why choose ETHASH while you know that the asic for this algo is already out in the market , you said your coin is asic resistant,
you should consider changing the algo if you are serious about being asic resistant
First off, news about the Bitmain ETHASH ASIC came out very close to the time that we launched after development was already done.
A more in depth answer requires some exploration of the term “ASIC resistant”. It really implies just what it says, resistance. There is no such thing as an ASIC proof coin, you can build an ASIC for any algorithm. Just as you can implement any algorithm in software, making an ASIC is simply implementing an algorithm in hardware.
ASIC resistance is about economics more than technology. There are a number of ways it has been achieved, and they pretty much all boil down to tuning your algorithm to something generic hardware does very well - so that building an ASIC won’t achieve a tremendous advantage. For example when we look at Bitcoin it uses a double SHA256 hash for proof of work, which general hardware is not particular good at. ASICs rule Bitcoin mining because it is far more cost effective to mine Bitcoin with chips especially designed to compute SHA256.
The ETHASH scheme for ASIC resistance is very clever. ETHASH is bound my memory speed not computational speed. Memory is an extremely general circuit that is needed by pretty much every computational circuit there is. The idea behind making memory the limiting factor is that for an ETHASH ASIC to be substantially faster/cheaper than common hardware, one would need to invent faster and cheaper memory.
Faster and cheaper memory has broad implications well above the level of profitability one could expect by making crypto mining hardware, so you wouldn’t expect a threat to decentralization to come from this route.
So what happened? Why is there an ETHASH ASIC then? It is because of a combination of factors that made producing one economically feasible. During the bull market last year, we saw a tremendous rise in the price of cryptocurrencies, but also a huge shortage in GPUs commonly used to mine Ethereum. As the second biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, the sudden explosion of demand left producers of common hardware unable to keep up with demand, as evidenced by the soaring price of GPUs last year and even some retailers placing limits on how many each customer should buy. The ETHASH ASIC was designed to capitalize on a supply chain weakness exposed by a sudden surge of demand in the market. Are they faster and cheaper than buying a bunch of GPUs? At the time they launched yes, marginally. I am not sure on this right now as I haven’t run the numbers but I have seen the price of GPUs come down dramatically with the market.
Is the ETHASH ASIC the same sort of centralizing threat we saw consolidate Bitcoin mining power? Absolutely not. When people hear ASIC they are thinking of the Bitcoin ASIC which can be 1000x faster than commonly available hardware. By contrast, the ETHASH “ASIC” is actually comparable to GPUs in terms of hashrate per cost. Just because Bitmain is marketing it as an ASIC, it is just a piece of specialized hardware that is limited by the memory speed they can put into it just as common hardware is. In fact, the lack of anything particularly special about ETHASH ASICs is a testament to how well designed this algorithm is. Also keeping in mind that there is a lot more incentive to design a good ASIC for Ethereum than for other smaller coins that may be claiming better ASIC resistance just because no one has made an ASIC for their algorithm yet, when the economics aren’t there for anyone to even want to try.
Furthermore, Energi shares enough differences from Ethereum that an Ethereum “ASIC” is fundamentally unable to mine Energi anyways. Among these differences are a completely different block structure, different seed data for the DAG, and a different epoch length.
To be perfectly clear, there is NO ASIC threat to Energi at this point nor has there ever been yet at any point in the past. If in the future that changes, we will likely have strong community support for a change to our algorithm and we will happily follow through with that.
