Bitcoin Forum

Poll will remain open for 5 days. You are allowed to change your vote. Please post additional pros/cons of the different options and we will add them to the list.

On April 16th KNC issued another update for their Scrypt ASICs that are scheduled for delivery in Q2/Q3 (June/July) of this year. The Titans will now be hashing at around 300 MH which is up from the previously stated 250 MH.

One thing we can all agree on is Scrypt Mining profitability for GPU’s is going to drop like a rock within a one- two week time frame. Not to mention this is just the 1st generation of Scrypt ASICS. KNC Press Release (https://www.kncminer.com/news/news-83)

Given that DigiBytes daily net hash has fluctuated between 500 MH and 1 GH the past few days, 1-2 people with Titans could easily fork DigiByte or other lesser known Scrypt coins.

So what are the options DigiByte or any other Scrypt coin can take right now?

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Pros:
* No Hard-Fork Required
* More professional mining market will emerge
* Attractive to long-term ASIC mining investors


Cons:
* Centralization of Scrypt hashing power
* Lesser known coins easily forked
* 1-2 People with Titans could currently fork most Scrypt coins
* Very high cost barriers to compete ($5k-$10k) in Scrypt Asic Mining
* Goes against most peoples reason for becoming involved with cryptos
* Will eliminate GPU mining for most Scrypt coins
* Will push most GPU miners to other ASIC resistant coins
* Most Scrypt ASIC miners will dump mined coins to re-coup hardware costs

Resources:
*Doge Dev Summary on staying Scrypt (http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/23fk2i/very_long_very_serious_development_summary_week/)
*Litecoin Dev Teams Position on Algo Switching (https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=18166.0)

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Pros:
* GPU miners can still profitably mine
* ASIC resistant for the near future
* GPUs run cooler
* GPUs use less electricity
* blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa, cubehash, shavite, simd, echo

Cons:
* ASIC creation still possible & likely
* X11 Mining Software possibly not optimized
* Some of the x11 algos were dropped from the SHA selection process due to security issues
* Hard-forking required

Resources:
*Darkcoin Thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.0)
*Doge Dev Summary on X11 (http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/23fk2i/very_long_very_serious_development_summary_week)

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Pros:
*GPU miners can still profitably mine
*Increases memory requirements as hardware bottleneck
*Adaptive memory increase into the future/ Moore's law
*ASIC resistant into the future

Cons:
* Hard-forking required

Resources:
*Vertcoin Thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=404364.0)

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Pros:
*All miners can mine
*Scrypt, SHA256D, Qubit, Skein or Groestl
*Each algorithm has separate difficulty
*Any algorithm can find the next block
*Each algorithm aims for a block generation time of 2.5 minutes
*Over the five algorithms, a block should be found on average every 30 seconds

Cons:
*Technically Challenging & somewhat untested
*Hard-forking required
*Unforeseen attacks may exist
*Difficult for mining pools to implment

Resources:
*Myraidcoin Thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=483515.0)

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Pros:
*SHA-256, Keccak-512, Grøestl-512, BLAKE-512

Cons:
* Hard-forking required

Resources:
*Heavycoin Thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=470391.0)

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Pros:
*More blockchain security
*Combination of communities
*Larger net hash
*Very attractive to ASIC miners

Cons:
* Loss of complete autonomy
* Negative press or events with 1 coin will effect all merge mined coins

Resources:
*! (http://)

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Pros:
*More blockchain security
*Combination of communities
*Larger net hash
*Very attractive to ASIC miners
*Bitcoin is Gold, Litecoin is Silver
*DigiByte is the dollar, Dogecoin is like a quarter

Cons:
* Not likely to happen
* Loss of complete autonomy
* Negative press or events with 1 coin will effect all merge mined coins

Resources:
*! (http://)

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Pros:
*More blockchain security
*Combination of communities
*Larger net hash
*Very attractive to GPU miners

Cons:
* Loss of complete autonomy
* Negative press or events with 1 coin will effect all merge mined coins
Resources:
*! (http://)

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If you would like to know more about DigiBytes long term vision watch our NYC presentation here:

This is our thought as well. Non the less lets get a fact based discussion going. Lets add as many pros & cons as we can to each option.

