Let’s talk about ASIC mining

[JKDC]

@zooko

One thing I’ve learned along the way is that GPU mining is absolutely essential to Zcashers in Venezuela. If Venezuelans try to import ASIC miners (i.e. for Bitcoin, currently), then they risk having the miners stolen or extorted by the army which controls all imports. GPUs are not (yet?) nabbed on import like that, and anyway there are a lot more GPUs already floating around inside Venezuela. This really goes to the point that Simon has made a few times in this thread, that custom mining hardware is more vulnerable to special treatment by authorities.

Oh, bottom-line, by the way, is that I’m basically still in the same place now that I was four years ago when we first decided to go for widespread-distribution-of-coins at the expense of sunk-cost-incentive-alignment. I still think that widespread-distribution-of-coins is more important (but I still think that it can’t last forever, and that the other side of the trade-off may also prove to be important).

That should be the most important reason to have ASIC resistance. ASICS more easily become centralized and more easily controlled/confiscated. When you are creating the most private coin out there it will become a target for authorities and you need a decentralized mining community that can use hardware that is not so easily controlled. I am not convinced ASIC’s make a network more safe in the first place. Is it easier to gather ASIC’s to perform an attack or GPU’s? I would argue the former since they are only good for one thing. As long as the coin is profitable to mine there will be miners to mine it. Any theoretical advantage gained by more hashpower really doesn’t make much difference since you have to have a majority to carry out an attack. Wouldn’t it be better to look for an alternative to attack resistance by using ASIC’s? What about Komodo’s approach to backing up the blockchain for Zcash on the Bitcoin blockchain? Then attacks have to be aimed at Zcash and Bitcoin. Maybe it is possible to back it up on more than one blockchain? In that way you have attack resistance plus distributed mining. I think that approach would further both of your goals and you wouldn’t have to choose.