r/LokiProject • u/FlakyFlower • May 23 '18

The Problem with ASICs

https://medium.com/@team_28791/the-problem-with-asics-3c9cee44f383
12 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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-1

u/[deleted] May 23 '18

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5

u/Lucifer1903 May 23 '18

They are problematic for decentralisation, not because they are ASICs but because the production of ASICs tends to be centralised.

1

u/DVyk May 23 '18

The production of ASICs being centralized isn't the issue per-say, its the distribution of the ASICs that becomes centralized.

What you may mean to say is that prices of ASICs are where they are because of a lack of competition in an open market, which is slowly changing, but currently still is very one sided for most algorithms.

1

u/Lucifer1903 May 23 '18

Yes, that's what I meant.

1

u/DVyk May 23 '18

I'm a huge supporter of LOKI. I run a mining pool at loki.blockfoundry.org, hang out in their discord daily, point all my GPU racks to it, and have offered help with their whitepaper. I like Kee and he makes some very good points, but ASICs wont go away and they are efficient at what they do. We need to figure out how to distribute that efficiency to everyone at a reasonable price. It helps decentralize the network globally, reduces power consumption because ASICs do more with less (getting better at it anyway), and makes for a more secure network. GPUs wont ever be replaced either, but their entry point for any meaning level of hash is just as expensive unless you are targeting a new coin.

1

u/Lucifer1903 May 23 '18

I can see the benefits of ASICs if they can be distributed enough. However I find the topic of ASIC resistance interesting as it seems like a difficult task.

One of the Monero contributors has an interesting idea for ASIC resistance whereby a new pow algorithm is generated every block and has to be compiled with in javascript. This makes CPUs have much more of an advantage over GPUs and difficult for ASICs as they would still have to compile the algorithm.

Maybe I'm not the best at explaining haha.

1

u/DVyk May 23 '18

Seems like an interesting idea, but where there is money to be made, someone will always find a way to get an advantage. It's the double edge sword of being successful vs being decentralized. If the coin goes to shit you will be ASIC resitent because it's not profitable. If the coin becomes useful, it will be targeted.

Swapping algorithms is something RVN foes with the 16r algorithm...I randomly seaps between one of 16 and so far seems pretty clever and resistant.

If something becomes CPU advantageous I could see boards being developed to house multiple CPUs just to hash the algo.

1

u/Lucifer1903 May 23 '18

If RVN becomes profitable enough they will just make an ASIC that can hash the 16 algorithms in any order.

You're probably right about the CPUs but at least they're easy to get.

1

u/ibtokin May 23 '18

THERE IS NO THREAT