How to defend against asics or prove Metroid wrong

[skablast]

I don't like the idea of having my day to day transaction based on Bitmain.

I don't believe that developers at Etash and even Monero are doing something strong enough to have a decentralize network.
The problem is a complex problem  and need complex and structured answer

There are huge holes leaving the door open to Asic:
for example, to name a few:

1) Mining solo: nobody does that in the normal mining. But allowing to do that open the door to Asic.

2) the developer of the coin MUST have direct relationship with the pool. Where is written that anybody can open a pool ? And distribute coins? If a developer want he can decide to send money ONLY to pools that are registered and that follow the rules indicate. It doesn't make sense that Monero, among others, realize that 1/3 or more of their hashrate is coming from nowhere.

It's like Tesla saying that anybody can sell their car. They are not doing that. The channel ownership  is what define a business.

3) Do we want really 10000 pool spread across the globe in which 2M people mine ? Then algos must be choosen in order to do so.

4) do we want the lower energy for transaction ? well, Algos must be chooosen for that, difficulty increase / block reward need to be stable .

I like and mine Ubiq. They decide what they want and just trying to have the network follow them.
I like the idea of RVN( well, pigeon idea is better). And I will wait to see what they would like to do with "an asic resistant" blockchain

[wheelz1200]

I support the idea of protecting coin algorithms from the use of asics. But how can we force developers to do that. For them, it does not matter who will be able to mining. But for decentralization mining and survivability of the coin is of great importance. How to explain this to the developers, I don't know.

You cannot force anyone to do anything.

In fact, a great many developers are ASIC pro, not against, due to the high volume of hashrate that can be achieved to secure network through PoW.

My firm belief is that GPU mining will ALWAYS have a place, and that the largest component to this is the home user. However, for assurance that this will be the future, there needs to be stability in the GPU mining systems, and the current state of affairs in the GPU market is abhorrent. Almost NO decent GPU can be had, and the manufacturing giants are elevating the prices of GPU's much higher than they are actually worth. This is a side effect, and a negative one at that, of the market at play here. We know, we buy and supply the GPU's. Shortages are not the only problem, though price is a major one.

So ASIC's become much more attractive in that case, as they come close to the price of GPU's in the medium level ASIC market.

What does this mean on an overall level?

Simply that NO ONE can kill ASIC's, just like NO ONE can kill GPU's.

I believe there will be a balance of all mining hardware, and that this balance will be maintained WELL into the future of mining. The fact that the head of nVidia himself believes that mining will be a core aspect of the business proves that the GPU mining will be alive and well MUCH deeper into the future than what anyone can conceive.

As for the Algo change, that is not difficult at all. We know, we have designed a few ourselves which will appear shortly in our coins. Getting around an adaptive ASIC/FPGA miner is!

#crysx

Dont have the misconception that high hashpower = secure.  I for one would rather a lower hashrate but many more people on the network.  And hashrate is reletive to the machines available to mine.  

Wrong ...

That is where 51% attacks come from. Security is a hashrate phenomenon, whether you or I like it or not.

If the network is a GPU hashed PoW and has 25MH, while we come along with our 'theFARM' and thrash the network at 250MH, then the network has a massive issue.

MH or GH, the figures stand.

#crysx

So you are saying when bitmain developed the x11 they couldnt have 51% the dash network....they crushed the network....i.e. asics.

What phil is saying is to be adaptive and change algos.  You have stated that there might be adaptive asics coming out, i am no tech guru but i dont believe thats how asic chips are designed...they do one thing and do that one thing very well

[philipma1957]

I support the idea of protecting coin algorithms from the use of asics. But how can we force developers to do that. For them, it does not matter who will be able to mining. But for decentralization mining and survivability of the coin is of great importance. How to explain this to the developers, I don't know.

You cannot force anyone to do anything.

In fact, a great many developers are ASIC pro, not against, due to the high volume of hashrate that can be achieved to secure network through PoW.

