Public announced Bitmain ASIC, the E3, is about 10% to 20% more efficient than an average GPU mining rig - 200mhs at 760w.
However, the pressing concern is the Innosilicon A10, fabricated using Samsung 10nm process with a spec of 485mhs at 850w - about 150% more efficient than even the best tuned GPU mining rig.
These ASICs are already in deployment, and would begin mass shipping first week of September.
The worst part is, these ASICs are priced competitively relative to GPU rigs - $3,000 USD.
Effectively, an A10 ASIC is equivalent to the performance of 2.6 best-tuned GPU rigs, at the price of 2 GPU rigs, and at 50% of the operating costs.
I may not speak for my fellow miners, but a reduction in issuance is an understood and welcomed development direction, provided that we also have a solution to the ASIC problem.
All we need is a stop-gap solution to bar ASICs out, even if temporarily, as long as the solution lasts long enough to propel us through the issuance reduction, into Shasper.
My greatest fear is that if we don’t have an answer to the ASIC problem, come issuance reduction time, we’ll lose a significant number of GPU miners, be left with a less secured (less overall hash rate) chain, and very centralized hash rate sources.
Coupled with deteriorating overall price sentiments, we might be opening doors to potentially hostile counterparty actions, such as 51% double spend attack on prominent exchanges, or worst, a direct 51% attack to topple everything we love and built atop of us.
I hope my doomsday scenario never come to be.