Ethereum Anti-ASIC fork, is it the right time for bitcoin too?

[DooMAD]

Reminder:

"it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself -- Professor Darwin"

Then why are we having a discussion about changing the environment to benefit those who haven't adjusted?  This topic is advocated reverting back to an earlier stage in evolution in the vague hope things evolve differently this time.  You don't encourage weak species by removing all the predators and pretend that's how it was intended to be.  Current generation ASICs are the top of the food chain.  For something to no longer be top of the food chain, it either takes the introduction of a more advanced predator (the preferable option), or an extinction-level event (the likely outcome of changing the environment).  Older mining hardware eventually dies out, new hardware replaces it.  Life goes on.

In cryptography, having access to the invention privately and exclusively is always a bad thing. People are using an encryption system with some presumptions about the state of technology and infeasibility of some calculations and an evil comes with a device that breaks the code secretly and takes advantage of this against public interests. It is what makes technology progress a nightmare for cryptographers and why they cautiously use harder mathematical problems unlikely to be vulnerable to technological progress but it happens anyway like in the case with quantum computers.

QC is a disruptive technology progress that threatens ECDSA based cryptography which is the core algorithm used in digital signatures but how do cryptographers approach it?

Firstly nobody calls it an evil move, why? Because, once it is commercialized, it would have a series of other socially valuable applications, actually disruptive applications, secondly we are actively investigating QC resistant asymmetric encryption algorithms to be prepared for the D-day, aren't we?

Changing the algorithm to combat something that actually has the potential to break the cryptographic has function is a different proposition to changing the algorithm because of your skewed notions of fair play and closing the stable door several years after the horse has already bolted, lived it's life and subsequently died of old age.

[1714738285]

1714738285

[1714738285]

1714738285

[1714738285]

1714738285

[1714738285]

1714738285

[HeRetiK]

Professional miners, don't switch between coins just because of temporary price fluctuations as reported by coinmarketcap or other indexing services, they consider choosing coins with stronger infrastructure and long term perspective as well. As a result we have an objective measure regarding actual value of coins. When something bad happens for a coin, both price and hashrate will drop and vice versa and mining industry acts more coherent with basic incentive system designed for bitcoin...

In a way NiceHash made switching between coins due to short term price fluctuations their business model. It was also their hashing power that was used for the 51% attack on Bitcoin Gold. That's only possible due to a lot of free-floating multi-purpose hashing power. Accordingly I'm not sure whether the assumption of professional miners not switching between coins based on short-term profitability quite holds. Obviously they likely won't switch for intra-day price fluctuations, but on a weekly scale it may make sense to simply go for the most profitable coin and exchange for your target currency from there.

Let's look closer to the recent event in ASIC industry, Bitmain is launching its 7 nm ASICs while bitcoin is in the lowest price levels in a year, now what do miners have to do other than buying new hardware and dumping their now useless ASICs? See? It is worse than slavery!

This is very different for gpu miners, when the whole market is down, there is a chance to assign other jobs to gpus and more importantly, there is no force to install new hardware.

For people mining as a hobby, using their gaming GPU, sure. Once mining is not profitable anymore, they'll simple continue using their GPU for gaming.

But any commercial miner still has to upgrade their GPUs regularly, as GPUs are no exception from Moore's Law. As far as other jobs are concerned I doubt that dedicated mining rigs will see many uses besides mining other coins. I guess there's a market for computational power outside of mining (cracking passwords? training neural networks?) but I doubt that it's mature or profitable beyond the occasional hobbyist.

So short of selling your GPU to an unwitting buyer (I personally wouldn't want to be the one buying a GPU that has been slaving away in a mining rig for months on end) the "chance to assign other jobs" is realistically speaking rather marginal, even for GPUs.

I think it is all about exchanges and their poor software designs: typically they do not distinguish between a multi million dollar and a one hundred dollar txn and use a same stupid parameter as the number of confirmations. it is really crazy, you don't need to wait like two days to be convinced about my deposit of like 5 etc but if I had enough money to buy like 1,00,000 etc from you, I wouldn't release the funds sooner than a week after the first confirmation. When two entities have chosen a low hashrate coin to do a high stake business, they need to treat it properly.

Sure. But on the other hand we are also lacking hard rules in terms of confirmation counts for vulnerable networks. You can't expect proper implementations if there are no proper recommendations (ie. like Bitcoin's 6 confirmations).

---

It's an incredibly interesting discussion and there's definitely a conflict of interest between ASIC manufacturers vs miners (ie. ASIC manufacturers being miners themselves) that doesn't doesn't apply to GPU manufacturers. Still I doubt that this problem is inherent to ASICs. Given a strong and stable enough market, GPU manufactures might just as well enter mining eventually (there's little risk to their core business after all, beyond the risk of mining). And the ASIC market might become more competitive and diverse in terms of available vendors.

[aliashraf]

Changing the algorithm to combat something that actually has the potential to break the cryptographic has function is a different proposition to changing the algorithm because of your skewed notions of fair play and closing the stable door several years after the horse has already bolted, lived it's life and subsequently died of old age.

Inevitability of ASICs is a hype and a lie made by Bitmain. A memory hard algorithm is not theoretically vulnerable to ASICs. Bitmain invested like millions of dollars to prove otherwise against Ethash and has not offered anything better than 2-3 times better efficiency which is tolerable and gpu mining of eth is not abandoned no matter how much Jihan has invested for political reasons like providing evidence for spreading FUD against ASIC resistance.

