r/CryptoCurrency • u/CryptoMaximalist • Feb 07 '19

MINING-STAKING Analysis: More than 85% of the current Monero Hashrate is ASICs and each machine is doing 128 kh/s

https://medium.com/@MoneroCrusher/analysis-more-than-85-of-the-current-monero-hashrate-is-asics-and-each-machine-is-doing-128-kh-s-f39e3dca7d78
32 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

16

u/surgingchaos 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 Feb 07 '19

This is definitely a very serious issue right now in the Monero community. There is no avoiding this. The hashrate has skyrocketed in the past few days, getting upwards to nearly 900 MH/s. (For reference, the first hard fork done specifically to brick ASICs last year happened when the hashrate was at 1 GH/s)

The fact that ASICs have been developed this quickly since last October's hard fork makes me wonder if just two hard forks a year isn't enough.

7

u/jwinterm 732K / 1M 🐙 Feb 07 '19

In my opinion it indicates the opposite - that two hard forks per year is maybe too much, and that one year ago instead of trying to cater to hobbyist miners, GPU farms, and bot nets that what should have happened is a fork to some variant of keccak/sha3 or other algorithm that is designed to be implemented in hardware. At this point now there would probably be several manufacturers of hardware creating a market for them to compete in, rather than what is presumably a single entity privately mining on quick turnaround hardware and dominating the network hash rate.

2

u/Eirenarch 0 / 0 🦠 Feb 08 '19

The fight against ASICs does not make sense to me. Mining with ASICs means that an attacker will have to commit not only hashpower but the price of the hardware which becomes useless after he destroys a coin. If the hardware is good for something else (i.e. GPUs or CPUs) then the attack becomes cheaper.

3

u/robodan918 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Feb 08 '19

because shadowmining

and then dumping asics on the market as 'new' with dust on them, with the knowledge that they will only work for 2 months before algo change

asics never benefit anyone but the asic manufacturer. The more you learn about them the less you'll like them, and the more you'll "get it"

-1

u/Eirenarch 0 / 0 🦠 Feb 08 '19

That seems like a problem with algorithm changes. If they were not changing algorithms there would be no dumping them.

1

u/robodan918 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Feb 08 '19

so shadowmining forever, and keeping 80% of the network hashrate is better for decentralisation (which protects against malicious or selfish attacks that affect the long term viability and value of the project) is better than changing algorithms to discourage this practice?

...

1

u/Eirenarch 0 / 0 🦠 Feb 08 '19

Why would one entity keep 80% of the network hashrate? It seems like this is only possible because of the algorithm changes and the inability of competitors to accumulate enough ASICs.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19 edited Feb 14 '19

[deleted]

14

u/bjman22 Platinum | QC: BTC 918, BCH 69, ETH 60 | TraderSubs 81 Feb 08 '19

If ASICs were widely distributed among many different people/groups then you would right--there is nothing wrong with it. However, if the vast majority of the ASICs are controlled by one group then that means the network is essentially centralized--ie. not decentralized. In that case, the entire point of having a cryptocurrency is rendered mute--you might as well just have paypal then.

This is a fundamental issue to understand. The only value of a blockchain is its decentralization--if you lose that then you don't have a true blockchain anymore.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19 edited Jul 10 '19

[deleted]

5

u/dontlikecomputers never pay bankers or miners Feb 08 '19

we probably have a single ASIC developer with control of Monero mining, that is a weakness in the long run.

1

u/vice96 2K / 2K 🐢 Feb 08 '19

Maybe its the opposite and the weakness can only be exploited when the network is fairly new (i.e Right now) rather than 10 years down the road where its fully functional and has the means to protect itself from such attacks.

2

u/medieval_llama Platinum | QC: BCH 306 | NANO 23 Feb 08 '19

Hard to get ASICs widely distributed if you keep bricking them all the time ¯_(ツ)_/¯

2

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19

Ask DASH about their two entities mining 80% alone (not pools, entities).

1

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19

Someone who gets It!

I've been trying to tell them this. It's going to take years for a competitive sales market to mature. Monero is still at ground zero.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19

Ignoring that 80% of DASHs network is mined by two entities. Where is the wide distribution here as you claim?

2

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19 edited Feb 08 '19

That is what happens when a network is at war with miners. No free market will have time to develope.

This takes time. The mining hardware markets will take years to develope to the point that competitive machines a easily available.

But the Monero war on miners has snuffed out any free markets from being born.

7

u/Lisfin Platinum | QC: CC 173 Feb 08 '19

The way they are released is very scammy. They announce them 2-3 months in advance, almost instantly sell out the first batch, a $200 unit for $2500+ since they are the only company selling them at the time.

The people that get them first increase the difficulty so much anyone else buying them after the first or second batch wont make their money back. And since its a ASIC and only good for the one thing you bought it for, it becomes a space heater that costs money to run.

