -- in advance. Otherwise we'll end up with a debate on the selection process itself and during the worst time at that.



Pretty [1] much [2] every [3] chip [4] gets produced in China. GPUs included. So naturally they not only have the know-how but also the infrastructure. It'd be weird if it were any different with Bitcoin miners. The means of productions have been gifted rather than seized.

[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/17/nvidia-corp-relationship-taiwan-semiconductor.aspx
[2] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276169-amd-moves-all-7nm-cpu-gpu-production-to-tsmc
[3] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276690-report-intel-will-outsource-chipset-production-to-tsmc
[4] https://www.gsmarena.com/qualcomm_going_back_to_tsmc_for_its_7nm_chips_production_starts_later_this_year-news-31804.php


I think electricity cost plays a larger role in terms of geographical (and by extension legislative) decentralization than where the miners are produced. If Europe and the US had electricity prices closer to China I'd expect the dominance of a certain ASIC manufacturer to be much less of an issue than it is today.

It is odd, imo, too much concerns about ASICs and zero interest in the situation with pools.

I agree with the need for preparations - above all, with what Theymos said about finding clear criteria for a malicious attack.

I'm also a bit concerned about the "new monopolies" that could emerge after a PoW change. It may sound a bit naive, but - is there a possibility to create/fund an open hardware project for mining chips running the "new Bitcoin algorithm"? It's true however that major "chip foundries" are located in China, but there are at least some scattered around the world (mainly Europe and North America) which could step in for production.

In this case, time is on our side - renewable-based (e.g. solar/wind powered) off-grid mining probably very soon (in the next 5 years) could be cheaper than Chinese electricity, where the cheapest price is ~3 cent per kWh. I already mentioned in other threads that ~2 cent/kWh (https://energynarrative.com/is-2-cent-a-kwh-solar-power-real/) solar power costs are probably becoming real in the next 5-10 years (the article I linked makes pretty conservative assumptions).

While China has good solar energy spots, there are even better ones in the Americas (south-western North America and western South America) and, of course, Africa and the Middle East.

But where will they make the chips and assemble the miners for mass production that would make the price more competitive? I believe it will still end up to be "Made in China". Haha.

That to me is a slap in the face of the Western world. Trump is saying "Make America great again" and trade restrictions are implemented, but the Chinese still rule the technical manufacturing of complex electronic components.  ::) Where are all the brilliant engineers and scientists of the western world?

Elon Musk <ex-South African> are one of the leaders in electronic manufacturing of components like this... Why are they not stepping up to the plate to fulfil this role?

We are gifting this to the Chinese.  ::)

That would still require trust in none of the developers leaking the selected algorithm.



...just like all GPUs where apparently no one is bothered about where the chips come from. Like I said, I think it's more a question of where the miners are deployed, not where they are produced.



Focusing on software, rather than hardware. We live in a globalized society of specialization, so naturally knowledge accumulates where its applied most.



Because it's apparently neither profitable nor interesting enough.

Maybe manufacturing the chips in China isn't really a problem. Many companies from other countries manufacture their products in China, and they control that the producers don't "tamper" with the design of their products. If the Chinese manufacturer manipulated the product, the customer would be able to charge a penalty for breaching the contract and change the manufacturer. An "open mining hardware" project could do the same thing, ensuring no Antbleed-style backdoors are implemented - and such a backdoor would be very easy to discover, above all if the firmware is open-source.

Once Bitcoin and the mining market becomes really big, it would be perhaps no problem to install production infrastructure outside of China able to deliver similar production costs.

Right to the point.

ASICs are bad but pools are horrible, both should be taken care of but we need to understand without a truly pool-resistant fork bitcoin has no chance to be adopted in levels much higher than what it is right now because it is not decentralized enough and could not be considered secure for bigger missions.

Let's just forget about scalability, decentralization is a more urgent issue and although I think it is very convenient to retire ASICs and let more commodity devices in, but it would make no difference with pools being in charge.

Slightly off-topic, but it's worth pointing out that the truth is rather dire in this regard:

https://bgr.com/2018/10/04/china-hardware-backdoors-sophisticated-chips-used-in-us-bound-tech/

In short, supply chain attacks on hardware do happen. However it doesn't appear to be as critical if you only produce the chips in China and assemble the rest of the hardware within a trusted environment (ie. backdooring a chip is much harder than backdooring a motherboard).

What "bigger missions" are you speaking of that would put decentralization on top of its list?


