Change Bitcoin to Asic Resistant

[lepar]

What are your opinions on whether bitcoins mining algorithm should change to an asic resistant algorithm?

Based on Bitcoins principle to be a decentralized currency, shouldn't this be adopted?
It's only viable to mine bitcoin with asic hardware and that's kinda centralized with whoever
has more money to invest in these machines.

It's very close to PoS because both you would need alot of cash to participate and that goes
against the the principle of decentralization because on both algorithms, only the rich can
join the network. That creates a door for centralization.
Yes yes I know that not one entity can control it but if the 3 largest pools decide to act against it,
they can.
According to https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/pools/, BTC.com, AntPool and ViaBTC
control 52.4%. That's only 3 pools that could control the network.
Obviously if they did this and it was discovered, the price would go way down so it is against their
interest.
But this is crazy, only 3 "companies" could take control of the network, that's against a liquid democracy
and certainly doesn't favor everyone to participate as a node.

I searched for this topic but couldn't find anything related on google nor on the forums.

What are your thoughts on this?

[Mr.Ease]

Na. Im pretty comfortable with the environmental destruction bitcoin is producing.

Anyways. I thought that was a future planned fork. Maybe not asic resistant but atleast not so power hungry.

[Nalbo]

I think it's too late. We've turned bitcoin mining to an industry and we are very much depended on the miner that users can't do anything about bitcoin. Bitcoin has turned into a miner's coin.
I'm not complaining about the miners, they have done a great job bringing bitcoin here. Always worked for the collective good of the community. Yet, too much centralized mining could bring up problems in the future.

[DooMAD]

"ASIC Resistance" is generally misconstrued.  People seem to think that you can make a single change one time and then the problem is magically solved forever.  It doesn't work like that.  Once the new algorithm is set, people can begin designing hardware specifically tailored to that algorithm.  The only way to truly make something resistant to ASICs is to continually change it in an unpredictable way.  But it's problematic to make changes to a protocol when the vast majority of participants have to agree with the change in order to enact it.  And people are particularly hesitant to change something that would have a direct impact on Bitcoin's security.

Ultimately, making changes in such a crucially important area, frequently enough to stay one step ahead of ASIC manufacturers, is unlikely at best.

[rdluffy]

I don't like this side of BTC
The BTC is decentralized, of course, but the generation of BTC is NOT, we all know about a giant company and the owner of this company who have a LOT of power over cryptos, and this is not good, they did a lot of bad practices and the customers continue to buy stuff from him

I really dream about a future where BTC can be mined on CPUs and GPUs again, and this is not so hard as a lot of people think, we have altcoins working against Asics, and BTC can include in the algo easily

[100bitcoin]

There are already 2 ASIC resistant forks of Bitcoin, namely Bitcoin Gold aka BTG and Bitcoin Diamond aka BCD. So, instead of changing Bitcoin to Asic Resistant, it is better to change your BTC holding to BTG & BCD.

[DooMAD]

So, instead of changing Bitcoin to Asic Resistant, it is better to change your BTC holding to BTG & BCD.

What kind of atrocious advice is this?  BTG has already suffered a successful hashrate and double-spend attack because their hashing power is far more centralised than BTC's.  Hence my earlier comment on how changing algorithms has a direct impact on the security of the network.  It creates power vacuums that are very easily filled by malicious users.

BTG?  More like BTGTFO.  

[subSTRATA]

There are already 2 ASIC resistant forks of Bitcoin, namely Bitcoin Gold aka BTG and Bitcoin Diamond aka BCD. So, instead of changing Bitcoin to Asic Resistant, it is better to change your BTC holding to BTG & BCD.

bitcoin gold the fork that was 51% attacked quite successfully? yeah how about not.

Yes yes I know that not one entity can control it but if the 3 largest pools decide to act against it,
they can.

except these are just pools, and the pools do not control the miners and where those miners point their hashing power to. if the pools did decide to band together (which i personally think is extremely unlikely) and launch a coordinated attack on the network, the miners can choose to stop pointing their miners to the pool. The way you try to explain to this is only a half truth, in reality it's a lot more decentralized than you're trying to make it seem.

