That’s the quoted price I got from my local supplier inclusive of duty and shipping. I’m in Asia though, so there’s that.
Edit: you’re right. I checked the price again from the local supplier, it seems the price has been bumped up to around $5,500 for the 485mh model.
Yeah it is quite apparent from where I sit, being a long term Ethereum miner and investor, that the developers need to take action this year on something. In April they did not want to do a separate fork to remove ASICs due to Constantinople being released this year. If the developers delay Constantinople like they talked about then they will have no reason not to get this small fork done by December. Surely they can get this done with the pressure off the table to get Constantinople released.
Being a long term miner and investor does not make your opinion more valid.
The developers don’t “owe” you anything.
Many developers do support a fork to improve ASIC resistance, but wanting something and having a technically feasible solution that everyone agrees on are two very different things.
There are many reasons why a new ASIC resistance protocol change should not happen by December, or even at all.
I strongly urge you to research what ASIC resistance is, the currently available “ASICs” that are on the market, how they work, and then return with a protocol that you believe will be an upgrade that makes the desired changes you want. If you can not or do not want to do this, then your opinion on the matter is the same as every other person who isn’t doing this.
Wow so hostile. Please review the Ethereum Devs Meeting where they said they were looking for the opinions of the mining community on the three competing EIPs to delay the difficulty bomb and/or reduce the block rewards. I never stated my opinion matters more than anyone else or that the developers owed me anything, they are reaching out to us. I am just giving my opinion and supplying background to support my perspective. I also put a post on Reddit and YouTube asking other miners to come here to give their feedback.
You might want to try taking long walks outside so you can step back, relax, and enjoy life more. Sorry you are always so upset, life is to short.
You’re confusing being logical and impartial with anger. If it really comes off that way, perhaps it’s because it’s a truth you’re simply unwilling to acknowledge.
Regardless, you definitely do seem to think that being a miner and investor is somehow relevant to your opinion because you keep mentioning it. It doesn’t matter. That’s just a fact, and “facts don’t care about your feelings”.
All that matters is whether or not you are actually developing a solution, or if you can present substantiated arguments for or against specific decisions. If you cannot, then you are noise. There is already too much noise.
Unless you are developing a solution it is noise? Much of what is said here then is noise!
Yes, you are a prime example of noise in this discussion. If the signal to noise ratio degrades here as it has on reddit, i would expect nothing other than for these discussions (and ultimately decisions about the protocol) to be made more and more in private.
I would even consider this response I’m making right now to be noise because it contributes nothing to the topic at hand, but it is at least in an effort to cut down on future noise and be a net positive. That’s all I’m going to say on this here.
@atlanticcrypto Maybe I’m the only one, but I really dislike URL shorteners. They just force me to go to checkshorturl.com to see where the link is going to redirect to, which is much more of a hassle than dealing with a long url (which could’ve just been embedded in text to make it shorter).
The slides are a little noisy for me, particularly the background graphic. I’m sure if somebody was presenting them it would be fine, but reading them on my own they are very congested.
It mentions that this proposal is “in line with Draft Casper FFG’s Year 1 Issuance”. Is this a meaningful/valuable target? I don’t think using a line out of a draft as your goal is particularly worthwhile if that’s the only support.
What is the motivation behind reducing issuance? That may seem like a silly question, but the follow-up questions to the response tend to point out nuances that bring into question why reducing issuance really matters.
You mention “top line incentives” a few times, but never really define it. Are you just talking about block rewards that aren’t ommer related?
The fact that the top 15 pools have 90% of the hashrate is irrelevant. Those pools don’t own the hashpower. Pools are decentralized. Lines like “Uncle rates are driven by latency - a product of centralization” are patently false. I find the motivation and “evidence” extremely suspect, but I’m not going to spend too much time breaking down every little thing in this when I haven’t seen it being referenced by anyone else.
EIP-1295 will be discussed during tomorrow’s developer call. I will be presenting it.
I will address your claim that “Uncle rates are driven by latency - a product of centralization” is patently false.
Latency is the single driver of Uncles.
With centralization of work package distribution (mining pools), there is latency introduced that can be otherwise avoided when solo mining. Hence, latency is a product of centralization.