I agree, decentralization secures on-chain censorship resistance. That's why many people in the community believe, me included, that an off-chain layer is the best way to scale Bitcoin.


Is it convenient to hard fork to cut nodes and hash power from the network, and hurt its security? For a developer like yourself, I believe you need to think about these things.

Replacing fiat definitively. To accomplish this you just can't put all the eggs in a Chinese basket and give it to XI JInping to keep it secure and act rational.

Massive adoption of bitcoin rises scalability challenges, but we could just wait for them to actually happen then figure out a solution but it is a process that never gonna boost with the current fragile situation.

Actually I  suppose the level of adoption we got right now is even a bit higher than what a realistic assessment of the level of decentralization would suggest as a safe situation.

I don't see the old scaling debate's  scalability vs decentralization dilemma (or the stupid Buterin trilemma) as a viable discourse, (as you know already) but I think it is not our problem today. Once bitcoin got enough stem and started boosting in adoption, we can debate  off-chain vs on-chain disputes. Without mass adoption, arguing about scalability is pointless.

Most people suppose we need scaling bitcoin to help with adoption. It is absolutely false. Adoption is a slow process and won't be even triggered as a massive one, without a solid, decentralized, uncompromisable network, scaling challenges won't show up until the midst of this process.

By convenient, I mean forking to an ASIC-resistant algo is both desirable and achievable (incrementally tho) but not very effective and helpful while fixing mining variance and proximity premium flaws and  pooling pressure, is the hard job comparatively and the ultimate decentralization solution.

Boring I know,  but I have to rephrase it: with pools being in charge no cryptocoin could be considered decentralized enough to get mass adopted no matter how popular it would be, period.

I agree that pools are the biggest problem.

They logically result from the winner take all algo.

I postulate that in a theoretically ideal POW system, every single participant that contributes cycles/work towards securing the network would be rewarded in direct proportion to their contribution.  ie, even if they only calculate 1 hash during a given block and do not match target difficulty.

How to achieve that?  I have no idea.  haha.  But I'd like to see more discussion/brainpower/research on it.


First question:  Is the above scenario ideal/desirable for maximizing distribution of work across non-colluding parties?   Or the incentives are flawed somehow?

Followup question:  What technical obstacles prevent it, and how might they be overcome?   (assuming a brand-new system with no legacy code/chain).







I will leave these open-ended for now...

Slightly off tangent, but I think for this we'd need to start from scratch either way.

Regardless of what growth potential I still expect from Bitcoin and some of the other cryptos I'm not convinced that a deflationary currency can work without an inflationary currency to relieve market pressure -- ie. without credit I'd expect economic growth to stagnate, and credit within a deflationary ecosystem is financial suicide. Note that I mean credit as in company bonds, not as in maxing out ones credit card.

Definitively off tangent  ;)

It is axiomatic, and I afraid you put yourself in shadowy borders of cryptocurrency movement once you begin revisioning its mission. Inflationary monetary disciplines which are meant to help 'relieving' market pressure (like fiat) are aligned with state control and government intervention eventually and it is not an option for us, rebels. Bitcoin is based on a resistance axiom, resistance against sate control, it is deflationary by definition and indisputably.

Also, I think it is too soon, to argue about how economic growth could ever be compatible with a true deflationary monetary system and we could relax and focus on preliminary phase: mass adoption.

I have worked on this, PoCW (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4438334.msg39653860#msg39653860), it is based on few tricks:
Trick 1: Miners not only generate nonce for block headers,  they are also free to commit to Merkle root by generating nonce for it.
Trick 2: Miners do not include coinbase transaction in the Merkle tree they commit to. This way validating a Merkle path happens once and shares are being validated in microsecond scales to be at least partially difficult (good) compared to what is dictated by the target.
Trick 3:  Coinbase transaction provides both proof for difficulty and reward distribution i.e. a coinbase consists of like thousands of wallet addresses and nonces that commit to the Merkle tree (coinbase excluded).

Many other details are also devised ,,,, Understanding that it is about a hard fork, I just decided to postpone implementation to a more complete package and a much stronger community support.
[
First: It is absolutely a guaranteed secure decentralized schema because when you have tens of thousands of distinct almost anonymous human beings involved in solo mining bitcoin, there would be no practical chance for collusion or state control. Absolutely secure, no doubts.

Follow up: no technical obstacles, I just need more community support and contribution.

I believe Bitcoin can be a world reserve currency, but taking away the right to print money and seigniorage from the government would be impossible.