There is no horse and no bolting, some stupid person has managed to do a silly thing against the most decent modern age invention of humanity, bitcoin, we are not discussing few years of being a smartass in this business, if there is anything inevitable in this context, it is just one: smartass frauds will be kicked out of bitcoin.

As of the strategy, I've proposed one: gradual migration from ASIC dominance to GPU dominance.  I believe that such a strategy is capable to have support of both camps because ASIC miners are really becoming desperate with their fate being in hands of irresponsible corporates, I've done some math and surprisingly found out that it is even more profitable for ASIC miners because it reverses the irrational behavior of network hashrate and eliminates the threat of introduction of new ASICs  substantially.

It's an incredibly interesting discussion and there's definitely a conflict of interest between ASIC manufacturers vs miners (ie. ASIC manufacturers being miners themselves) that doesn't doesn't apply to GPU manufacturers. Still I doubt that this problem is inherent to ASICs. Given a strong and stable enough market, GPU manufactures might just as well enter mining eventually (there's little risk to their core business after all, beyond the risk of mining). And the ASIC market might become more competitive and diverse in terms of available vendors.

I don't think NVIDIA or AMD would ever be able to take advantage of their premier in gpu development to be used  in mining. It is because gpu industry is not just like ASIC, new technology in gpu is very expensive and as a common practice people wait like months for cards to become more reasonably priced before installing them on their rigs. Most importantly, Game industry is just in its infancy and shows no sign to cool down, NVIDIA and AMD are dominant but not done with other competitors, most importantly Intel has every potential to kick in, not to mention ARM and others.

[mixoftix]

Reminder:

"it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself -- Professor Darwin"

Then why are we having a discussion about changing the environment to benefit those who haven't adjusted?  This topic is advocated reverting back to an earlier stage in evolution in the vague hope things evolve differently this time.

I don't understand why you guys see the crypto-world with the eyes of an ASIC miner. please try to see the crypto-world from a crypto's point of view. this topic never says "lets do something to block evolution of processing power out there", it is about "lets evolve bitcoin in a way that doesn't get hurt by evolution of processing power out there"..

You don't encourage weak species by removing all the predators and pretend that's how it was intended to be.  Current generation ASICs are the top of the food chain.  For something to no longer be top of the food chain, it either takes the introduction of a more advanced predator (the preferable option), or an extinction-level event (the likely outcome of changing the environment).  Older mining hardware eventually dies out, new hardware replaces it.  Life goes on.

no, no, this is where you do mistake. look, in the aspect of a crypto-world the bitcoin seats at the top of food-web. in the terms of biology, ASICs just enroll as parasites and leeches in this ecosystem. so this is very legitimate that species (cryptos) try to get rid of parasites that try to attach them and this can't consider as a devolution for cryptos.

(I personally wouldn't want to be the one buying a GPU that has been slaving away in a mining rig for months on end)

or you could buy them in half of the price (or less) and statistics show that the most problem with GPUs that has been in a mining rig is their MOSFET component that could get repaired with something around 30 USD.

[ABCbits]

Looks like ASIC and non-ASIC discussion won't stop, but people should remember that it's easy to put backdoor on ASIC (such as antbleed) as it's closed source and allow government/actor to control PoW-based cryptocurrency easily.
Without ASIC which is fully open-source and have good efficiency, GPU is clearly superior in this case.

I guess there's a market for computational power outside of mining (cracking passwords? training neural networks?) but I doubt that it's mature or profitable beyond the occasional hobbyist.

The market is bigger than you think and there are more fields from astronomy to medical fields. But i doubt they'd buy second-hand GPU, only hobbyist or budget users who would buy second-hand GPU

It's an incredibly interesting discussion and there's definitely a conflict of interest between ASIC manufacturers vs miners (ie. ASIC manufacturers being miners themselves) that doesn't doesn't apply to GPU manufacturers. Still I doubt that this problem is inherent to ASICs. Given a strong and stable enough market, GPU manufactures might just as well enter mining eventually (there's little risk to their core business after all, beyond the risk of mining). And the ASIC market might become more competitive and diverse in terms of available vendors.

Little risk? Both Nvidia and AMD suffering from overstock after various coins price crashed. They need to think ways to sold older GPU series while there's no way they delay their GPU launch.

I don't know about AMD, but Nvidia now focusing their product for gaming, deep learning & anything related with GPGPU. So i doubt GPU manufacture would enter mining unless party with power (government, banker, etc.) took interest with cryptocurrency or mining become popular again to the point where they'd take the risk again.

[DooMAD]

I don't understand why you guys see the crypto-world with the eyes of an ASIC miner. please try to see the crypto-world from a crypto's point of view.

I see the crypto world as a permissionless one that can't be stifled.  Social contracts can't enforce limitations.  When it comes to running code, people will only enforce and adhere to the rules they agree with.  The manufacture of hardware is a different matter.  It isn't something you can easily regulate.  And from the perspective of a cryptocurrency enthusiast and believer in permissionless freedom, I don't think it's something we should try to regulate.  If you want to try to build a new coin using the 'honour system', where you trust participants to agree not to use the most efficient means of mining it, then by all means go for it, but in my view that's weak and I won't support it in Bitcoin.

this topic never says "lets do something to block evolution of processing power out there", it is about "lets evolve bitcoin in a way that doesn't get hurt by evolution of processing power out there"..

