Let’s talk about ASIC mining

those are the only arguments put by zooko , I dont see others putting any additional arguments.
it will be more helpful if any one would put the pro arguments in a list .

I will give it a rest when people like yourself give it a rest. I would not have said another thing if someone (like yourself) had not said something else about me, such as, “…give it a rest.” If you and/or anyone else would simply “rest” from responses to me such as this, THEN I’ll give it a “rest.”

I have just as much right to defend myself against accusations as you or anyone else.

This is a very important point, that is not being discussed enough!!

Task specific and specialized hardware AKA ASIC’s, can very easily be regulated simply by placing them on a restricted and or regulated technology list, like International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), or an environmental regulation list. How about a large Carbon tax imposed on ASIC’s miners?

But wait! You say, cryptocurrency is not a weapon! Well neither are most ITAR controlled technologies. They are classified as “Dual Use”. So it does not need to be a weapon, it just need to be a security threat or could be used in a way that is. I don’t think I even need to make the environmental argument, everyone here should already know that ASIC’s are raising serious environmental concerns (correct or not, it does not matter, the deck is staked). Making the environmental argument stick will become even easier if multiple cryptos start going ASIC friendly.

China and India are already regulating Bitmain ASIC technology. Why do you think Bitmain moved to Switzerland and is also opening shop in Washington State in the US?

Zooko’s Zcash only ASIC is the worst of all. If all an ASIC can do is mine Zcash, and Zcash needs to be controlled, or is seen as a threat to the financial industry, or the environment. Then the ASIC will simply become regulated, no economic consequences, does not prevent innovation in any field, just imposes strict control on Zcash. Zooko just handed absolute centralized control over on a silver platter.

However, regulating general purpose hardware that has multiple uses in multiple industries is nearly impossible without severe economic consequences and crippling the innovation in those industries (AKA GPU & CPU). Who thinks any World Gov would risk their AI industry just to regulate crypto? Its much harder to regulate something that is a core technology in multiple fields, representing trillions of dollars in GDP.

ASIC’s In their current form can be regulated and can quickly lead to centralization. Until I can 3D print or otherwise fab an ASIC in my garage then it does not matter if its open source or not. I still don’t have open access to the ASIC, it can be regulated, game over.

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I have no problem with this PROVIDING the components/hardware required to do so is easily accessible to the average joy (like myself) and easy to build. If it’s something that requires a lot of soldering, that’s simply allowing BIG guys to come in (including BITMAIN) to make these to benefit themselves while squeezing out the small guy, like myself.

My farm is rather large (From home mining standards) at 400 Amps. I’m hoping to get to 600 or 800 Amp service in an external two story (16 feet x 32 feet) structure behind my house around this time next year. What you’re talking about could potentially squeeze out someone like myself if what was required for this idea of a new mining rig specifically for ZCash required a lot of soldering of components to get it done.

It would simply create more big guys while squeezing out small guys. Which means longer time frame for adoption of ZCash. Most adopters (at this point in time) is by miners. If most of them are squeezed out, there will be less adoption. That’s my opinion…

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There are companies in most developed countries doing board integration (you can hire them, it creates jobs near you). If the asic chip has designed and is open to order. Then you need to get the other pieces required which are not specific to crypto so should be available.

Though i don’t think cost for ordering chips from fab is something that one person can pay. Crowd-Funding can help at this.

I want to mention i read an article saying bitmain is selling their hardware nearly twice cost they pay to their suppliers for each miner.

ASIC’s are the most efficient hardware for searching for PoW. You can be at top if we have an open-source community to drive capital cost of manufacturing down while be competitive to propitiatory products, open-source projects can be used at enterprise level like linux.

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I could be wrong. I’m very optimistic. This is not a simple task.

I read about OpenCellular. Thought this is similar situation.

If a coin has two or more ways of mining it with equal # of blocks being solved by ASIC’s and GPU’s, I don’t see how ASIC’s have an advantage. Unfortunately, yes the Myriadcoin algorithm is now solvable by ASIC’s, but if a more ASIC proof algo like LYRE2REV2 was used, this wouldn’t be an issue. There must be a successful way to implement this strategy.

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There’s possible attacks to find who is mining. No matter what you use GPU or ASIC.
Miners are mining 24/7 with relatively fixed rate of power usage.

If we get to what you are describing. Probably It’s time to do political action.

The problem with “most efficient” solutions, is you end up adding more “efficient” miners to keep up with the difficulty/nethash, leading to just as much power usage you would have used with a less efficient strategy. Meaning we all are going to push our electricity use to the max, no matter how efficient a box is, to compete with everyone else. As someone has said, it really doesn’t take more than a few miners to actually process all the transactions on a blockchain. It’s not like we need this hashpower, we are just competing to solve blocks.

When LTC went ASIC, people still used as much power as they did when using their graphics cards, and didn’t really make any more money than they used to…it’s kind of a fallacy that more efficient miners are somehow better. They just replaced rigs with ASIC’s using just as much power total as their graphics rigs did.

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I’m not arguing against power usage.

Efficient in economic sense. Currently we are mining with GPU’s but we don’t know if there’s someone else that using ASIC? Which is more efficient for them.

You are compairing apples and oranges. A PCB with commercially available components is NOT an ASIC. An open source ASIC will be Fab specific and likely restricted to one or maybe two foundaries.

I understand what you were talking about with the regulations and the danger of potentially shutting down half of the (daisy) chain, but given the versatility of gpus they could probably just switch over to mine the old algorithm too?
Edit- i know im harping on this idea

ASIC chips are very small, shipping them is simpler, it’s still efficient to get it assembled were you want to use it.

What you describe is akin to making mining illegal. How is this even remotely related to regulating a techology? Going after miners requires a law in place to allow this. Regulating the technology used to mine requires no such law.

So I don’t get the point you are trying to make.

What is your point? If the ASIC is regulated you are not going to ship it anywhere unless you meet the regulation and are permitted to aquire the tech.

I’m not comparing it against GPU mining. ASIC to ASIC.
I’m GPU miner too.

With ASICS you ship more quantities which leads to more assembly and shipping vs. one rig. So even though the size is smaller, you need more hardware which ends up filling up as much space,as your old rig did… Example, my heavier “complicated” 200Mh GPU rig could be replaced by 4 antminers in the future because the difficulty and efficiency has gone up due to everyone getting ASIC’s. This will weigh just as much, and setup may even be worse (more power cables, and ethernet links). Seems to me that no overall energy, or space is ever saved by ASIC’s, except initially. It always becomes an arms race.

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I am not comparing to GPU mining either.

If there is an open source ASIC and multiple companies make commercially available ASIC miners… even with multiple commercially designed ASIC’s and miners. They can still very easily be regulated as they only do one thing, and will not impact any other industry but the targeted crypto.

If mining is creating jobs for local economy we can debate it politically.

I’m not concerned about this sort of regulations. It’s like saying it’s illegal. And might be big enough miners there to fight it back.

Mining does not create jobs. Mining operations are mostly autonomous dark facilities.

I think you are a bit naive. These regulations don’t make anything illegal. You just need proper authorization for the transaction. Without that authorization, even as part of a company, both company officers, and you personally can be fined and or imprisoned. This happens all the time in the US.

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