What's the acceptable solution? The problem in Bitcoin is many developers have just discovered it and some of them already propose to "save" it without fully understanding the trade-offs.


What's your opinion on the Lightning Network or a layered topology for Bitcoin in general?


Yes but these are "tools" that will help create more tools for the network, and make it easier for new users to enter and use Bitcoin that will help in adoption.

You are granted the right to criticize and disagree, but it will not take away their right to create those tools.


Desirable knowing that you are cutting off hash power and nodes?

When should the community expect a written proposal?

As much as using this term, "world reserve currency"  is common nowadays, it is nonsense. There is and there would be no such thing ever. Central banks use their reserves among other devices, for manipulating market. It is not what bitcoin and cryptocurrency is about.

Denouncing the possibility of elimination of fiat and gov seigniorage is an ideological argument which as a bitcoiner, I'm not aligned with, neither Satoshi:

I don't think politically neutralizing bitcoin by pushing it to whales/central banks territory in the name of "world reserve currency" would help. For this they have Ripple.

The only solution, acceptable or not, is a PoCW hard fork complemented by a 2 way hash algorithm for retiring ASICs in a 2-3 years window as a package.

As I said, I think it is too early to be concerned about scalability but generally I think off-chain solutions (LN, side chains, ... ) are not that ultimate that BlockStream suggests and we need on-chain scaling through improvements and sharding as well.

No hash power cut-off. Imagine we implant a secondary ASIC-resistant cpu/gpu friendly algo (like ProgPow) and define two parallel difficulty adjustment systems which regulate blocks mined by sha2 at 11 blocks per every 2 hours ratio while gpus are set to generate 1 block in the same window also suppose we use a gradual re-adjustment policy by introducing a decrease/increase strategy for above parameters. See? no cut-off!

Understanding the need for a hard fork, and not being interested in following bch fate, I have realized that I need to produce a complete package and it is hard job for a lone wolf, not impossible but I need more time. I'm thinking of early 2019 for such a package, like 6 months  ;)

I said it more to make a point that Bitcoin will have the same status as the US Dollar as a "world reserve currency". A currency that nations will be willing to hold. Who said they can be stopped if they wanted to?


Trying to put yourself on the level of Satoshi now are we? Hahaha. I'm joking. 8)


If Bitcoin is viewed as something of real value within 50 years, then it will become a world reserve currency in my opinion.


I would be happy to see you prove to the Core developers that your idea is applicable.

Many developers discovered Bitcoin and claimed they can "fix" it.


Why would Bitcoin need "sharding"? Bitcoin is already designed to scale out by the regulated the block size cap.

Plus wasn't sharding "invented" by Vitalik Buterin? The same developer that you said we should not lend an ear to?


How many hard forks will that take?

What would make you so sure that Bitmain will not make new ASICs for the new mining algorithm?


Good luck in finding a solution.

It is just ONE hard fork. The ratio is adjusted deterministically by virtue of the protocol, just like halving in legacy bitcoin.

Solution is almost ready, implementation is the phase.

1) Bitcoin doesn't care what language miners are speaking or what lines orcs have drawn on maps to satisfy their mental deficiencies.  Also there is no person called "China", there are many people here with different agendas.  To use English properly please avoid assigning agency to non-agents.    

2) Sure there may be problems with centralized pools and ASIC manufacturers,  but the money supply and transactions can still all be public despite these problems.  In other words, we are still worlds above a privately issued currency system (fiat).  We aren't talking about abuses such as issuing arbitrary amounts of monetary units for ourselves here, so it really isn't fair to compare this kind of centralization with the kind witnessed in fiat systems.  



  

Sincerely good luck. But I believe the idea has already failed before it has started. The miners will never signal their readiness for a hard fork that will kill them. The community would also not want to risk a chain-split.


Theoretically if there is enough of Bitcoin's "transaction processors" centralized geographically in one country, that country's government can threaten them, and make the "processors" censor some transactions that that country's government does not like.

There exists no such thing as a miner in bitcoin network, I suppose by miners you mean pools, there will be no signaling neither any negotiations, pools are the main target and they are to be extinguished.
How?
I admit it is one of the most sophisticated problems in bitcoin right now, getting rid of pools and transition to a truly decentralized heterogeneous network but you always find it more convenient to face a problem when both it is recognized by most people as a serious problem and there is hope/technology to overcome it.