Except that it does advocate suppressing the most efficient way to mine and it would absolutely hurt Bitcoin if we ended up in a situation where some miners were stuck using inferior technology while others manage to obtain ASICs for whatever new algorithm was chosen.  You keep portraying it as some form of injustice that ASICs exist, but the real injustice would be the inevitable disparity of some mining on inferior hardware when others had a major advantage.  Say what you like about ASICs, but any manufacturer can make them for SHA256, so no one company can gain a major advantage now.  You would also likely bring more financial harm upon Bitmain's competitors than you would Bitmain if you pressed the reset button and undid all their research and development before they can achieve return on investment.  It's not remotely the simple change you describe.  There are real and tangible consequences.

no, no, this is where you do mistake. look, in the aspect of a crypto-world the bitcoin seats at the top of food-web. in the terms of biology, ASICs just enroll as parasites and leeches in this ecosystem. so this is very legitimate that species (cryptos) try to get rid of parasites that try to attach them and this can't consider as a devolution for cryptos.

Perhaps we need to stop anthropomorphising hardware here.  We're talking about machines designed and built for a purpose because there is a financial incentive to do so.  Nothing more, nothing less.  These overly emotive pleas to define them as "parasites" are not productive avenues of discussion.

[aliashraf]

this topic never says "lets do something to block evolution of processing power out there", it is about "lets evolve bitcoin in a way that doesn't get hurt by evolution of processing power out there"..

Except that it does advocate suppressing the most efficient way to mine ...

Ok, it is getting really insane  
There is no "most efficient way to mine bitcoin" what the hell are you talking about?
Mining bitcoin is a social activity with a built-in regulatory mechanism that responds to game theoretic driving forces and has nothing to do with technology and efficiency. Is this that hard to understand?

To mine ~1.25 btc/minute the community needs to consume a specific amount of energy and other resources that their cost should fall in a threshold that the value of bitcoin is the main driving force behind it. It is absolutely irrelevant that the community uses penta hash/second magical devices with 0.0001 j/s efficiency or cpus 1 mh/s with 100 j/s efficiency. The whole mining process should burn resources that their cost is determined by the noble game theoretic approach built deeply in conceptual design of bitcoin and PoW. Understood or I have to use bigger fonts?

... and it would absolutely hurt Bitcoin if we ended up in a situation where some miners were stuck using inferior technology while others manage to obtain ASICs for whatever new algorithm was chosen.

And now you are back pedalling on the big lie about inevitability of ASICs. Of course one can conventionally call a gpu or even a cpu an ASIC. The thing is it is easily provable that there is no way to do what Bitmain did with SHA256 with ProgPow, they just failed to abandon Ethash gpu mining (a 5 years old technology) and it has been like a year since they proudly announced their Ethash asics. Bitmain ASICs retired gpus from mining bitcoin like in weeks. E3 is no more than 2-3 times efficient than an old generation (rx 470) gpu rig and a modern gpu almost beats it!

Please! You are legendary figure bro, stop shooting in your head by saying weird things just because you have chosen a weird position in a debate that you can't ever win.

[HeRetiK]

I don't think NVIDIA or AMD would ever be able to take advantage of their premier in gpu development to be used  in mining.

They have been profiting from the market ever since Bitcoin got GPU-mineable. There's simply no other game in town for GPU mining other than NVIDIA and AMD. In Bitcoin's late GPU-mining days it was even worse, with AMD's cards being the only option to mine profitably.

It is because gpu industry is not just like ASIC, new technology in gpu is very expensive and as a common practice people wait like months for cards to become more reasonably priced before installing them on their rigs. Most importantly, Game industry is just in its infancy and shows no sign to cool down, NVIDIA and AMD are dominant but not done with other competitors, most importantly Intel has every potential to kick in, not to mention ARM and others.

NVIDIA has utterly dominated the GPU market for more than 2 decades; they've essentially invented the market. AMD / ATI joined a bit later but is just as dominant. I wouldn't expect Intel or ARM to join the top ranks any time soon, especially since developing new GPUs is very expensive and requires a lot of expertise as you rightfully pointed out. Additionally NVIDIA has been only upping their game with their involvement in the development of autonomous cars.

(I personally wouldn't want to be the one buying a GPU that has been slaving away in a mining rig for months on end)

or you could buy them in half of the price (or less) and statistics show that the most problem with GPUs that has been in a mining rig is their MOSFET component that could get repaired with something around 30 USD.

Ooh that's neat. Wish I'd been aware of that sooner.

Looks like ASIC and non-ASIC discussion won't stop, but people should remember that it's easy to put backdoor on ASIC (such as antbleed) as it's closed source and allow government/actor to control PoW-based cryptocurrency easily.
Without ASIC which is fully open-source and have good efficiency, GPU is clearly superior in this case.

*cough cough* SPECTRE *cough cough* MELTDOWN *cough*

CPU and GPU architectures are closed source as well. GPU drivers mostly too. Heck we've had two critical CPU vulnerabilities just a year ago.

Not that it makes Antbleed any less bad. It's just that that's a general problem we are facing with hardware and drivers nowadays.