Mining nodes are hit with three levels of latency:
Latency with the Ethereum node network — the time it takes for the mining node to receive notification that a new pending block is available.
Latency with the miners — the time it takes for the mining pool to send new work packages to its miners + the time it takes for a miner to send a potential solution back to the mining pool.
Latency in propagating a “solved” block — the time it takes for a mining pool to distribute its valid block solution to 51pct of the Ethereum network.
There are some areas where a mining pool/node CAN minimize latency:
Invest in low-latency fiber connectivity.
Invest in best-in-class compute servers (including SSD storage).
Increase their exposure to the Ethereum network (connect to more peers).
Trim their transaction queue size to minimize computing requirements.
There are some areas where a mining pool/node CANNOT manage latency:
**The latency of its miners to the pool itself (think home internet latency).**
The latency of network peer connections.
The block propagation advantage larger pools have to their own miners.
Let’s quantify some of the latency:
Mining node block propagation — 200ms to 500ms
Block Import / Transaction Processing — 100ms to 150ms
Mining pool to miner latency — 100ms to 500ms
Miner to mining pool latency — 100ms to 500ms
This puts our aggregate range of latency from 400ms to 1650ms.
If a target block round is 15sec, it’s possible a valid block may not be propagated for 1.65sec!!! That’s an 11pct delay under normal operating conditions! That also defines the lower boundary of the network wide uncle rates.
Top line incentives - yes - I did a bad job not defining this - I mean only block rewards that are not ommer related.
This is correct. What is incorrect is that latency is a product of centralization. It’s the product of decentralization, no?
Now that I’ve read your comment though, I think I misunderstood the original statement because the argument you make I would call an issue with the decentralization of miners with respect to pools, but you’re saying the existence of pools (centralized block creation) is the issue. Same thing. I agree with your expanded explanation, and I see why you called it a problem with centralization now. Thanks for the detailed response
Why, whenever we discuss lowering the block reward, do we only talk about whole numbers of ether?
Instead of 5 to 3, or 3 to 2, why not 3 to 2.9, and then after X thousand blocks 3.9 to 3.8, X thousand blocks later to 3.7. That code would take four minutes to write, so it’s not a technical issue. Is it a lack of imagination or something else? Is it because we would become central bankers if we did that?
Why not lower issuance 1 Szabo per block for the next 1,000,000 blocks (which would be about 1 ether over the next half year)?
This decision is based on seat of the pants arguments, and if we’re going to be central bankers anyway, why not experiment with small moves and have time to react to adverse effects in between?
Honestly, we don’t talk about whole number or anything particularly creative because it doesn’t matter. You can’t guarantee security with issuance unless you have one that adapts to spot price, and that will never happen.
Why all the hulaballoo about issuance then?
Ignorance? People upset with the price and thinking decreasing “inflation” will somehow help? From what I’ve seen, the majority of the hulaballoo is coming from investors, not developers or technologists.
So they made a decision to reduce issuance from 3 to 2 and postpone difficulty bomb. Anti-ASIC algo change not going to happen now at least until 8 months from now. My guess it will never happen. I am going to laugh my ass off when Ethererum is < $100 when they try to reduce the issuance and the network goes to zero hash. Good luck guys, just sold all my Ethereum from over 2 years of mining. See you below $100.
Next time listen to your miners six months ago and fork ASICs off. You did not want a fork to get in the way of Casper release this year and then drug your feet to even get Casper done. The ASICs killed Ethereum as miners had to liquidate holdings to pay for costs. RIP ETH.
Why even spend the time to write this?
I’m just as disappointed in the decision, as well as how it was reached, but I’m confident that the developers and community aren’t consciously sacrificing the network and will stand by and let it be cannibalized by ASICs.
As far as I’m concerned, I did pretty much all I could do to educate the community and voice an opinion to those who actually matter. I never expected it to change anything, but seeing as how many developers bent to the public “outcry” for their vote, maybe that’s just how governance works now.
Please check if you can suggest changes to make this list shorter: What has to be done to get ProgPoW on Ethereum.
Without the miners the developers would have nothing to develop. Let’s face it you developed a currency, not a piece of art work. So the purpose of this currency is to offer value. If the value is zero it is not a currency. Developers do owe miners. Without the miners their project would be dead.
Why so hostile?