If you haven't read, Bitmain has introduced an ASIC Miner that will dwarf current GPU miners. Their initial product is kind of pathetic at 180Mh/s for 800W, but rumors are they have a 1,500GH/s miner with not much more power usage already completed and being used internally until they decide to sell them.
ASIC stands for Application-specific integrated circuit and refers to hardware that is designed with one specific purpose and does that purpose very well compared to current technology. In the mining industry, this means hardware that can perform extremely efficiently on one hashing algorithm gaining a huge advantage on hash rate per kwh of power used.
Ethereum has always declared itself as ASIC resistant and will likely create a hard fork to prevent the launch of ASIC devices. Vitalik Buterin claims the second line of defense for Ethereum is to "poison the well" to prevent the release of ASIC devices.
Currently 57% have responded to a recent poll in favor of a hard fork to prevent ASIC mining. Unfortunately, it is highly likely Bitmain is currently mining with these devices and considerably more powerful devices in secret. They have been accused of this many times and in fact is so lucrative it is hard to imagine they are not already.
Would you support a hard fork to prevent ASIC devices from having an unfair advantage or should any resource available be used if you have the power to create it?
i'd vote for a fork.. ASIC miners will centralize, rather than decentralize.. it is already what's happening to bitcoin. and it's sad that mining used to be profitable to an average joe, not anymore.
on the flip side, this will drive GPU prices down and make them more affordable for machine learning purposes.
the benefit stands on whichever side you are on. both have their pros and cons.
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That's really Hastings
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I don't know a lot about ETH mining -- I dabbled in it a few months ago with my GTX 1060 on my personal computer. Was interesting to see that I could still (barely) break even (before ETH value tanked... I think.. I don't really remember).
I was watching @crypt0's video that he put up last night (or the night before? not sure) where he talked about these ASIC miners, and how apparently the difficulty level of mining ETH skyrocketed around December / January. I think he was suggesting that ASIC miners had probably already been deployed an in-use (by bitmain or others) -- and now they're only selling because they have more powerful ones coming up in production for themselves.
I was only half listening while I cooked dinner, but I think he was of the opinion that a HF would likely only be a temporary fix, and that the only full solution would be to switch to PoS -- which would also upset a lot of the miners. I'm not certain if I'm summarizing his views, and I'm not really trying to speak for him anyways -- just my take of what very little I know.
tl;dr -- I doubt a HF that doesn't pivot ETH to PoS will do much but be a temporary slow-down to ASIC producers -- But I also don't know what I'm talking about.
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The phenomenal rise in the price of Ethereum a few weeks ago sparked speculation about the change of Ethereum coins that rival Bitcoin. The increase in the price of Etherium and the surge in its trading volume has caused people to mine etherium
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I like turtles.
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Cowabunga
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Me too!
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I'm all for fair mining for everyone, including Bitmain. So yes, I support a hard fork. I think Vitalik is right about this.
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I think they should definitely hard for if it is somehow possible. But I don't have the power to influence that. It will probably be all video card miners against ASIC!
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Any effort to support the decentralization of a project is very much welcomed by the communities I suppose.
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I have transfered 0.500 sbd for @ipromote but @ipromote did not vote on my link .. why
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I am not a bot.
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hold that it is not you, if i am wrong, forgive, if you accept sbd from me, please on return, if not you, forgive me, thank you
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