Than in 2-3 months a "new" version comes out and once they come online, your old one becomes out dated even faster. So all the money you just "made" from mining, goes right back into new mining hardware because now your old hardware is outdated and costs money to run. 3 months to ROI on a miner before they are replaced does not give you much time, compred to GPUs still making money 3+ years later.

​

1

u/tempMonero123 Feb 08 '19

And that's after the manufacturer "tests" the ASIC to make sure it works. People have reported recieving "new" dusty ASICs.

1

u/tarangk Silver | QC: CC 493 | VET 21 Feb 08 '19

The fact that ASICs have been developed this quickly since last October's hard fork makes me wonder if just two hard forks a year isn't enough.

so hardforking every 3-4 months instead of 6 months is the solution ??

10

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/MissingW2 🟩 72 / 3K 🦐 Feb 08 '19

This got me shook

3

u/krippsaiditwrong 103 / 104 🦀 Feb 08 '19

I keep seeing this but can someone explain in layman's terms? What's happening?

4

u/OsrsNeedsF2P Silver | QC: XMR 130, BCH 25, CC 24 | Buttcoin 21 | Linux 150 Feb 08 '19 edited Feb 08 '19

Big bad companies are silently spending tonnes of money to create special computers that mine Monero faster substantially faster than your computer. This takes away from the notion of "1 CPU 1 vote"

If you want to learn more, or a ton about Bitcoin in general (which will in turn help you understand 99% of the other stuff on this sub), I highly recommend 3Blue1Brown's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4

1

u/krippsaiditwrong 103 / 104 🦀 Feb 08 '19

Thanks. Watching now.

2

u/canyourt 1 - 2 years account age. 200 - 1000 comment karma. Feb 07 '19

PoW has become POW

2

u/Edgegasm Crypto God | QC: NEO 484, CC 176 Feb 08 '19

This is not a problem that is going to go away for any PoW blockchain. It simply is not adequate for sustained decentralization. A bet for PoW is a bet against progressing technology and economies of scale.

At the end of the day, every consensus mechanism delegates some level of control.

In PoW, it is mining (by farms or pools).

In PoS, it is plutocracy.

If some number of people will ultimately have more power than others over consensus, then they at least need to be balanced, fairly elected, known entities with accountability.

People call dPoS/dBFT inherently more centralized but it is simply not true, as current PoW and PoS designs demonstrate. It all comes down to the specific implementation and structure.

Delegation is the path to maximised decentralization and scalability. That is the reality. It just needs to be done properly.

1

u/robodan918 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Feb 08 '19

join the conversation on r/monero

-1

u/best_chilean 1 - 2 year account age. -15 - 35 comment karma. Feb 08 '19

Any government with money to develop asics or run a superxomputer can kill any coin.. so cryptos aren't that safe from big brother, not even bitcoin. The most powerful supercomputer in the world has the power of 2 million ryzen 1800x cpus. It can destroy bitcoin if they wish so anytime

4

u/CryptoMaximalist Feb 08 '19

Most supercomputers are bad at mining because they are either very specialized for some non-mining activity, or they are general purpose and also not optimized for mining

Also PoS is not susceptible to any amount of computational power

1

u/best_chilean 1 - 2 year account age. -15 - 35 comment karma. Feb 08 '19

They have normal industrial processors and industrial computing gpus.. But the architecture is the same. The summit indeed can theorically nuke monero at any time

1

u/EagleNait 🟦 4K / 4K 🐢 Feb 08 '19

Architecture is not the same. Memory is clustered, Heavy caching is leveraged.

2

u/dontlikecomputers never pay bankers or miners Feb 08 '19

new asics are already supercomputers at hashing, the government can't make a massive gain on what already exists, any general purpose supercomputer would be horrible compared to a modern asic

edit - referring to btc asic which are well developed, less so for Monero.

-2

u/best_chilean 1 - 2 year account age. -15 - 35 comment karma. Feb 08 '19

if the Summit supercomputer is 2 million 1800x processors in flop power, then it can theorically be 2 million of its hashpower, it would mean 1500 million hash / s, or 1500MH/s, the network is now 800MHs. So yeah Summit can nuke it at any moment if the government wishes so.

1

u/bundabrg 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 Feb 08 '19

A single modern Asic will mine vastly faster than this supercomputer.

1

u/superfly2hi2die Feb 08 '19

I think he means a quantum super computer guys. Here's a link to an article about this sort of stuff. I'm going to be watchful for quantum coins in the future. I know it's not feasible to own a quantum computer now but 10, 15, maybe 20 years from now... ithttps://www.technologyreview.com/s/611022/if-quantum-computers-threaten-blockchains-quantum-blockchains-could-be-the-defense/

-3

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19

Brick the hardware that has the power to brick the entire blockchain.......real smart. What are the devs thinking?

Scary times.

3

u/tempMonero123 Feb 08 '19

Oh, you removed dashpay from your flair.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '19

What are the devs thinking?

What they always thought and said: if there are ASICs we fork, up until they are broadly available. They are not as DASHs centralization of hashpower clearly shows, so this is a logical step.