I guess there's a market for computational power outside of mining (cracking passwords? training neural networks?) but I doubt that it's mature or profitable beyond the occasional hobbyist.

The market is bigger than you think and there are more fields from astronomy to medical fields. But i doubt they'd buy second-hand GPU, only hobbyist or budget users who would buy second-hand GPU

I have no doubts that it's a huge market, but what good is a huge market if you can't make use of it? Can you profitably sell computational power (ie. as in a paid folding@home, not as in selling hardware)? Serious question btw. Apart from some half-baked ICOs obviously.

It's an incredibly interesting discussion and there's definitely a conflict of interest between ASIC manufacturers vs miners (ie. ASIC manufacturers being miners themselves) that doesn't doesn't apply to GPU manufacturers. Still I doubt that this problem is inherent to ASICs. Given a strong and stable enough market, GPU manufactures might just as well enter mining eventually (there's little risk to their core business after all, beyond the risk of mining). And the ASIC market might become more competitive and diverse in terms of available vendors.

Little risk? Both Nvidia and AMD suffering from overstock after various coins price crashed. They need to think ways to sold older GPU series while there's no way they delay their GPU launch.

I don't know about AMD, but Nvidia now focusing their product for gaming, deep learning & anything related with GPGPU. So i doubt GPU manufacture would enter mining unless party with power (government, banker, etc.) took interest with cryptocurrency or mining become popular again to the point where they'd take the risk again.

I doubt that NVIDIA and AMD suffered much. NVIDIA's cards simply went back to the price point that they were 2 years ago at time of the GTX10xx's series' release. Let that sink in. A whole generation of GPU's not getting cheaper for 2 friggin years. Not sure about AMD though, I didn't keep track of them as much.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that NVIDIA and AMD will start mining themselves anytime soon. But there's little stopping them from doing so if the market reaches a high enough level of maturity.

Also be aware that I don't think GPU mining is bad. I'd be very interested in seeing a GPU-mining based Bitcoin hard fork that isn't a mere cash grab. I'd just like to point out that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side.

[aliashraf]

Looks like ASIC and non-ASIC discussion won't stop, but people should remember that it's easy to put backdoor on ASIC (such as antbleed) as it's closed source and allow government/actor to control PoW-based cryptocurrency easily.
Without ASIC which is fully open-source and have good efficiency, GPU is clearly superior in this case.

*cough cough* SPECTRE *cough cough* MELTDOWN *cough*

CPU and GPU architectures are closed source as well. GPU drivers mostly too. Heck we've had two critical CPU vulnerabilities just a year ago.

Not that it makes Antbleed any less bad. It's just that that's a general problem we are facing with hardware and drivers nowadays.

Not comparable at all. A GPU/CPU manufacturer has no clue about the application you wish to run and has very little if not zero space to do anything bad against you as its customer.

What @ETFbitcoin is talking about is a hypothetical open-architecture miner like what in this forum has a history, a community miner, as I remember, I'm pretty sure @ETF is specially mentioning that project which never materialized anyway. He (she?) says only such a hypothetical ASIC may be considered more secure than cpu/gpu miners that are obviously closed architectures.

Also be aware that I don't think GPU mining is bad. I'd be very interested in seeing a GPU-mining based Bitcoin hard fork that isn't a mere cash grab. I'd just like to point out that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side.

Sure it is greener. Well not super green but much green.  
We do better with general purpose devices, not a heaven but more easier to live.

Opening a 10% segment of bitcoin market on gpus and leaving it unchanged for like a year and incrementally increasing this share in next 2 years, all prescheduled, would help gpu industry to adopt and be prepared and let ASIC manufacturers to find a way out of their scammy business too. Mining crypto is an industry and industries come with hurdles and difficulties, no doubts, but it is ways important to keep things as transparent and fair as possible.

[mixoftix]

If you want to try to build a new coin using the 'honour system', where you trust participants to agree not to use the most efficient means of mining it, then by all means go for it, but in my view that's weak and I won't support it in Bitcoin.

You know, I am working on a new consensus model "PoCo" that works with PoW in its first layer but is also neutral against processing power. What we are doing here in this post is about sharing our latest knowledge and forecasts about the future of crypto and bitcoin, then everybody could make the best decision that better suits them. nothing weird is going to happen.

Say what you like about ASICs, but any manufacturer can make them for SHA256, so no one company can gain a major advantage now.  You would also likely bring more financial harm upon Bitmain's competitors than you would Bitmain if you pressed the reset button and undid all their research and development before they can achieve return on investment.

Bitmain company is not my problem. ASICs (or any other processing devices that can do nothing but calculate one thing in one way) are my problem.

It's not remotely the simple change you describe.  There are real and tangible consequences.

True. I prefer to read more about these consequences. as I said above, these all are about sharing forecast to better understand the upcoming trends in crypto-world.

Perhaps we need to stop anthropomorphising hardware here.  We're talking about machines designed and built for a purpose because there is a financial incentive to do so.  Nothing more, nothing less.  These overly emotive pleas to define them as "parasites" are not productive avenues of discussion.

these analogies are necessary for "SYSTEM DESIGN", but the most close machinery example here could come from inverted pendulum.. systems behind inverted pendulums are dramatically similar to consensus algorithms of cryptos. and please don't worry about using the word "parasites" here. I already have a plenty of these hardwares in my lab. this is a scientific chat.