My firm belief is that GPU mining will ALWAYS have a place, and that the largest component to this is the home user. However, for assurance that this will be the future, there needs to be stability in the GPU mining systems, and the current state of affairs in the GPU market is abhorrent. Almost NO decent GPU can be had, and the manufacturing giants are elevating the prices of GPU's much higher than they are actually worth. This is a side effect, and a negative one at that, of the market at play here. We know, we buy and supply the GPU's. Shortages are not the only problem, though price is a major one.

So ASIC's become much more attractive in that case, as they come close to the price of GPU's in the medium level ASIC market.

What does this mean on an overall level?

Simply that NO ONE can kill ASIC's, just like NO ONE can kill GPU's.

I believe there will be a balance of all mining hardware, and that this balance will be maintained WELL into the future of mining. The fact that the head of nVidia himself believes that mining will be a core aspect of the business proves that the GPU mining will be alive and well MUCH deeper into the future than what anyone can conceive.

As for the Algo change, that is not difficult at all. We know, we have designed a few ourselves which will appear shortly in our coins. Getting around an adaptive ASIC/FPGA miner is!

#crysx

Dont have the misconception that high hashpower = secure.  I for one would rather a lower hashrate but many more people on the network.  And hashrate is reletive to the machines available to mine.  

Wrong ...

That is where 51% attacks come from. Security is a hashrate phenomenon, whether you or I like it or not.

If the network is a GPU hashed PoW and has 25MH, while we come along with our 'theFARM' and thrash the network at 250MH, then the network has a massive issue.

MH or GH, the figures stand.

#crysx

So you are saying when bitmain developed the x11 they couldnt have 51% the dash network....they crushed the network....i.e. asics.

What phil is saying is to be adaptive and change algos.  You have stated that there might be adaptive asics coming out, i am no tech guru but i dont believe thats how asic chips are designed...they do one thing and do that one thing very well

I could make a 4 board miner like the L3   with 4 sets of asics  and a good controller  (fpga)

It would be decent and be able to adapt , but  at a certain point  of complexity it would fail.

My skill set is looking at economic factors  that make coins work.

[The Demon Slick]

Factor in that the government is coming down hard on ico's, further compressing the ecosystem.

[ThugB33]

Why in a freaking hell they like this word of decentralization when it's not?!?! Are mined coins spread across the globe thru geo-nodes equally? No they're not. The fattest wallet gets it first and that is totally wrong, IT breaks the whole idea! What we could do is that we could create the coin spread thru geo-nodes ... what i mean with that ...the country like china could get out of the geo-node only 25 coins! If hashrate cap is reached in that region then there wouldn't be any point in increasing the hashrate in that region as the total payout cap is at reached. And if you add a mining rig circulation into it it, that would add some value IMO.

............... 

[rdluffy]

https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/958

Please post your ideas on this topic at github

We are doing something and devs will look for surr

[Max Likelihood]

The possibility for one company mining with their new asics in secret for months, dominating  block chain, before then selling them at obscene prices, reminds me of a kind of insider trading coupled with monopoly. This seems to exemplify some of the worst features of the traditional financial oligarchy.

Maybe GPU mining isn't perfect, megafarms and such. But seems more consistent with solutions to the problems crypto was supposed to solve.

[rs1x]

replying to subscribe to this thread due to interest.

[philipma1957]

replying to subscribe to this thread due to interest.

good  I would love to  see how this plays out.

[The Demon Slick]

The possibility for one company mining with their new asics in secret for months, dominating  block chain, before then selling them at obscene prices, reminds me of a kind of insider trading coupled with monopoly. This seems to exemplify some of the worst features of the traditional financial oligarchy.

Maybe GPU mining isn't perfect, megafarms and such. But seems more consistent with solutions to the problems crypto was supposed to solve.

Exactamundo.

[badfad]

Hi @philipma1957 ,


miners do secure blockchains,
it does not matter what device is used.

The value of a coin does not come out of "how" it is mined.

Use case and adoption gives value.


PanneKopp

And how many people can get an ASIC to become miners?

How many people can get gpus AND are willing to invest in them? AMD and nvidia inspires a hell of a lot more trust than Bitmain.

Can you say the next sentence with a straight face? BITMAIN IS A FIGHTER FOR DECENTRALIZATION.