This is a great poll, I love how there are pro's and con's listed for each decision. Kudos digibyte team!

I have voted for : Multi-Algo (MYRAID)

Tell me if I have wrong, but with MYRIAD, each algo will have it's own difficulty right? That's why I voted for this choice...

You forgot Skein.

IMO X11 and Hefty1 is best.

Stats updated for Myraid coin.

Do you have a link with more info?

What would be the advantages of it being used by itself vs just using keccak which won the SHA-3 contest?

I voted Myriad but if you don't do that, do nothing. The best way to secure your network is to make it as accessible to as many as possible. Cheap low-wattage ASICs mean a community that likes a coin for its own sake can keep it going, perhaps not profitably for the miners but at least not at a significant loss. Myriad could accomplish the same thing if tech-poor CPU miners like myself at least have a shot at being effective.

This is a very valid point. Ideally it would be awesome if everyone was able to mine a coin. Cpu's, ASICs and more. Does someone have a link to a more technical description of Myraid, or have first hand experience. More info on mining pools would be nice as well!

So the more the better. What about a combination of Scrypt-N, Keccak, Sha-256 and Scrypt. So everyone could mine? Similar to Myriadcoin?

For the record, "do nothing" is what the Dogecoin community has decided for the foreseeable future. The idea is to get enough miners to adopt ASICs (like the Zeus 8W 300 KH for about $90) that no one person really ends up spending much in electricity and build strength in numbers. Of course, GPU miners who can operate at whatever their electric bills run can stick around as well. Doge has a much shorter time than DigiByte to implement before the halvings make mining not particularly profitable, so it will be good to watch and see how that goes. The canary in the cave, if you will.

Perhaps multi algo scrypt + sha256 blake would be nice idea. Graphic card miners will switch to blake and it will be fine for ages. I very much doubt that blake will become popular enough for asic makers to dedicate develop asic for it. At least not any time soon.

We are thinking an updated multi-algo myraid/ approach would be the most fair. Here is a very interesting article on the SHA-3 finalists.
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/hash/sha-3/Round3/March2012/documents/papers/WENZEL_BENNER_paper.pdf

According to the results, Blake looks like it would be the easiest of all algos to develop an ASIC for. Skein looks to be the most RAM intensive.

The question is how would different algos be weighted evenly?

Buy NXT or mine it at hashrate.org is what you should do, because PoW is going to eventually be a thing of the past.  The only PoW coins that will be worth something imo are coins that use the hashing power for something useful like prime numbers or BOINC or something.  But just hashing numbers for no purpose, and wasting electricity when we now know of better ways to secure networks (like PoS), is going to eventually be obsolete I think.

I was going to be a bastard and say: sell yr DGB and move into PoS, preferably with NXT, but someone beat me to it.....

actually with instamine you can compete even against titan, as long as you come first and the coin isn't anti-instamine of course

Buying script ASICs would be the best solution.

Doesnt really matter if developing ASIC for algo is a bit easyer or harder. If certain algo gets enough popularity, they will do it anyway.
Weighting problem is an issue for discussion. Theres no perfect fairness in multi algo solution. Just got to go with a best possible choice i quess.

A few weeks back I was all about switching algorithms but the more I think about it the more I think it won't solve IMO the even bigger problem facing DigiByte right now.....exposure/adoption.  Also there is nothing saying ASICs wont be developed for the "resistant" algorithms.  I think Multi-Algo will be too confusing for your average Joe to truly understand and too much technical hassle.  

I voted merged mining with Dogecoin.  

Pros:
-Solves the ASIC issue with increased net hash.
-Huge exposure boost.  /r/dogecoin alone has 75,000+ readers most of whom are already familiar with DigiByte due to past work.  Their are constant news headlines about it, heck in two weeks they will have a NASCAR racing at Talladega and possible in the All Star race.
-If DogeCoin continues to grow in theory so would DigiByte.
-I see Dogecoin and DigiByte as siblings with Doge covering the internet/tipping and DigiByte falling more in the professional realm.