[DooMAD]

this topic never says "lets do something to block evolution of processing power out there", it is about "lets evolve bitcoin in a way that doesn't get hurt by evolution of processing power out there"..

Except that it does advocate suppressing the most efficient way to mine ...

Ok, it is getting really insane  
There is no "most efficient way to mine bitcoin" what the hell are you talking about?

Reality.  Name something more efficient than an ASIC that you can use right now, at this very moment, to mine Bitcoin.    

Mining bitcoin is a social activity with a built-in regulatory mechanism that responds to game theoretic driving forces and has nothing to do with technology and efficiency. Is this that hard to understand?

To mine ~1.25 btc/minute the community needs to consume a specific amount of energy and other resources that their cost should fall in a threshold that the value of bitcoin is the main driving force behind it. It is absolutely irrelevant that the community uses penta hash/second magical devices with 0.0001 j/s efficiency or cpus 1 mh/s with 100 j/s efficiency. The whole mining process should burn resources that their cost is determined by the noble game theoretic approach built deeply in conceptual design of bitcoin and PoW. Understood or I have to use bigger fonts?

Now that you mention it, I would love for you to draw more attention to your irrationality and faulty reasoning with a larger font.  Go nuts.  I'm particularly fond of the "magical devices" bit.  Let's hear more of that.

... and it would absolutely hurt Bitcoin if we ended up in a situation where some miners were stuck using inferior technology while others manage to obtain ASICs for whatever new algorithm was chosen.

And now you are back pedalling on the big lie about inevitability of ASICs.

That or your reading comprehension needs some work.  ASICs are inevitable.  My point was that it's unlikely all manufacturers would manage to release them at the same time for a new algorithm.  The company with the most income to invest would likely get there first.  Your proposed actions would open the door to the potential of one manufacturer gaining an advantage over the others for an unknown period of time.  We've clearly moved beyond that stage in SHA256, where anyone can manufacture an ASIC for it now.  So why turn back the clock by choice and take the chance of creating a larger imbalance than the one we moved past ages ago?  It's a baffling stance.  

If the cost/reward ratio works out, no matter how much ingenuity a given algorithm has, a static obstacle invites progressively advancing ingenuity to overcome it.  The static obstacle is unable to adapt to the efforts of the person or group attempting to overcome the obstacle, allowing ample time to probe for weaknesses and workarounds.  Ergo, it doesn't matter how good someone is at designing a puzzle, more often than not, they tend to be solved given time.

Of course one can conventionally call a gpu or even a cpu an ASIC. The thing is it is easily provable that there is no way to do what Bitmain did with SHA256 with ProgPow, they just failed to abandon Ethash gpu mining (a 5 years old technology) and it has been like a year since they proudly announced their Ethash asics. Bitmain ASICs retired gpus from mining bitcoin like in weeks. E3 is no more than 2-3 times efficient than an old generation (rx 470) gpu rig and a modern gpu almost beats it!

And you're willing to reassure the entire world that no matter how much time, money and research Bitmain, or any other manufacturer, put into development, they won't achieve anything more than 2-3 times efficiency?  Bold claim.  However, bold claims are not nearly sufficient to sway my view on this.  

What's IfDefElse's budget on ProgPow, out of curiosity?  How many people are working full time on it?  And for how long?  Can they dedicate more time, money and research into creating it than hardware manufacturers can into "cracking" it?  What information can you give us that might bolster your stance and convince us that your proposed action will actually be worth the considerable upheaval?

If you want to try to build a new coin using the 'honour system', where you trust participants to agree not to use the most efficient means of mining it, then by all means go for it, but in my view that's weak and I won't support it in Bitcoin.

You know, I am working on a new consensus model "PoCo" that works with PoW in its first layer but is also neutral against processing power. What we are doing here in this post is about sharing our latest knowledge and forecasts about the future of crypto and bitcoin, then everybody could make the best decision that better suits them. nothing weird is going to happen.

Call me paranoid, but if there's going to be any talk of a new algorithm or consensus mechanism, I'd personally rather see something battle-hardened and not some new and experimental idea fresh from the drawing board.  Kudos for your efforts and all, I certainly don't mean to diminish your work in any way, but the security of the Bitcoin network is hugely important.  Obviously I can't speak for everyone but, for me at least, security easily takes precedence over some vague idealism about how ASICs are considered by some to be a problem.

[aliashraf]

this topic never says "lets do something to block evolution of processing power out there", it is about "lets evolve bitcoin in a way that doesn't get hurt by evolution of processing power out there"..

Except that it does advocate suppressing the most efficient way to mine ...

Ok, it is getting really insane  
There is no "most efficient way to mine bitcoin" what the hell are you talking about?

Reality.  Name something more efficient than an ASIC that you can use right now, at this very moment, to mine Bitcoin.    

Mining bitcoin is a social activity with a built-in regulatory mechanism that responds to game theoretic driving forces and has nothing to do with technology and efficiency. Is this that hard to understand?

To mine ~1.25 btc/minute the community needs to consume a specific amount of energy and other resources that their cost should fall in a threshold that the value of bitcoin is the main driving force behind it. It is absolutely irrelevant that the community uses penta hash/second magical devices with 0.0001 j/s efficiency or cpus 1 mh/s with 100 j/s efficiency. The whole mining process should burn resources that their cost is determined by the noble game theoretic approach built deeply in conceptual design of bitcoin and PoW. Understood or I have to use bigger fonts?