[pooya87]

first of all there is absolutely nothing wrong with being ASIC mineable. if you are unhappy about how hashrate distribution is then start investing your money and own hashrate to mine bitcoin and help it become more decentralized than it is right now.

secondly there is no such thing as ASIC resistance. somewhere in 2011 when LTC forked as "ASIC resistance" with its scrypt algorithm, everyone has been coming up with other algorithms and have been claiming to be "ASIC resistance" and none of them has ever been capable of reaching that.
apart from that, the problem that you are referring to as "ASIC resistance" has nothing to do with ASICs, it is about centralization that is caused by some parties having invested more money and having higher hashrate. no matter what algorithm you mine the coin with, the same parties can invest more money and gain the same control (that includes PoS coins too)

and finally despite  what the advertisement of altcoins tells you most of the alternative algorithms are so much inferior to PoW that bitcoin is using whether by design or by security flaws or financial design.

[jseverson]

I searched for this topic but couldn't find anything related on google nor on the forums.

Here's a good detailed read for you:

There are two problems with anti-ASIC hard forks.  The first is with ASIC resistance itself; in recent work actually analyzing the dollar cost to attack both Ethereum and Bitcoin, it’s quite apparent that ASICs are actually a good thing for the security of a cryptocurrency system (extended abstract / full paper).  General purpose computer-secured systems are quite cheaper to attack than specialized systems, as general purpose hardware can be rented and resold after an attack to substantially subsidize attack cost.  Worse still, an attacker can use general purpose hardware advantages to overwhelm any cryptocurrency seeking to avoid specialization by carrying attacks across PoW changing / defensive forks, a feature which is not possible with ASICs, where the community has a “nuclear option” available to disable miners at any time if objectively malicious behavior is detected.  These two factors combined severely cripple the economic security of networks secured by general purpose hardware.

The second problem with anti-ASIC hard forks is in the culture established itself; discouraging capital investment in the short term, and a governance process of repeated change create potent vectors for disruption, attack, and takeover, without accomplishing the stated goals of preserving decentralization in the long term.  In my opinion this will eventually lead to more centralization, as only the most sophisticated and dedicated companies are able to ride the waves of change and extract profits at scale.

Wherever you may stand on the matter though, it should generally be agreed upon that "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" is a good saying to stand upon, especially on matters of massive scale like Bitcoin.

[Kakmakr]

How do you make a protocol 100% Asic resistance? The Chinese engineers will eventually find a way to bypass these restrictions and they will just develop something that would exploit some loophole in the code and then monopolize the whole mining section. 

In any way, most people will resort to GPU mining and the GPU manufacturers will develop multi core GPUs that would be specifically targeted at Bitcoin mining. The demand for these cards will increase and it would become prohibitively expensive to buy these cards. 

The guy with the most money, win again. 

[100bitcoin]

So, instead of changing Bitcoin to Asic Resistant, it is better to change your BTC holding to BTG & BCD.

What kind of atrocious advice is this?  BTG has already suffered a successful hashrate and double-spend attack because their hashing power is far more centralised than BTC's.  Hence my earlier comment on how changing algorithms has a direct impact on the security of the network.  It creates power vacuums that are very easily filled by malicious users.

BTG?  More like BTGTFO.  

There are already 2 ASIC resistant forks of Bitcoin, namely Bitcoin Gold aka BTG and Bitcoin Diamond aka BCD. So, instead of changing Bitcoin to Asic Resistant, it is better to change your BTC holding to BTG & BCD.

bitcoin gold the fork that was 51% attacked quite successfully? yeah how about not.

Both of you probably missed the subtle satire in my post. It definitely was not an advice. But, if someone proposes to change the Bitcoin protocol to be ASIC resistant, then they will be better off by converting their own BTC holding to BTG or BCD.

[Jet Cash]

How about freezing the difficulty once the block rewards have finished. This could lead to the block generation time being linked to transaction volumes and fee rewards. This could also help with scaling.

[subSTRATA]

Both of you probably missed the subtle satire in my post. It definitely was not an advice. But, if someone proposes to change the Bitcoin protocol to be ASIC resistant, then they will be better off by converting their own BTC holding to BTG or BCD.

it is incredibly difficult to convey a satirical message in text without making it incredibly obvious. it's pretty easy to miss to be fair. however, there's no basis for converting bitcoin holdings to its altcoin forks in the hypothetical scenario, nor have you provided any explanation for your thought process. care to explain?

