so as a community member & miner, all the fork stories & doorstop stories, are they rumors only or the devs are going to implement it?
There is not going to be any hardfork.
The whole story is that the Obelisk miners (manufactured by a subsidiary company of the Core developers) a few days ago revealed the preliminar tests on the units, and sadly the specs could be a 30% bellow the expected. As the mining network is already flooded by miners of 3 companies, by the time Obelisks are delivered their profitability will be very low (so all that speech about "doorstoppers")
The buyers of Obelisk are in rage and are pressing really hard the developing team to fork the mining algorithm of the network to invalidate every miner but Obeliks. Some buyers are going as far as considering the fork as inevitable or consider it a proven fact, I guess in hopes of shaping the reality by describing a different one.
... but the reality is that the Core team is not going to fork the network: they are stating every day that this is no reason to provoke a contentious fork, and that the decision of not forking is firm unless Bitmain/Antpool starts to behave destructively against Sia (something that can't currently happen as the hashrate of Antpool is <15%)
This is true. The no fork. IMHO, it is because 1) Obelisk-Tech is not OUT anything..they got these miners out the door as a pre-order with BTC...if they even kept 20% in BTC they
likely are well ahead of the game. Their investment (and whatever profit) on the units are secure.
2) They want ASIC's for the network security..if instead of say (what is like 8,000 sc-1's or something) they can have the Bitmain units work in the same manner with aprox
75,000 Sia units in the world....that works even better for the sia-tech folk on their network...they have even LESS motive to fork...Bitmain has done the work and numbers
for them..they could not pull out themselves....add the LATE Sc-1 units on top of this mix...and IF sia-tech gets the network where it needs to be to use all these ASIC's in
the manner they intend...they will be golden
3) They COULD fork and do the same thing...and again IMHO that would work just as well, because I don't think the extra capacity of the Bitmain units would matter, in that
I doubt they can implement that many units that fast into the network vision anyway....so again, a fork would be plenty of units to get their invisioned network off the ground
but the numbers of ASIC's with Bitmain behind the protocol...well, it will be a LOT and I mean a LOT easier to get BIG TIME INVESTMENT with that under their belt...so again,
IMHO, Bitmain will rule this coin and network as it becomes available...IF the obelisk sc-1's do arrive they MAY have fewer watts (500w vs bitmain 1,350w I think it is)...but
that means they won't fade quite as fast (and this assumes Bitmain won't have a 2nd generation out of these miners at 500 watts also by the time they ship)..so there is that
As an aside, I fully expect that Bitmain will have a Decred Miner out before the Obelisk Decreds ship..if I had to guess I'd say by July 1st, 2018....just a guess...
I have ONE FREE Decred miner (swap'd 5 1/2 price sc-1 obelisk coupons off to a friend, he got 4 coupons and I got $800 bucks covered..thus free with 5th coupon free unit
...really tried to talk him out of it, but he badly needed equipment deductions etc and was getting 15 decred units 2nd batch, anyway...so I lost that argument)
...so at least I will ROI on that maybe...
As to me, I think that I can ROI after electric with equip deductions at my miner income rate on my dubious 5 sc1 miners, ..IF I can make 40% back of the USD price after electric
So the ONLY hope any of us have (or in my case 5 obelisks sc-1's) Is that the network use they plan for these ASIC's work and they ALL can be put to use
Bitmain and Obelisk in a coherent manner....WITH a pretty good plug of Investment in the obelisk-tech firm and the coin..from this all pulling together...we MIGHT squeak by..but their
frigging network storage vision will have to be on task at the same time as these ASIC's hitting in mass...along with some pretty good press...and investment $$$ and also
investment $$ in the siacoin price too boot..or again...I myself will feel.. lucky if I get 40% back over electric and could just then call it wash (or ROI)
compared to paying the tax man last year (2017) and the 25% equipment deduction also from 2017...*yeah...I was that big and need equip deduction that bad*
but again..it is a stretch even on my 'dubious' scenario' above, for any of this in reality to happen....so heck ...perhaps after above I'll likely really be looking at full 25% loss...
But no, they ain't gonna fork ..no way...they have like 8x the ASIC miners they expected.....for their network vision....bet on that if nothing else...NO fork possible...
We pre-ordered..they are covered on equipment...the real test is IF they can get their network vision storage up to speed with all these ASIC's in the wings...that is
what is gonna determine if any of us even get close to ROI'ing on the Obelisk's or the Bitmain units....without that ....all the ASIC's of this algo and siacoin are 'doorstops'
anyway, what do I know at one time I drank the BFL kool-aid in 2013...but how I'm seen my 5 units of obelisk sc-1 doorstops currently
later
brad