Also for the main reason, immagine how much we can stick it to metroid 

[shibob]

And how many people can get an ASIC to become miners?

How many people can get gpus AND are willing to invest in them? AMD and nvidia inspires a hell of a lot more trust than Bitmain.

Can you say the next sentence with a straight face? BITMAIN IS A FIGHTER FOR DECENTRALIZATION.

Also for the main reason, immagine how much we can stick it to metroid 

We all dont want something like decentralization, I dont own any asic miner as well but Bitmain is too big now, and they have too much money to not only destroy another asics manufacturers also our small GPU miners, to monopolize the market. So we hope now some actions like Monero team who may launch a radical means of combating ASIC-miners through the update of CryptoNight algorithm. But that's all about the efforts of development team, this's quite exciting times, I think Ethereum team also are watching on what happens to Monero. I believe that it would be best practice would be to fork like Sir Phil said.

[bigjee]

And how many people can get an ASIC to become miners?

How many people can get gpus AND are willing to invest in them? AMD and nvidia inspires a hell of a lot more trust than Bitmain.

Can you say the next sentence with a straight face? BITMAIN IS A FIGHTER FOR DECENTRALIZATION.

Also for the main reason, immagine how much we can stick it to metroid  

We all dont want something like decentralization, I dont own any asic miner as well but Bitmain is too big now, and they have too much money to not only destroy another asics manufacturers also our small GPU miners, to monopolize the market. So we hope now some actions like Monero team who may launch a radical means of combating ASIC-miners through the update of CryptoNight algorithm. But that's all about the efforts of development team, this's quite exciting times, I think Ethereum team also are watching on what happens to Monero. I believe that it would be best practice would be to fork like Sir Phil said.

A few things to note:
1) Bitmain became wealthy because folks bought from them in large scale. Mcafee, genesis mining etc large corporate mining businesses that a centralised hubs for mining now.
2) i say let the btc value go back to zero so these large mining businesses shutdown as running costs get too high (electricity, labor costs etc)
3) devs keep modifying their coins to keep them decentralised (sia tried but failed; monero is trying to beat asics and eth is undecided). Only fork when asic video is launched by manufacturer.
4) just need to figure out how many forks will it take to discourage these asic manufacturers to stop making these new asics (capital losses in millions) to bankrupt them.
5) dont forget why bitcoin came into existence in the first place. It was to move away from corporate suits trying to fabricate regulations only to break it themselves and ending up causing the markets to crash by 6 trillion dollars. Bitmain is turning into another central bank controlled by Jihan and it seems we have created a centralised entity.How is crytpo better than the current banking system if its lost its initial vision and only a few key players hold a majority of the coins/hashing power.....

[Bigpiggy01]

To some extent there are merits in both forms of mining. The main problem as I see it is the centralization of asics around Bitmain which I completely agree is abhorrent.

Decentralization spreads adoption, end of story. 10-100k peeps with a "hobby" will do a lot more to drive adoption than any reasonably honest marketing campaign can.

A couple of years back, there were a ton of opensource initiatives with ASICS that would have stopped Bitmain from getting into the position they're in now. There were even a couple of "commercial" ventures that got badly burnt doing business in China and ended up eating failcake on that account. The current initiatives I see at developing less evil asics seem either scammy as fuck or just as evil as Bitmain.

Forking coins regularly will just drive additional innovation on the Asic front but is in my opinion a more than reasonable stopgap measure. However to do something truly effective, some of those next gen ASICS need to be democratized one way or the other.

[Ajiloveyuyun]

can we win against the rich?
can we as a miner GPU remain allowed to actively mine?

your idea is good, please make a referral letter for your idea to crypto .. me as a miner GPU worried can not mine again because asic!

they are a very greedy rich people creating asic into small coin coins!

[vapourminer]

might be answered already but if most popular coin algos go to gpu, and say 6 gpu coins dominate with all gpus coins more or less evenly split gpu hashpower wise, whats to stop people suddenly taking the gpu mining power from say 4 coin algos, switching to 5th (very easy to switch algos on gpus) and 51%ing one of the others? take a lot of bad actors and coordination but the possibility is there. it could effectively kill the attacked coin.

at least with asics that are dedicated to a coin you cant use them to attack another coin on a different algo.

just playing devils advocate here. i am all for getting rid of asics, at least until there are many more manufacturers (like dozens) that play fair (ie not limiting supply, mining on them for months before release etc).   