I think both ASICs and pools have triggered enough hatred and protests again themselves and the ugly face of centralized mining is nothing to be covered by any means, the fact that they've been tolerated that long is a result of the lack of an ultimate solution especially for pools and this is what we should  focus on: preparing a solution. The community will decide how and when to adopt it.

I still think that PoCW will need to be deployed successfully in an altcoin and tested in the wild for a good while before the bitcoin community will seriously consider it.

There are a few folks that take the pool problem seriously and that value real mining decentralization, but I think not enough to make a difference at this time.    I'm happy to be wrong on this point of course, but if others thought like I do then only a few innovative coins would have any value right now, and PoS and tokens wouldn't be a thing...

If you get a library of working code and decide to launch an altcoin with it, let me know.  I might be able to help out.

True, and reason for concern.  However:

 1)  This shouldn't be compared to the problem of private issuance, or fiat money
 2)  Users already have tools to evade this kind of censorship, such as alternative chains, coinjoins, pseudonymity, stealth addresses, ... 


 

I mean that whole part of Bitcoin. Miners, pools, ASIC makers.


To be quite honest, I believe there is no way for any POW coin to be ASIC-resistant. If the coin has value, there will be ASIC made.


But it will make the project a failure and worthless.



I believe you misunderstood. "Bitcoin's transaction processors" are the miners.

No. A memory hard algorithm is not breakable by ASICs if it is devised properly. It is always possible to have a device more specialized than commodity devices but not that far to be an order of magnitude more efficient. Ethash for instance is not cracked by ASICs despite what Bitmain says, E3 is just like 2x better than a comparable gpu rig and still the race is not over, better gpus are ready to beat E3 in next few months. Plus, commodity devices, being multipurpose, have an inherent advantage against specialized hardware like E3, this compensates for their relative inefficiency.

Another sophisticated approach to ASIC resistance is ProgPow (https://github.com/ifdefelse/ProgPOW), it is a really 'badass' algorithm that theoretically makes it almost impossible for a specialized device to have gains above 1.2x over commodity gpu and it is not enough incentive for an attacker to invest on such a device.

Wow! We got a contributor. Appreciate your support mate, will be in touch soon.  :)

As of altcoin vs bitcoin thing:
Well, ... I'm not ok with such a hypothetical dilemma. Sooner or later, we need to do something about Chinese and centralized mining, and it would be a hard-fork, undisputable. Now no matter how persuasive you are and what level of consensus is reached, there always are actors who continue mining on legacy chain, ignorantly or intentionally.

I don't know who invented this term, 'altcoin', first but as a software engineer/developer I approach bitcoin like any other system, it needs overhaul and versioning at least every few years, there is and there will be no eternal system, protocol, contract, constitution, ... ever. I understand bitcoin is a social compromise and is to be treated cautiously but it doesn't change everything and we are late already.

Now, what is bitcoin? Our decent upgraded version which is maintained directly by tens of thousands of solo miners or the legacy version that is maintained by a handful of Chinese pools?

I don't care about labels, I'm sure that getting rid of pools is the most exciting event in cryptocurrency since 2009.

The main problem is we would need a hardfork to implement any of these changes, which ultimately are changes on the fundamentals on bitcoin, so expect a ton of opposition.

We may need to be under actual attack for people to wake up and align against attackers with a ton of hashrate. Sadly this is how humans seem to work, we may need to be pushed into the cliff first to actually make it happen, however it's not a waste of time to have the plan B prepared.

As far as China does, as long as the cheap labor and cheap electricity is mostly there, then things will stay there I guess. But the Bitmain monopoly is alread showing big cracks, specially after being stuck with massive BCash bags.

Do you really think so?  The project will still be censorship resistant (just not perfectly so) and have a public verifiable money supply (so no hidden counterfeiting or issuance malfeasance).  Just because there's a chance that it isn't perfect for one use case doesn't mean that it's worthless.  A helmet won't always save your life but it isn't considered worthless to all motorcyclists.   

Be careful in saying this and believing it is the "truth". The same were said of Scrypt, Equihash, and Cryptonight. But they ended to have ASICs built for them. How can you give assurance of ASIC-resistance?

I believe "ASIC-resistance" has become a buzzword.


I will give the benefit of the doubt. But I believe Jihan Wu won't.

The beauty of computer science is that it is no magic, just pure mathematics. No matter how expert or wealthy a cracker is, he just can't build a specialized device with much more than 2x efficiency for Ethash or 1.2x for ProgPoW. This is how it works in the real world. You take Bitmain too serious, imo.