Cons:
-Success/failure will be partially tied to DogeCoin
-Will people that mine only keep their DogeCoin and sell the DigiByte?  (Obviously multi-pools are going to sell both)

ASICS are the future might as well sell the old GPU I am sure its made ROI by now...... So my vote was do nothing.

Well thanks for calling me a bastard   ;)

I agree 100% that POW will be obsolete at some point. From our earlier discussions, I suggested an X11/POS hybrid for DGB but unfortunately a few coins are popping up with this exact makeup now. There has been alot of resistance to go the POS route by members of DGB forum. Clearly they don't fully understand what's happening. Honestly at this point, every move is risky for DGB. If we adopt X11 without POS or any other value added feature then we are just a copycat of Darkcoin (ie. = Hirocoin)...

Not sure what to do however POS should be considered in the list of options...

I agree and have been saying this for months....

you mean as a DGB community buy asics to secure our own network? this is actually an excellent idea, if doing nothing is the route that we go. There are risks with this too (not sure what they would be)..anyone have any thoughts on this?

or doing exactly what blackcoin is doing but in a more transparent manner...the blackcoin multipool is a great idea but i believe the developers are stealing....we could buy asics as a community and create our own transparent and honest multipool.....we could all buy shares of the asics which will give us dgb in return....doing this in conjunction with switching to x11 is ideal.....it will accomplish 3 things

1. x11 will prevent dgb from being mined and dumped by asics
2. x11 will allow us gpu miners to mine dgb with low electricity
3. buying DGB community asics, we can mine junk coins and buy x11 dgb

Merge mine with Doge for me.

Switching algos will only just buy us more time.

If we combine community's there's more of an opportunity for both coins to grow, plus it would get us a bit more mainstream acceptance.

This is something we are willing to look into more for sure. The idea is very attractive if we decide not to switch algos.

My opinion is:
You can not resist evolution and progress.
Don't do anything or go merge mining.

An DBG specific ASIC which can only be bought with DGB would be cool  :P

For me the Myriad way sounds best when you ignore the technical issues. However, since I have no coin-dev experience I have no idea what they could be?

Thanks for the great summary on the first post. Was looking for something like this.

By the way, one question I have. What is the estimated timeline on Scrypt ASICs coming out in full force?

More than likely by June/July they will be here in full force.

Not many people will be willing to change algo for each coin. Its irritating. If you want the hash rates, its better to go with popular. Looks like x11 is becoming very popular now.

HEFFTY1 !, for now it's best algo ( low temp , really low fan noise, high power efficience, simple gtx 765m got 4,5MH ). I propose to check this ALGO, just mine hevay coin for a while and U will see, smooth and easy :)

Everyone shut up.. i am the smart one here !

i was thinking of bring this up the other day.. seems like the community is asleep and going to get steam rolled..
i have been saying right from the start that scrypt asics are going to tank scrypt coins and idiots just argue and give me dumb excuses..
they prob have pre-orders and can't want to dump on unsuspecting idiots.. like exchange guys selling mining shares LOL
as usual people bs like crazy to line their pockets..

it's called supply and demand.. if we have a super short period where all of a sudden 100x more scrypt coins are being dumped
and yes they will be dumped.. people have bills to pay ..You don't get a gpu roi unless you cash out
then what happens ?
Well morons have have argued with me for ages that this is going to make scrypt coins 100x higher in value
and that is the dumbest thing i have heard yet and everyone is saying that.
i was surprised to see this topic and someone agree with me, i am still stunned.. finally we have someone speaking that isn't a fucking moron lol

I got me mostly Vertcoin and i am mining X13. <-- did not see any x13 stuff in the Poll list ;)

I did not vote because i want the voting option
- Anything but scrypt (to mine / trade etc)

what would happen if went and dumped 500,000 Bitcoins on BTC-E ? Is that going to drive the price to 10 grand a coin ? lol
asics turn garbage into gold ? oh really ??  ::)
go look at coinchoose at the list of SHA coins and tell me how awesome they are and how popular and high in value they are..
spoiler alert: they aren't.. they are all fucking garbage no one wants anything to do with.

forking is a good point too, i keep forgetting about that.. this is when the Exchange(s) are going to have step up (and coin dev's cloners)
AND START notifying their customers.. hear me Cryptsy ?

