While using PoW, should the Ethereum network be secured primarily by GPU miners?

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It’s nobody’s business, but I keep getting asked here and elsewhere…

I currently hold very little ETH – I have some dust scattered from prior trading that isn’t worth dealing with, and keep meaning to add a bit to my portfolio but haven’t. I do hold BTC and USD money-market funds. What savings I have came from trading crypto acquired from an Ethereum-based startup and contracts with the Ethereum Foundation and later with Algorand – who hired me based on my long (now four decades) experience as an engineer with C++, VM, Standards, and community building experience. If I have any conflicts of interest there they are. I’m currently unemployed.

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Yes, all known flaws and exploits have been dealt with @phoenix, and there weren’t but a few of those. This is very well-inspected, well-tested code.

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Of course.

BTW right now - most Ethereum being minted is going straight to a few private ASIC manufacturers.

The funniest of all is the ‘linzhi’ one. Everytime they are scared of progpow they tell their sheep that they are about to release it immediately! So then the sheep start advocating ASICs.

Linzhi will deliver, once their new tech comes out and dump the old junk to the sheep.

Seriously Ethereum’s governance is like so so bad. It’s just a bootleg bitcoin at this point that doesn’t scale.

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Do you have a source for this number, @VanwaTech?

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Two relevant arguments:

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Yes: it is impossible to mine with a profit for 99% of regions in the world using even the best GPUs. Yet the hashrate grows larger everyday. It’s just basic common sense.

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Yea, hashrate hasn’t changed much in quite some time actually.

So maybe a bunch of gpu’s turned into asic’s, maybe people just haven’t invested into the network because they are afraid of PoS, maybe the low profitability prevents it, or all of the above along with 1000 other reasons.

Also profitability of mining with ‘best’ gpus doesn’t always mean using the most expensive or fastest gpus.

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The irony in this statement makes me cringe.

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The fact of the matter is that there are piece of hardware designed specifically for mining ethereum that far exceed the efficiency of consumer grade hardware.

These ASIC manufacturers are not publicly listed companies, and they operate with no oversight.

The fact that there is so much unknown is a symptom of the problem.

Everyone knows that ASICs are running the game right now. It’s like not even worth having a discussion about that, because that’s arguing just to argue.

I really really can’t understand why someone who is not an ASIC manufacturer would ever support ASICs.

Is it because they can somehow ‘beat’ the game and get an ASIC that no one else gets? Seriously are people that naive?

IDC about prog pow. What I care about is making it so that the playing field is fair, and openly understood. This is only possible with GPUs.

Additionally, no regular people use Ethereum anymore.

The grandma and grandpa buy bitcoin. And the gamer mines monero.

Ethereum is dying (20% loss to BTC over the year).

Ethereum has every reason to grow and succeed and destroy bitcoin. It has the momentum, but because of bad governance particularly around ASIC resistance it is actually losing.

20% might not sound like a lot, but it only takes a few years like that and this thing is bigger shit coin

Truthfully, I have no problem with people making money. But unless you’re actually the asic manufacturer you’re going to lose big.

ProgPOW drives me nuts because it isn’t even like a confusing thing. It’s literally the world vs the asic manufacturers. Yet there are so many people who have been convinced to support ASICs. Truly stuff like this makes me think Ethereum will never make it.

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I agree 100%. Althouh my main argument for Ethereum is based on network security, it is amazing how the majority of the devs live in a world where they accept the current abysmal Bitcoin dominance of 0.02 ETH/BTC.

Because devs focus solely on development and security, game theory gets pushed into the background. The increase in Bitcoin dominance as shown by the reduction in ETH/BTC exhange rate is directly correlated to the rising number of Chinese ASIC farmers on the Ethereum network. What a different world we would now be in had the dev team decided two years ago that keeping ASICs off were the number one priority. This is when ETH/BTC exchange rate was well over 0.1. With the huge progress made by the developers in moving to POS, they have seen no increases in value, only continual reduction in valution. BTC is down 50% from its 20K highs. Ethereum would be at 700 if it had only maintained its relative dominance.