No, I take what's in front of me as evidence that "ASIC-resistance" is becoming another buzzword marketing tool for altcoins that use POW.

Plus can you give us the sources on where you got "2x efficiency for Ethash or 1.2x for ProgPoW"? Thanks.


Back to this. How can the network be assured that the hardware behind the hash power of the new algorithim will make up for all the ASIC? Won't buying all the generic machines needed to mine make it more expensive to maintain the same hash power?

We should show this topic to someone from the mining subforum, and make a more productive discussion out of this.

ASIC-resistance has been a design principle for Pow variants for a few years and you just can't find a single algorithm being developed to be intentionally
'ASIC-friendly', hence it is not a buzzword.
On the contrary what is more journalistic and hype is the fallacy about "every algo could be ASIC-ed". It was not a fallacy if it was just about pure mathematical computations (like shA256) but it is not and there exist bandwidth/storage/memory/... bound algorithms.


As of 2x maximum efficiency for Ethash, besides checking Bitmain specification for E3 and comparing it with a 6xAMD-RX570 rig  you are welcome to check:
This reference is an Ethereum Improvement Proposal for implementing ProgPow (https://github.com/ifdefelse/ProgPOW) that briefly discusses the extent of ASIC vulnerability of a handful of algorithms, including Ethash and  ProgPow.


Well, my idea is implementing an orthogonal PoW system with zero interference with legacy sha2. Both legacy and the new system coexist with no clue about each other, while each node takes care of both algos simultaneously.
1- In the beginning, ASIC miners experience 1/11 increase in difficulty such that the average blocktime increases from current 10 to 11 minutes while GPU miners experience a network with 110 minutes block time.
2- Users experience an average of 11 (10 ASIC  + 1 gpu mined)  blocks per 110 minutes, so it is the same 10 minutes block time they are used to.
4- Every 13000 blocks (like 3 months) the block time is re-adjusted for each system such that ASICs lose one block in each 110 minutes and gpus win one i.e. the ratio changes to 9:2 then 8:3 then 7:4 and so on.
5- Re-adjustment happens 9 times and stops in 1:9 ratio in favor of gpus.

As of your interest in "maintaining the same hash power", it is very important to note that security and essentially the value of bitcoin is not dependent on the network total hash rate unlike what people say carelessly, it is about the total amount of resources consumed mainly labour (human resources) and electricity/energy consumption. For instance a jump in ASIC manufacturing process won't make bitcoin more secure!

Suppose in a hypothetical scenario, all miners upgrade their hardware to new technology while each decide to maintain exactly the same hashrate they already have with the old devices, total network hashrate remains the same but energy consumption will drop significantly, because new technology consumes less resources(for asics, less power mainly).

Interestingly, because of its higher human resource consumption, gpu mining is more environment friendly than ASICs.

But the evidence has showed that if a cryptocurrency is successful, then mining will become more efficient, and more specialized through the invention of ASIC.

Coins that make the claim that they are "ASIC-resistant" has become a buzzword.



Would it be wrong to believe that Bitmain and some other ASIC maker are doing their research to make ASICs for ProgPow?



Good luck to this idea. I hope a miner replies here.


What?


What?

Yes, it would be absolutely wrong. It is not rational to make a specialized device f0r 10-20 percents more efficiency. It won't ROI.


I suppose by  'what?' You mean 'How is that?'  ;D

Once an adversary decides to do anything bad against a network he doesn't ask about technical details, he asks about the costs, yes?

What makes bitcoin secure is not an index, say the required hashrate, it is the costs to achieve that hashrate. Suppose we got these two coins ACoin and CCoin, checking their network status we find out that ACoin has a total hashrate of 1 penta hash while CCoin is secured by like 100 terahash power, now which coin is easier to attack? We don't know! They enjoy different algorithms and we need to do a research about the costs of hiring the required power to attack each coin, don't we?

Most authors, realizing the above fact, measure the security of a network correctly by the costs of renting the required hashpower for a 50%+1 attack (for instance from Nicehash) and what I'm saying is about this cost, essentially determined by  electricity and human resource consumption.

Yes of course. But out of confusion.


A smart adversary would plan everything all the way to the end, including the costs.


But in mining the network honestly, miners would also find the most efficient way to mine a coin. ASICs are the most cost-effective way to mine and we will always go back to the debate, "if a cryptocurrency is successful, ASICs will be developed".

Let's go back to this topic in due time. But the evidence today shows that ASICs are always made for the most successful coins. Plus they always get better.