How about freezing the difficulty once the block rewards have finished. This could lead to the block generation time being linked to transaction volumes and fee rewards. This could also help with scaling.

an interesting idea, but personally, I think there has to be some correlation between the difficulty and the network's total hash rate; as long as there is a reasonable amount to be made from mining blocks, people will keep buying miners to increase their odds of mining a block / their share form the pool. if we end up basing the difficulty purely off other variables (tx volume + fees in this case) we might end up with an incredibly disproportionate difficulty and drastic changes to the bitcoin network.

[dothebeats]

It's not like major changes could and would happen overnight, and if such an idea be proposed, you know that it will ultimately be the miner's choice on where would this network move to, so it's a dire effort all in all. Also, the network is heavily dependent from ASICs for processing everything, and while that may seem to be implying something negative, it has well protected the integrity of bitcoin transactions for the past 10 years, and is not, in any way, prone to any 51% attack that could potentially destroy bitcoin (hi bitcoin gold), not unless miners banded together and decide to screw it up--which they will not do as it will only cost them money in the long run.

[ene1980]

But all you will get back from the community is nonsense that Bitcoin is most secure due to it's energy waste,
which we both know is incorrect , as a few pool operators could double-spend on a whim, regardless of energy expended.

Good Luck , but don't be surprised when the bitcoin maximalist all deny the reality in front of them.  

Are you telling that these pool operators will kill the golden goose, not everyone will be that stupid as they have invested millions for mining and their aim is to make profit and we have ten years of history now with bitcoin can you showcase one instance that the pools did anything of that sort to jeopardize the entire network. I am sure you will not have an answer for that  .

What are your opinions on whether bitcoins mining algorithm should change to an asic resistant algorithm?
Based on Bitcoins principle to be a decentralized currency, shouldn't this be adopted?
It's only viable to mine bitcoin with asic hardware and that's kinda centralized with whoever
has more money to invest in these machines.

Not everyone needs to mine bitcoin to be a decentralized currency, equality is not attained everywhere in society and that is how it functions, so the idea of everyone running a node in their basement is a joke, if you are willing to support the network spend some dime to do so rather than having a complete change in the process.

[NeuroticFish]

"If it's not broken, don't fix it."

I see lately the revival of the old proposals: "ASIC resistant Bitcoin" and "PoS Bitcoin".
I don't know why people think that such changes would be good, really. It would anger the miners. It would clearly create a ETH/ETC like "war", where, because of the bigger security of the network and the similarity to Satoshi's proposal, the ASIC-PoW fork will become (actually remain!) the true Bitcoin, while these proposal will become altcoins.
And I think that there are such forks already - at least for ASIC resistance - proving that the idea is not viable.

Also, as said, ASIC resistance is achieved by constantly changing the algo, like Monero does. Just Monero's anonymous nature may help a little with that; on transparent blockchains such changes may be the recipe for disaster.

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

While I agree the electrical use of the bitcoin network is something to be concerned about I doubt anyone is keen on changing from ASIC.
I do think more effort is needed to ensure bitcoin is not a massive pollution source better machine with more efficiency are what is required but this may take another 10 years to reach where we need to be.

Another effort I feel is missed out on in bitcoin is Green energy.



The African nations really could be green-energy-zones of the world but we all know that fossil fuel company's won't let there grip go of the industry why is bitcoin not aiming to make the sun power the network I know there has been much good work done by some members of the forum in this regard but there is wind power and wave power that is yet to be fully tapped or the potential for the use of them in bitcoin is massive.

[pooya87]

How about freezing the difficulty once the block rewards have finished. This could lead to the block generation time being linked to transaction volumes and fee rewards. This could also help with scaling.

you mean "remove" difficulty entirely and that would require a ton of fundamental changes to the protocol to achieve that and somehow link block generation time with transaction volume. otherwise if you "freeze" the difficulty number to some fixed amount you are practically assuming hashrate is never going to change again and if it does, everything would be ruined!

[Pursuer]

According to https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/pools/, BTC.com, AntPool and ViaBTC
control 52.4%. That's only 3 pools that could control the network.

those are "pools" not miners so they don't exactly control the mining power and the network. the minute they start showing any shadiness miners are going to pull their hashrate from their pool and move it to another place. not to mention that it can have legal precautions for them.

as for the topic of ASIC resistance, go ahead and introduce another algorithm that is superior to bitcoin's PoW first and then talk about changing to that. but as long as you don't have that algorithm, discussion about such change is moot.