In her Medium article, Kristy focuses a lot on decentralization but doesn’t really engage with the issue of how the cost for an external actor to attack the network is higher with ASICs. She mentions it only in passing before moving on to say that what’s even more important is protecting against attacks from ASIC miners rather than external actors.
There are a lot of arguments that we never engaged in. I mentioned this before when ProgPoW was scheduled for inclusion in Istanbul - we did a bad job of producing educational material. This is no one’s fault by our own. IfDefElse was a small team of enthusiasts with full-time jobs, and our jobs got in the way of helping to educate the space. We never intended ProgPoW to take on the life that it did - we simply put it out there with all the enthusiasm an engineer usually has over sharing their work, because it solved a problem we were passionate about.
I’ve generally stayed quiet because of the amount of attack on both my personal and professional life. If this space had engaged in professional discourse, I would have been more willing to engage in education. C’est la vie.
This is a big point of disagreement: what are we more worried about, people from outside the ecosystem attacking Ethereum or mining companies attacking it?
The problem a lot of ProgPoW opponents fail to address is how scarce ASIC equipment is. Look at the current state of the Bitcoin mining network. It is near impossible for a U.S. miner to get new equipment without going through a broker, in any sort of volume. Most of the equipment is three to four months out. If you are a Chinese miner, you can get equipment with a snap of your fingers - there are natural favourtisms and buyer preference at play. But this is far more pronounced in the Bitcoin ecosystem than it is in the GPU system. Case in point: the RTX silicon was launched at the same time (give or take a month) for every region around the world. But the M21s was pre-sold in large batches before any consumer units were distributed.
MicroBT and Canaan both advertise that they are moving towards the made-to-order model, rather than the made-to-stock model of GPU manufacturers. This is a key reason for my favouritism of GPUs. The inability to get new equipment punishes new entrants to the ecosystem and rewards veteran participants.
With the recent impact of the trade war in the United States, it’s now even more punishing to new miners in the ecosystem. Sure, I’m biased here - I live in the US and work for a US-based company. But every single day I have new, enthusiastic entrants to mining hit me up on Twitter, asking where they can buy units now and get started in the community now. With ASICs, I have to point them towards a) a broker, of which most are unregulated and simply flip equipment for another middleman, or b) the manufacturer, who will not sell units of 1 or 2 to a loan individual. Most of the equipment has been out of stock on manufacturer’s websites, or is available for purchase in bulk alone.
Contrast this with a GPU. GPUs are stocked, at large, the world over. Yes, there was a shortage, because enthusiasts brought them off the shelves. But I can buy a GPU in the US, in Ukraine, in Russia, in South Africa…all over, there are miners entering the ecosystem, because of the readily available hardware. You don’t need to be an expert in this - you just need to understand that the economics are there. And yes, some of them do leave the network, but so do ASIC miners - by selling off their current equipment and buying new equipment.
You can’t use the ‘skin in the game’ argument, because there is always a way to get out of your ‘contract’ with a network. But this is healthy for a network when done properly - it forces coins to compete on product, community, and quality, rather than just on pure profit alone. Miners are either nomadic or tribalistic. If you capture on the tribalistic miners, they will stay with your network for its lifetime.
I think “the incentives at play” is the part of this that people disagree about the most. Even if people agree with the ProgPow advocates on everything else, disagreement about this can determine where people stand on the issue. It is this that I don’t see ProgPow advocates having any more expertise than opponents on. Does Kristy have a more expert opinion about this than Phil Daian? If so, why?
There aren’t a lot of people that have been in mining since the beginning. Most have left the space, or went off to work in other verticals in blockchain. I am not saying I am authority, but I don’t think a single person in this thread can’t agree with this statement: mining is inherently tribalistic right now. Too much knowledge in this space is kept in secret. That is because it is a nascent industry (just like blockchain), and communication is hoarded.
Phil might understand the theory (and I value his opinions and insight), but the reality is quite different. I am not saying I am the authority, but I am saying that all I can do is share my experiences and explain why I value ProgPoW - because how can I champion something if I don’t believe in it?
I have yet to see any good metrics showing broad community support whose results can’t be explained by there being a group of passionate miners pushing for ProgPow.
Most of them will not speak up. There are two reasons for this. One is that many people have seen the result of what happens when you go against a special interests party - @greerso himself was dox’d, and quite a few non-Ethereum miners have signalled support but will not speak because their association with Ethereum would ‘muddy’ their image. The second is that, unless you are a part of the Ethereum ‘core community’, you don’t know where to voice your opinions. For instance, where does the broader Chinese community engage or speak? It’s not taking place on forums such as this one, or even on Twitter. We’ve failed to capture the QQ, WeChat and LINE communities, all of which have thriving ecosystems that passionately debate this topic every single day.
But, more to the point - why is it such a bad thing that miners speak about a mining related topic? Just like a developer topic would be rallied for by developers who understand the complexities and how the change will effect them, why is it seen as such a vulgar act when a change that will effect a user is met with passion for, or against it?
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