Now that you mention it, I would love for you to draw more attention to your irrationality and faulty reasoning with a larger font.  Go nuts.  I'm particularly fond of the "magical devices" bit.  Let's hear more of that.

OK then. This is how you want to play, I'm in:

Suppose we have this game X and it has rules:
1- In each round, you can join by burning any amount of electricity that you can ever afford paying its bill.
2- When a sum of specific amount D of electricity is consumed by all players, points will be calculated for each player proportional to his burnt electricity.
3- At the end of the day, points are calculated and players are paid by some coupons.
4- Total coupons paid in each round is fixed. like eternally.
6- If coupons happened to become more popular and valuable more players may join and vice versa.
7- After each n rounds host decides about D as the needed total sum of electricity burnt.
8- The electricity you and other players burn have absolutely no use case just a waste.

Now a fraud comes to you
The fraud: Hey  I got some device that you can use more efficiently.
You: But efficiency is not a concern in our game, just a waste of electricity that the counter shows.
The fraud: I know, I know, it is actually about kinda cheating, I've built this device that its counter shows like 100 times more waste of electricity, isn't it great?
You: Why don't you use it for your own benefit?
The fraud: Sure I do, actually I've been using it for a while, and now I'm selling it to you to make even more money out of it, capitalism it is, you know
You: I knew it, recently I'm not happy with my profit rate ... so you are now selling your cheating device to me?
The fraud: Yes.
You:To me and and other guys as well?
The fraud: Sure you and other guys!
You: But then the host would assume more players has joined and increases D, wouldn't he?
The fraud: Sure he would! But no worries, I'm working on a more advanced cheating device, it manipulates counter even more like 300 times, I'll sell it eventually to you.
You: Me and other guys?
The fraud: You are asking too much questions, who are you a communist? it is capitalism told you before, you want it or not a lot of people have bought it and many others have ordered it ... buy or back-off!

Does it sound familiar  

I just don't believe you are so naive not to understand it already, unless it is because you talk too much and don't read enough and now you are trapped bad. Aren't you?

And you're willing to reassure the entire world that no matter how much time, money and research Bitmain, or any other manufacturer, put into development, they won't achieve anything more than 2-3 times efficiency?  Bold claim.  However, bold claims are not nearly sufficient to sway my view on this.

Sure I'm. ProgPow is an enhanced version of Ethash ways more specialized and improved to resist optimization and your giant corporate and its army of researchers and millions of budgets have not done better than 2x improvement against Ethash. ProgPow is provably unfeasible to be improved more than 1.2x.

What's IfDefElse's budget on ProgPow, out of curiosity?  How many people are working full time on it?  And for how long?  Can they dedicate more time, money and research into creating it than hardware manufacturers can into "cracking" it?  What information can you give us that might bolster your stance and convince us that your proposed action will actually be worth the considerable upheaval?

Are you sure about here, a bitcoin discussion forum, being the right place for you? Not everything is achievable by money dude, why are you so confused? Are you a noob?

I can write down just 100 lines of encryption code that neither Bitmain nor NSA would be able to dream about breaking it, what's wrong with you?

[DooMAD]

OK then. This is how you want to play, I'm in:

Suppose we have this game X and it has rules:

<snip>

Does it sound familiar  

What sounds familiar is that you didn't answer the question.  I'll repeat it:  

Name something more efficient than an ASIC that you can use right now, at this very moment, to mine Bitcoin.

And you're willing to reassure the entire world that no matter how much time, money and research Bitmain, or any other manufacturer, put into development, they won't achieve anything more than 2-3 times efficiency?  Bold claim.  However, bold claims are not nearly sufficient to sway my view on this.

Sure I'm. ProgPow is an enhanced version of Ethash ways more specialized and improved to resist optimization and your giant corporate and its army of researchers and millions of budgets have not done better than 2x improvement against Ethash. ProgPow is provably unfeasible to be improved more than 1.2x.

"Provably unfeasible", eh?  Well that certainly sounds impressive.  But I could have sworn IfDefElse themselves described those figures as "estimates".  Are we deeming estimates valid as proof now?  Is that how this works?

They also state this assumes no one makes an ASIC with High Bandwidth Memory when the cost for that comes down over time.  In which case, they concede x4 against Ethash and x1.5 against ProgPow.  Not exactly what I'd call comfortable margins.  And this is just the technology they can foresee.  Perhaps when ProgPow has been around for as long as Ethash, it'll be more like x4 for that too.  There are any number of variables in this that can't be predicted.  As such, I don't think there are many things regarding the future that are "provably unfeasible".  It's more of a "wait and see" kind of deal.

What's IfDefElse's budget on ProgPow, out of curiosity?  How many people are working full time on it?  And for how long?  Can they dedicate more time, money and research into creating it than hardware manufacturers can into "cracking" it?  What information can you give us that might bolster your stance and convince us that your proposed action will actually be worth the considerable upheaval?

Are you sure about here, a bitcoin discussion forum, being the right place for you? Not everything is achievable by money dude, why are you so confused? Are you a noob?

So in other words, you don't have anything else to reassure us with?  Got it.

I can right just 100 lines of encryption code that neither Bitmain nor NSA would be able to dream about breaking it, what's wrong with you?