We all know Ethereum is superior to BTC, so ask yourself why is this not reflected in the markets? Could it be Ethereum is in a battle with the top dog BTC that is currently mined by over 60% in China? Could it be that Chinese ASIC suppliers will dump ETH for BTC to ensure that dominance remains? If you are are a dev please make a change to remove ASICs from your network. You deserve to be rewarded for the amazing progress you are making. Albeit not directly since most are not direct holders of Ethereum. However the Euphoria and energy that comes with gaining ground on BTC is a very positive force. Think back to two years ago and remember how that felt. You can have it once again. Remove ASICs and stop the bleeding.

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This is a strong argument I haven’t seen made so clearly.

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Thank you sir. So if I could take this one step further. If the premise is true, that ASICs are being used to dilute the value of Ethereum to prevent it from overtaking Bitcoin; could not we argue that this is also a security risk and in need of dev attention?

As we know there are other security risks in crypto besides a 51% attack. A large attacker does not need to attack the network if their end goal is sell ETH for BTC. They can achieve their goal by slowly siphoning off the GPU miners and gaining higher rewards. Once the ASICs reach a tipping point of over 50% I would expect it to cascade faster and faster as more coins are sold for BTC and GPU miners leave due to low profitability.

Of course this is speculation on my part. But isn’t security something we do in anticipation of what an attacker might do? If network security waits for the attacker to reveal their plot, they will surely lose the battle no matter how amazing their technology is.

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Finally lets explore the true reason the Defi DAPPS don’t want to remove ASICs. Their main goal is to accumulate as much Ethereum at what will be historically low valuations. They fully understand the difference between distributed GPU HODLR mining versus centalized Chinese mining dumping ETH for BTC. As the ASIC miners sell ETH for BTC, BTC value rises increasing their main operations value. The constant development work on Ethereum helps hold the value up so they can continue to dump Ethereum.

The DAPPS are very much enjoying this time as they can fill their bags as both GPU and ASIC miners are dumping ETH, but for different reasons. GPU miners are being forced to sell to cover costs and Chinese ASIC miners who control over 65% of BTC hash sell ETH for BTC as a way of increasing the value of their main BTC operations.

The DAPPS are playing russian roulette with the ASIC miners though. They know full well of the security risks in allowing centralized mining to take over a coin that will need fork concensus to switch to POS which will result in their removal someday. They however justify this risk with greed of they themselves becoming the controlling HODLRs of ETH once POS is completed and the immense selling pressure of POW miners is removed.

If successful the DAPPS, turning a blind eye to ASICS, will have swindled miners out of millions of coins sold so cheap in the early POW mining days of Ethereum. If not challenged this will be the history of the early POW days of Ethereum and how the devs did nothing and did not honor their own words in the yellow founding paper, that “ASICS are a plague” and remove them. How the founding miners were forced to sell their early mined coins so cheap to cover costs and losing the battle to cheaper ASICS. Is this what we want history to show for Ethereum?

Finally if I am correct about BTC ASIC miners mining ETH for BTC also, there is a way to determine if this is true. Post BTC halving, if you are selling ETH for BTC it is now 50% more profitable to build ETH ASIC miners than it was last week pre halving. All things being equal (ETH price, no reduction in ETH rewards) I would expect to see large increases soon in ETH hash rate as more ASICs are brought online to sell for BTC which is now harder to mine. This also would imply the 0.02 ETH/BTC exchange rate will go much much lower. Possibly by 50%.

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Agree 100%. Ironic that someone who is advocating against something that is stated quite clearly in the founding yellowpaper is worried about enforcing it. The discussion is not about ProgPow, it is whether Ethereum should be secured soley by GPUs. The OP said nothing in the title about ProgPow so lets not conflate the discussion as ProgPow has been discussed ad nauseam in other forums.

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In crypto, the name of the game is censorship resistance through decentralization – that’s the whole point. So if we’re actually committed to this hippie-dippie notion, we should be encouraging participation in network consensus-making.

Asking ordinary people to buy specialized hardware that only works with Ethereum is a corrosive manifestation of maximalism which in my opinion conflicts with much of what the Ethereum userbase often purports to stand for.

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