And yeah maybe it will end up good for Litecoin itself but there is far too many scrypt clone coins diluting the market / scene so.. shits going down lol

are you all finally waking up ?

i dumped my scrypt coin holding way back when i seen scrypt asics coming and the whole time since i seen no one agreeing with me..
nothing but dumb excuses at to how they are going to make scrypt coins worth a fortune..
and supply and demand dictates saturating a market is not a magical way of making a rare thing less rare and worth far more
that is just pure raw stupidity big time !

I vote who cares.. just pick something else than scrypt lol

The DEV seems clueless.
What a crap way of finding a decision.
YOU are in charge.

And you probably know the answer by yourself.
Sure its X11. Or 12 or 13 or whatever.

All this rants about non optimized software is pure propaganda.
It addresses the technically imbecile with cheap arguments.
Every nerd would tell you that its pure bullshit.
But those "lobby" people are as successful as ever spreading some tabloid disinformation.

By the way, ASICS are not a threat for X11, much too expensive.
FPGA could have a good comeback with that.
And I would promote it.
It saves energy and would run on off the shelf hardware.
Not on some bo-peep piece of shit.
Hehe, have a looky here, burn baby burn.
Stop the cheapness already!

Do nothing. That isn't even a problem. Scrypt ASICs are coming and it doesn't hurt if your coin is strong enough. If not, you can't do anything then. Changing algos won't be a solution.

Nope, see the Skein whitepaper, chapter 5.2:

http://www.skein-hash.info/sites/default/files/skein1.3.pdf

I like ASICS.  They are so much more efficient than GPUs and allow for proper commercial business plans to be shaped around them.  I think the bigger Scrypt coins will be absolutely fine in this new world just as bitcoin proved to be.  Smaller ones may be run over. 

DIgibyte is a great coin and it is a shame it is not more popular, but it needs more exposure.  There will shortly be an army of unemployed GPU miners looking to mine something and it is worth exploiting this group, just as Litecoin did in 2013 and Dogecoin in the first few months of 2014.  I love Doge, but the future is uncertain and a merge is a big gamble until we know if the coin has legs past January.

I would therefore recommend a switch to something else more GPU or even CPU friendly.  Cuckoo Cycle seems very promising if you want the widest audience possible mining.

I had just a quick look through the Cuckoo Cycle whitepaper...looks quite promising.

Thanks for that pointer  :)

Hefty is just SHA-256, Keccak-512, Grøestl-512 and BLAKE-512 combined, in other words 4/11 of X11 (combined slightly different, though).

Nice to make it collision free, but not improving ASIC resistance.

Multi-Algo (MYRAID)  --> MYRIAD ( show some respect to innovation ) , I know it was a typo , just kidding!

Would definitely pick the Myriad approach. I would, in fact pick Myriad coin as the solution.  
This coin is inclusive to all relevant mining algorithms and would end the "OMG ASICS INCOMING" fud once and for all.
It could potentially bring different communities under a single blockchain.
Provides the foundation for having the widest distribution of mining, essentially negating the centralization of ASIC mining, whilst still embracing them. ( Win win ?? )

Some people say that the concept and mining of this coin is complicated and not for the average joe. To combat that claim, a all in one miner is being developed by the myriad community.
This miner, with a few clicks of a mouse, would automatically begin to mine the algorithm with the lowest difficulty (for max profit), at your chosen pool. It would somewhat work like the GUI Scrypt miner.

I would definitely recommend checking Myriad out as i view it as a necessity in order to keep the crypto-currency space decentralized and for everyone.
I know that Myriad isn't quite there yet and it has a long road ahead of it, but at the same time one has to realise that myriad is only 2 months old and is very young :)

Jst my o2.
 