ASICs are not breaking encryption code.  I thought we had established this already.  What's wrong with you?  

[AGD]

ASIC's are just a logical step in Bitcoins evolution

we could consider self-driven cars as an evolution for man-driven cars. vehicle detector cameras could also consider as an evolution for classic speed cameras. but my friend, how could we consider vehicle detector cameras as an evolution of cars at all? a camera is an environmental threat (or opportunity) that is growing out there - out of control of car manufacturers.. now if you drive faster than declared speed limit in a road (do not regulate yourself and improve your driving algorithms), then you will penalize by the speed camera (a consensus fork happens).

ASIC technology always exists and grows out there - out of control of bitcoin. if you want to talk about the evolution of bitcoin, you need to bring a new idea as a BIP. bitcoin is just an algorithm. BTW, evolution is not only about survival, it is also about perish and letting others survive..

Reminder:

"it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself -- Professor Darwin"

UPDATE:

Plus proposals to hard fork to disable ASICs will never gain wide consensus from the community. Never.

it is alright. this is enough for everybody to know the truth that the PoW will die when Moore's law dies. accepting a problem is the first step for providing a solution.

Your car/camera analogy makes absolutely no sense.
You need to understand, that people who are able to make money simply by running a computer, will always try to optimize their ROI. Means, that coders always will optimize mining code and their hardware (i.e. CPU-->GPU-->FGPA-->ASIC-->Asicboost...) to raise their ROI. Bitcoin has raised enough attention, that even computer hardware companies jumped on the crypto train (the good old gold rush/shovel supplier analogy).
There are yet ASIC resistant coins out there, but if their value raises enough to make it worth to develop an ASIC, it will be done.

[mixoftix]

Call me paranoid, but if there's going to be any talk of a new algorithm or consensus mechanism, I'd personally rather see something battle-hardened and not some new and experimental idea fresh from the drawing board.  Kudos for your efforts and all, I certainly don't mean to diminish your work in any way, but the security of the Bitcoin network is hugely important.  Obviously I can't speak for everyone but, for me at least, security easily takes precedence over some vague idealism about how ASICs are considered by some to be a problem.

of course you are not paranoid. I personally support both approaches: 1- upgraded 2- brand new work flows, with different forks. each technology could best serve us in specific duration of their life cycle and R&D entities should provide better solutions anytime.

Your car/camera analogy makes absolutely no sense.
You need to understand, that people who are able to make money simply by running a computer, will always try to optimize their ROI. Means, that coders always will optimize mining code and their hardware (i.e. CPU-->GPU-->FGPA-->ASIC-->Asicboost...) to raise their ROI. Bitcoin has raised enough attention, that even computer hardware companies jumped on the crypto train (the good old gold rush/shovel supplier analogy).
There are yet ASIC resistant coins out there, but if their value raises enough to make it worth to develop an ASIC, it will be done.

with this method you can't even explain why coins with PoS consensus model still exist and grow in the market. in the field of PoW, we could see how Monero constantly blocks ASICs and its price remains unchanged. We could also see how Electroneaum followed Monero and blocked ASICs, but after drop in market got back to ASIC-Friendly algorithm again and this time their price in market dropped even more. We could see how market responses to Ethereaum these days. in all these examples I could see ASICs are somehow out of equation of pricing - except the recent 51% attack on ETC that ASICs were actively involved and the whole market has taken effect from.

when price of a coin is high enough to reward ASIC miners, they mine properly, but when they do not benefit from regular mining, they decide to become the majority and attack the network and this time benefit based on double-spending and then extortion. this is another way to OPTIMIZE mining:

the inversion of incentives for miners of ETC:

block interval= 10 second
block reward= 4 ETC (20$)
blocks (last 24h)= 6,108

block reward (last 24h) = 24,432+24.45+34.13+34.13 ETC ($105,506.96 USD)
stolen amount (less than 24h) = $1.1 million worth of the currency

now to fill the gap of block rewards and stolen amount ($1 million), ETC is rewarding (/ higher fee amount) each block with something around 200 coins [1] per block!! I call this hostage situation as extortion-after-51%-attack. this is not security.

[1] https://www.trustnodes.com/2019/01/13/etc-block-rewards-go-crazy


UPDATE:

please read this carefully. the problem with ASICs is they can't go anywhere else to mine. once they can not gain enough benefit, they decide to attack for ROI. but if we only get GPUs in the ecosystem, they could simply switch to other coins for more benefit. this changes the way miners proceed for optimize mining.

[AGD]

Call me paranoid, but if there's going to be any talk of a new algorithm or consensus mechanism, I'd personally rather see something battle-hardened and not some new and experimental idea fresh from the drawing board.  Kudos for your efforts and all, I certainly don't mean to diminish your work in any way, but the security of the Bitcoin network is hugely important.  Obviously I can't speak for everyone but, for me at least, security easily takes precedence over some vague idealism about how ASICs are considered by some to be a problem.

of course you are not paranoid. I personally support both approaches: 1- upgraded 2- brand new work flows, with different forks. each technology could best serve us in specific duration of their life cycle and R&D entities should provide better solutions anytime.

