Dero's official position on ASICs

@azzi
Do you understand how centralisation works? It has nothing to do with holding or selling the mined coins (unless it is a PoS coin). Centralisation in PoW coins is about controlling a 51%+ stake of the node voting so you can systemically control which blocks are accepted by the network - ownership of coins is completely irrelevant other than an effect on price. Further, Bitmain is a proven bad player - are you aware of the inbuilt kill switches found on its miners last year - or that each unit ‘phones home’ so it can be tied to an IP address? How does that work with a privacy coin. What if China decides it wants to cripple the economy by forcing all the ASICs made by Bitmain to be remotely shut down? What of Bitmain wanted to launch an attack for its own purposes - killing everyone else’s machines would make that a whole lot easier … and those are just the headline failings of your argument. I could be here all night - and don’t get me started on Bitcoin’s security/privacy failings - I won’t go near it so buying Dero is not an option for me at least. You really need to do some more research. Its all out there … but basically you are talking complete bollocks re security of the network wrt ASICs. ASICs can /only/ play a role if and when it becomes a commodity item like a GPU - and even then there will be downsides.

Centralization of hashing power is different from coin ownership. I explained that for a 51% attack a minor GPU-mined PoW coin is more vulnerable than an ASIC-mined one for economic reasons.
Do you have proof of a backdoor in cryptonight ASICs? Don’t extend antbleed into this case.

@azzi
Yep, the proof has been independently documented and widely reported. I don’t have the links but if you do a search I am sure you will find plenty of independent evidence.

Sorry, but if you read your comment again you will see you quite clearly link not having coin ownership via selling to maintaining decentralisation. You can sell the coins and still have the means of controlling the network. Either your thinking is fuzzy or your intent was not clearly made.

As for the minor GPU network being more vulnerable that is only partly true and nowhere near as simplistic as you are implying. ASICs have nothing good to bring to the table. At best if they ever become commodities they will be minimally damaging - but there will still be damaging aspects, albeit very minor. The total hashpowe which comes to a network is not relevant - it is concentration of hashpower. ASICs have at least two orders of magnitude greater hashpower and much reduced energy draw/kH/s - which is sometime mistakenly used as a justification for ASICs. Mass ASIC adoption would result in the same net electricity burn because everyone would have to migrate to ASICs and the H/s per reward would balloon negating any energy efficiency. The prospect of a single point of control GPU based influx even to a network of Dero’s size is extremely small - it would not be practicable even if conceivable. To do it with ASICs is both practical and coneivable

1 Like
  1. So you have no proof on cryptonight ASICS having a backdoor.
  2. Yes, originally I was referring to coin ownership centralization problem as likely not being worse with ASICs than GPUs because they are not more likely to accumulate. You then said you meant hashpower centralization and higher propensity for a 51% attack with ASICs and I said that this is probably not so for economic reasons.
    Think about the cost of mining bitcoin, dedicated SHA256 ASICs and bitcoin valuation. For anybody but this mining network attacking it is impossible but for the ASIC owners it is uneconomical.

For NW security the coin needs a massive cost of 51% attack and with a dedicated ASIC algo it would be provided by economic reasons. Ideally Dero moves to a new GPU PoW algo and gets ASICs in a year or two developed for it.
The time of transition to more efficient mining hardware is the only period of more concentrated mining profits.

@azzi I’m going to focus on the economics.

Overbought and oversold are common market conditions. It healthy to have retracements which are natural to the market ecosystem.

What I think you are failing to understand is the damage Asics have on pump and dumps. The dump that happened last night is not a correction. Although deros price does not reflect how it should be priced currently. Yes speculative market but even in a speculative market there are some basics on determining value.

The steady pump that happened was an artificial drive up of price (look at the buy orders and how they are places) this is purely an artificial way to drive up price so you can dump a larger amount at a higher price and make mega profit. To buy again lower and do it all over again.

Some people get in an buy again (general populatiom) but a higher number actually don’t. Cause they FOMO bought the artificial drive up and get burnt on the dump.

That is not healthy to a) the community b) the network c) coin reputation

You’ve neglected the economics of it. That is a massive issue

I never said anything about cryptonight ASICs having the back door - I used Bitmain’s proven past conduct wrt its other products to illustrate its untrustworthiness and its undesirability. A leopard doesn’t change its spots.

As for point 2, I started writing a rebuttal then had an ‘ah ha’ moment - I see the point that you were trying make, but it really wasn’t clear and I don’t really think it is relevant to the issue at hand - unless we move to a PoS based system, at which point it becomes critical.

@Abrustetha The connection between the event of pump and dump and ASICs is not clear from your post.

@azzi I don’t think you understand how the majority of asic owners operate.

To asic owners it’s about churn of a coin. Nothing more nothing less. It’s about profit and loss. More so than a gpu miner…specially on a coin that has declared its intent on being asic resistant

I understand, this is why I said ASIC miners are likely less of a threat to coin ownership centralization than GPU miners.

Another point of view: https://bytecoin.org/blog/the-asic-statement-clarification-from-the-bytecoin-team

They are correct that new FPGA miners such as Baikal can be reprogrammed to a new algo and I fear this mining by a few stealth ASICs much more than many ASICs in the open for concentration of both coins and hashrate.

@Abrustetha Another useful article https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51

So…@azzi

I read the first article fully. The 2nd article I got halfway through before seeing the obvious issues with the article.

It’s not that asic mining is bad. It’s that in it’s current state it is. I don’t think you are comprehending this. And I’m sorry if you don’t.

Majority of Asics are mined with before. And only once found out then they manufacturer comes out and announces. This practice Is not only unethical but then the pricing structure is excluding of general public while first people in get an upper hand even with higher prices. Difficulty increases and the people further down the line are disadvantaged even at the lower price for a batch.

Large numbers of Asics are bough In large numbers upfront by large farms. Not the egalitarian miner with a few gpus in his garage.

You are not only wildly missing the point but you are attempting to drive home a pro asic view without considering the actual issues with the current asic environment…

Sorry but I am probably not the only one that horribly disagrees with your sentiment or stance

Also. All the current Asics are Asics. Not fpga. I personally am experimenting with fpga boards.

The current Asics are in no way programmable(re) for algo changes. Do yourself a favour and get one and dissect the code and physical architecture then come back here and try argue