Thanks for reading :D

ive been saying this all along too...staying as scrypt is the worst choice...if we don't change out of scrypt, i'll be dumping all 6 million of my dgb and buying into a POS coin. It's too bad that the bigger stake holders in dgb don't get more of a say...for the future progress of dgb, we need to change to a different algo and/or a different philosophy

I agree DGB is underrated...in fact DGB is not a bigger scrypt coin but it's not entirely small either....I still think overall though that DGB is vulnerable to scrypt ASICS destroying the coin....Ive just purchased a few more R9 270x...why? Because I can mine X11 coins using practically no electricity, it's cooler and I believe in crypto in general.....GPUs and cpus keep cryptos decentralized....ASICS defeat the purpose of crypto...I will be mining some coin using which ever algo because GPU mining will never go out of style...GPUs are awesome because they can adapt to mine which ever algo comes out next...Whatever algo DGB goes with (if any change) I will be there mining it.

This,
Myriad is the most secure coin at the moment even if we can't really prove it yet.

X11 is just famous, most of peoples voting for it have even not idea of how it works exactly. X11 is good for the short/medium term only, like Scrypt was. But as soon as this will be "bypassed" by miners, all the coins using this algo will have sever issue.

The thing with multi-algo is each algo have it own difficulty, so even if the scrypt getting mined as hell, this is protected by the other algo.

I'm using absolutely fictive numbers,
but let say you have 2 miners on Skein on a low difficulty, and 400 miners on Scrypt, pushing the Scrypt to high difficulty. It will easier for the 2 dudes on Skein to find the next block, screwing the Scrypt miners, even if they throw out a incredible hashrate.

So this system is absolutely not a hashrate race, but an algo race.

X11 Algo of course,it is a very cool algo. ;D

What I see, only in the last week the number of the DRK miners (in a certain pool) went up from 800 to 1300 (edit: 1400+), and the number is still rising every hour. Im not saying switching to X11 is the answer for the subject of this topic, but it is clear, even the average gpu miners are ready to switch, learn, try out new things. Switching algo is not a bad thing at all. Im afraid staying at srcypt will end up like cooking for months, but no mealtime at the end.

i strongly suspect the massive wave of scrypt clones we're mostly made last few month in prep of scrypt asics coming.
they planned this..

i can see how this might be good for say Litecoin for example but a lot of damage is going to be done i think.
and i feel bad for people holding the OP's coin.. changing algo's is a crappy prospect maybe and what do you do ?
i dumped (i had a lot of Franko)

Voted "merge with myriad"

Would be a killing to merge your ideas, hashrate and community together + it's really easy with myriad and they are seeking for partners coins to merge

That sounds amazing :p

Here is an interesting video on the ASIC issue from a Bitcoin video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si-2niFDgtI&feature=youtu.be&t=40m45s

So you close the voting with 176 votes so that the results do not reflect the real opinion against your target?

Litecoins going to be fine....the rest....well does it even matter?

Rest are doomed (because of a way over-saturated market) with or without scrypt asic.

X11 , this algo will cool your rig at the hot summer.
So why not ?

I'm mining Vertcoin, so naturally, my vote would go to Scrypt-N. :)

ASICs are making coins centralized, that is the real problem.  The answer is to start over from scratch with a completely new system.  Lots of 2.0s are trying, none have succeded yet, but I think there is a chance for a coin to come up with a POsomething that will be better than what is currently offered.  If If If we have to stick with centralized mining pools then I guess multiple blockchains that are merge mined, but that is kind of just trying to make a broken system less broken.

We feel a multi-algo approach that allows Bitcoin ASICS, Scrypt ASICS & GPU's to mine is the future!

Does this mean adopting the myriadcoin algorithm or making a completely new one?

I don't know much about myriad but I don't believe that it can be mined by all asics and gpus...seems like a good choice...can't wait for more news

Thanks. :)

My vote goes to Myriadcoin.

The multi-PoW system allows users to mine competitively without ASICs (Qubit, Skein, Groestl)  while allowing those with ASICs to mine as well (SHA256, Skrypt). The difficulty is adjusted separately for each algo allowing every algo to remain profitable.   

Furthermore their merge-mining platform will allow their blockchain to secure other coins that are vulnerable to ASICs.

Join the community:  http://www.reddit.com/r/myriadcoin/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/myriadcoin/)
Read the facts:        http://myriadplatform.org/introduction/ (http://myriadplatform.org/introduction/)

I TOLD YOU SO !  ;D

i was 100% right.. as always ;)