Your car/camera analogy makes absolutely no sense.
You need to understand, that people who are able to make money simply by running a computer, will always try to optimize their ROI. Means, that coders always will optimize mining code and their hardware (i.e. CPU-->GPU-->FGPA-->ASIC-->Asicboost...) to raise their ROI. Bitcoin has raised enough attention, that even computer hardware companies jumped on the crypto train (the good old gold rush/shovel supplier analogy).
There are yet ASIC resistant coins out there, but if their value raises enough to make it worth to develop an ASIC, it will be done.

with this method you can't even explain why coins with PoS consensus model still exist and grow in the market. in the field of PoW, we could see how Monero constantly blocks ASICs and its price remains unchanged. We could also see how Electroneaum followed Monero and blocked ASICs, but after drop in market got back to ASIC-Friendly algorithm again and this time their price in market dropped even more. We could see how market responses to Ethereaum these days. in all these examples I could see ASICs are somehow out of equation of pricing - except the recent 51% attack on ETC that ASICs were actively involved and the whole market has taken effect from.

when price of a coin is high enough to reward ASIC miners, they mine properly, but when they do not benefit from regular mining, they decide to become the majority and attack the network and this time benefit based on double-spending and then extortion. this is another way to OPTIMIZE mining:

the inversion of incentives for miners of ETC:

block interval= 10 second
block reward= 4 ETC (20$)
blocks (last 24h)= 6,108

block reward (last 24h) = 24,432+24.45+34.13+34.13 ETC ($105,506.96 USD)
stolen amount (less than 24h) = $1.1 million worth of the currency

now to fill the gap of block rewards and stolen amount ($1 million), ETC is rewarding (/ higher fee amount) each block with something around 200 coins [1] per block!! I call this hostage situation as extortion-after-51%-attack. this is not security.

[1] https://www.trustnodes.com/2019/01/13/etc-block-rewards-go-crazy


UPDATE:

please read this carefully. the problem with ASICs is they can't go anywhere else to mine. once they can not gain enough benefit, they decide to attack for ROI. but if we only get GPUs in the ecosystem, they could simply switch to other coins for more benefit. this changes the way miners proceed for optimize mining.

There is no need to complicate things as you are trying to do obv. Let's short it all up to one word: Greed

Edit: I see, maybe this was a little too short.
If there was no greed in the game, Bitcoin people would have accepted CPU mining with the integrated miner as the only method. No one would have written optimized mining code and no one would have developed FGPA or GPU mining. But, as the world go round, people like to have an advantage over other miners. This goes on and on from one step to the next.
There is a lot of information about why Satoshi and the core devs have chosen PoW as their prefered method, so I'll leave that for your own research.
Now what happened with Altcoins is a different story, because they all are based on the Bitcoin idea. People found out how easy it was to create a new coin just by changing a few lines of code and give it new name. Some of the coins even presented some innovations and some of them also have their use cases, but still they are nothing more than a copy of the original idea because of greed.

Bitcoin works fine as it is and still it is in a process of changing with time. It has proven to be resistant against a lot of types of attacks until now and if it fails, there are thousands of Shitcoins waiting to dethrone the King and to prove they can keep their method on a large scale, which I doubt.

Edit 2: https://mapofcoins.com/bitcoin
Edit 3: https://www.coursera.org/lecture/cryptocurrency/short-history-of-altcoins-nyp82

[mixoftix]

There is no need to complicate things as you are trying to do obv. Let's short it all up to one word: Greed

the word "Greed" is just part of the problem and ends with something like ETC, my friend. please give us a solution with one word..

[AGD]

There is no need to complicate things as you are trying to do obv. Let's short it all up to one word: Greed

the word "Greed" is just part of the problem and ends with something like ETC, my friend. please give us a solution with one word..

See my edit.

[aliashraf]

@AGD, @Doomad
Guys, enough is enough. Although it is not a self-moderated shitty thread, as the op I do have some voice here, not a loud one but it deserves to be heard

1- You have made your point about ASICs being kinda progress an act of free market (I suppose), thank you. But this claims are strongly refuted above-thread. There is no progress, bitcoin is not about efficiency in solving a processing task. On the contrary bitcoin loves deficiency and deliberately makes the problem more difficult when someone finds out a way to solve it by a more efficient device. So, bitcoin is not an ordinary computing application and does not encourage progress.

2- Your points about competition, greed, ... is correct but not relevant enough. Bitcoin is about managing such instincts by means of a protocol and when the protocol fails to accomplish its job it should be improved instead of justification and making excuses about how hard it would be because of human nature.

3-Your claims regarding ASICs being the king is absolutely void and nothing worthier than Bitmain commercial advertisements and worse I would categorize it as FUD. We have Ethash on the scene that has mined billions of dollars in last couple of years and despite huge investments, Bitmain couldn't manage to beat it by its luxury ASIC and now we have ProgPoW that is a hardened version of Ethash ways more resistant and practically ASIC/bullet proof.

So, please put an end to such arguments and inform us about any other point you possibly got.

[Wind_FURY]

UPDATE:

Plus proposals to hard fork to disable ASICs will never gain wide consensus from the community. Never.

it is alright. this is enough for everybody to know the truth that the PoW will die when Moore's law dies. accepting a problem is the first step for providing a solution.

What? I believe that Moore's Law's "death" doesn't have anything to do with Proof of Work. I might have misunderstood, because if ASICs or GPUs have reached the most density, and efficiency for the most processing power it can make, how does it kill POW? Mining will not stop.