[Bigpiggy01]

might be answered already but if most popular coin algos go to gpu, and say 6 gpu coins dominate with all gpus coins more or less evenly split gpu hashpower wise, whats to stop people suddenly taking the gpu mining power from say 4 coin algos, switching to 5th (very easy to switch algos on gpus) and 51%ing one of the others? take a lot of bad actors and coordination but the possibility is there. it could effectively kill the attacked coin.

at least with asics that are dedicated to a coin you cant use them to attack another coin on a different algo.

just playing devils advocate here. i am all for getting rid of asics, at least until there are many more manufacturers (like dozens) that play fair (ie not limiting supply, mining on them for months before release etc).   

A coin that is shitty enough to motivate that kind of attack with current hashrate distributions etc, might just deserve whatever it ends up getting 

And it doesn't have to be a bad thing, a few of the coins that are around today have survived similar attacks and come out stronger.

[Metroid]

might be answered already but if most popular coin algos go to gpu, and say 6 gpu coins dominate with all gpus coins more or less evenly split gpu hashpower wise, whats to stop people suddenly taking the gpu mining power from say 4 coin algos, switching to 5th (very easy to switch algos on gpus) and 51%ing one of the others? take a lot of bad actors and coordination but the possibility is there. it could effectively kill the attacked coin.

at least with asics that are dedicated to a coin you cant use them to attack another coin on a different algo.

just playing devils advocate here. i am all for getting rid of asics, at least until there are many more manufacturers (like dozens) that play fair (ie not limiting supply, mining on them for months before release etc).  

POW wise, you are right to an extent, you could say the same to asics, even if the asic hashrate is high, a more powerful asic can be created 10x more hashrate and do the same, reason I said pow wise, nothing is fully protected and to me cpu, gpu or asic is the same thing, changing one to another concerning security will not change anything. Now concerning decentralization then cpu/gpu wins hands down cause anybody can buy a cpu or gpu, hardly anybody can buy an asic and when buys an asic you are already outdated cause the manufacturer is using to mine a new version, so asics is a no go to any decentralized network, sia devs is paying badly for their mistake.

[philipma1957]

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I guess this is april fools  above

might be answered already but if most popular coin algos go to gpu, and say 6 gpu coins dominate with all gpus coins more or less evenly split gpu hashpower wise, whats to stop people suddenly taking the gpu mining power from say 4 coin algos, switching to 5th (very easy to switch algos on gpus) and 51%ing one of the others? take a lot of bad actors and coordination but the possibility is there. it could effectively kill the attacked coin.

at least with asics that are dedicated to a coin you cant use them to attack another coin on a different algo.

just playing devils advocate here. i am all for getting rid of asics, at least until there are many more manufacturers (like dozens) that play fair (ie not limiting supply, mining on them for months before release etc).   

The reasoning against this  is simple enough.

Trading in exchanges  is very important.  Having lots of coins to trade  drives trading. Think of a 4 coin exchange vs a 400 coin exchange.

Diverse availability from gpu mining allows a guy  in the middle of nowhere Earth mine and trade coins.

To squeeze out the chance at 1 billion little gpu miners  is moron stupid.  Asics will do it. Bitmain shows they are trying to do it.

[vapourminer]

^^^

sounds good to me.

guess i worry about a bunch (as in most) of gpu miners suddenly jumping on the most profitable coin/algo, raising the difficulty to the stratosphere, then going on to the next next coin once the original is worthless because of the difficulty. leaving that coin useless because of the difficulty. seems i recall that happening before. and it happens now on a somewhat smaller scale with profit switching pools.

btw i am assuming the coins attacked are decent mainline coins at that point, not shitcoins which do deserve such a fate.

bcashlol had to do an emergency fork because of hashpower sloshing back and forth, i assume maybe such gpu coins may have to implement something similar?