The security comes with the fact that there would be machines that do nothing but mine zcash and they would probably do it very quickly and efficiently
The problems with that include reward distribution due to a potential monopoly if a company figures it out and doesn’t really tell anyone, eventual obsolescence of gpu mining
I think the friendly Fork idea describes 2 Chains with two different algorithms mining the same coin and Myriad mining describing one chain with two different algorithms mining the same coin (lemme know if i missed something guys!)
The sols/watt/founders reward idea is new, is that quantifiable?
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Thinl of it like being on an island, with an Asic Miner we can’t leave, you’re stuck
With GPU mining there’s boats and bridges so anyone can leave at any time for any reason
That’s the strength argument
The question is how do you incentivize people who are generally driven by profitability can leave at any time for any reason to stay on my Island through thick and thin?
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Looked it up, EU has a pretty decent chip manufacturing capacity Semiconductors_European_Union.pdf (226.9 KB)
This is a pdf
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I have one observation on flypool statistics page .
as I remember 4 - 5 months ago the Asia server was mining at half the hashrate of US server.
but now I see them both equal . more over its constant hashing with no spikes whatsoever . which means its constantly mining zcash and not jumping between coins, in contrast to EU and US servers where many use pools that keep changing algorithms like nicehash for example .
this rings some bells in my head that there could be some asics already working there .
I can’t backup my allegation since I didn’t take screenshot of that statistics that time nor I can find historical data on flypool .
I might be mistaken too . but I guess its worth to think about .
Perhaps @hosseamin is onto something. Let’s say ZCash Co/Foundation actively developed ASIC hardware but instead of selling it, made it open source for anyone to manufacture (I happen to own a small company that manufactures small electronics for our own devices, making PCBA easy for me to like). With the ZCash people actively developing the hardware - or paying someone to do it - it removes the potential for Bitmain to monopolize it, mitigates the risk of ASIC centralization and allows anyone to make a ZEC ASIC so that there would be enough to go around (at least potentially) to those who want them.
It’s my opinion that since the promise of ASIC resistance was made there exists few good reasons to break it. Shouldering the burden of ASIC development is in that universe of valid reasons, especially since they are taking 20% off the top.
While I’m resistant to “non-Asic resistance”, I would find the idea easier to accept if ZCash ASICs were open source and I could have as many made as I wanted…(yes, I know the idea is quite complex)
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This article talks about a similar situation with eth classic, new term- asic competitive
I thought about sth like this. I don’t know if that is possible to built-up but it wouldn’t matter centralized any of both chains is, cause due to the fact that they work independently they decentralize the system.
I’m not a developer and don’t know if it’s bu**shi* what I think about but generally it’s time to treat the topic seriously… perhaps we can better brainstorm than sh*tstorm. I still trust in this coin, the corporation, the foundation and the community! 
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I think that’s similar to the Myriad mining idea where certain percentage of the transactions would be mineable by one algorithm and the other percent by the other
It would be a way of distributing the reward more evenly if Asic miners do in fact exist
It could also potentially buy a little bit of time to try to de- monopolize through ramping up difficulty of either side
Its one idea
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Yes myriad seems similar but the big difference is, if I understand right, that myr chain builds up like :
- block algo1
- block algo2
- block algo3
- block algo4
- block algo2
- block algo1
And so on…
I would prefer 2 chains crossing in knots checking each other
Chain 1: 1; 1.5; 2; 2.5; 3; 3.5; 4
Chain 2: 1; 2; 3; 4
So let’s say block 1 is a checkpoint and block 4 is . While computing from 1 to 4 both chains receive information about the same txs. In block 4 must be written the same information from both. If that fits, this block is a real block on the zcash chain.
Here’s another important data point of another coin we can learn from: SiaCoin. They announced long ago that they had decided ASIC mining was better for security than GPU mining, for reasons that they explained at length in this blog post:
(I’m not entirely convinced by all of their reasons, but I certainly think there’s truth to at least some if not all of it.)
Since then, they launched their own custom mining hardware: November Obelisk Update. As we noted in June, Sia firmly… | by David Vorick | The Sia Blog
After that, there was apparently a situation where Bitmain announced a miner for Siacoin and then the Siacoin devs wrote “If Bitmain takes any action to harm the Sia project, we will soft-fork to invalidate their hardware.”
I haven’t had time to follow the whole thing closely. Anybody know of current developments, more details, or errors in what I wrote here?
I disagree, If a coin has one miner then it’s up to miner to put which transactions in. In my experience conflict of two ideology can simply destroy everything for one side. What if that miner is living in a jurisdiction which imposes for all transaction to do KYC and then simply kick out certain users.
Well, suppose we make Z-addresses extremely efficient and usable (starting with Sapling!) and then we (later, like one or two years later) deprecate t-addresses and then (later, like another one or two years later) the community consenses on no longer accepting payments from other people’s t-addresses, thus effectively eliminating t-addresses.
At that point, all transactions would be encrypted, so even if there were just one miner, it wouldn’t know which transactions to exclude or which users to kick out.
Hm, that’s interesting. It’s still circumstantial evidence, but it circumstantially suggests that Zcash ASICs are not (yet) widely deployed. 
This is an interesting possibility — an open source ASIC miner. It seems like the sort of thing that would fall within the Zcash Foundation’s purview.
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Here’s an idea of going back to the Myriad mining idea, what if the blocks were daisy-chained asic gpu asic gpu? (If that could be done). Would prevent either side from ever finding more than one block at a time, it would split the reward 50/50 and potentially moderate the difficulty for either side (assuming they exist)?
I saw some articles written by the same person about why obelisk should and shouldnt soft fork though i didnt get to read them yet
Disagree that such a change could be included in either of those two Network Upgrades, for reasons of business continuity for our partners (wallets, exchanges, OpenBazaar, Purse, Shapeshift, etc. etc. etc.) and project management (our current team is completely allocated for pulling off Overwinter and Sapling successfully and we can’t add to or change the plan at this stage).
It could definitely be done in a subsequent Network Upgrade, which could activate as few as three months after Sapling activates if we get started soon deciding on it.
Fantastic data collection and analysis. 
ⓩ Thank you.
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What i mean is something else, Even thought everyone uses z-address, If there’s one miner having monopoly. Then it can simply say anyone who wants to get their transaction in the blockchain they need to share with them enough data to get the links together and even their personal information. So zcash will be some service like paypal. Don’t you agree?
Open Source ASIC hardware should ensure that there would be enough hardware to go around to those who want it. (I would like to see them be PCIEx16 ASIC cards…just sayin)
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With that daisy chain idea, I was thinking it could be done on the transaction level as well, it may not affect mining so much with maybe a more real time difficulty adjustment and you could get the same block attack resistance if the number of transactions in each block ( I know it varies with #s of z and T transactions per) was kept always an odd number, that way whoever started mining the block would also finish it and the next algorithm would begin the next, each block would be half Mined by 1 and half Mined by the other
Edit - it would be like 55/45 split each time but back and forth
I like this idea of letting ASIC’s battle with other ASIC’s and GPU’s compete against each other. There are coins that have multiple protocols you can mine against with different equipment and get equal weight in processing transactions. Like a few have mentioned - Myriadcoin and others (see What is Myriadcoin and Multi-Algorithm Mining? - Coin Brief )
Instead of arguing about asic/no-asic I vote for the daisy chain / multi-algo strategy. The open source ASIC idea is OK, but that turns into a battle of who has the cheapest production cost.