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Activity: 112
Merit: 11
1. The exchange arguement I am not even going to justify. I have purchased and traded for most of my coin on exchanges. They are a necessary part of the success of the coin.
2. This is more to the heart of the question. Is ASIC resistance necessary forever: NO. But having large ASICs early in the lifecycle of the coin can actually harm the coin. It would both create a big barrier for entry, and kill any chance we have at building a broader community over the next 8 months which will be critical. ASICs later can help maintain the network, those mining for 1 coin per block with the possibility of a wormhole will not make sense to be gpu miners. This is not about making the coin ASIC proof. This is really a matter of timing more than anything. While ASICs are going to happen with X11 (and any other algorithm) eventually, it may take 12-18 months, especially if the alternative algorithms are fragmented, which they have.
3. To those who say the ASICs may lift all scrypt coin boats, that is not really the case having large ones target a coin changes the dynmics, some smaller coins will be hurt, especially those in the startup phase as we are. It can centralize the network quickly as the coin is strip mined, with rapid difficulty increase, then dropped. The more mature ones will benefit. I think if the larger scale asics were six months out, I would say sticking to scrypt is fine. Again, as people have correctly observed, it's not the individuals with ASICs, it is the the large farms from the manufacturers, and they are now 2-3 months out. This changes the dynamics significantly.
4. KGW is a defense against multipools, not ASICs.
5. The last part is important, this represents an opportunity to build a broader community by those now looking to leave scrypt coins and continue mining, small time miners who often are more apt to support a coin they can believe in, then dump a coin for a quick profit. It will also mean that at a key time our coin will be welcoming to newcomers. This broad community is critical for helping to fulfill our mission, at least I believe that, as they may be interested in giving a little extra projects because they believe in the mission. They may also be the ones who convince vendors, tell their friends, bring things up to the press, create things on their own, and open the doors to partnerships. A large ASIC farm is not going to care when we want to fill a funding target through a fundraiser which we may have been short with during the funding round. They will not want to create things involving the coin. The reality of cryptocurrency, is they are more community based organisms then anything else. We are in our infancy there. We have the people in place to create this community, but the technology can easily cut that off. Because the smaller miners and newcomers, will be turned off because we are still scrypt, rightly or wrongly. Building a broad base is critical for our success, ASIC farms are not. Without a dispersed community, you really do not have much of a market for people to use this as a currency.
6. In terms of power savings, I can say where there may be no effeciency gain if it's optimized. At the same time the ease of use element is probably the biggest gain from X11.
Again, I am seeing this as somebody who literally is more interested in keeping this coin alive, meeting it's mission, then seeing it dead. While there will always be farms, ASIC or GPU, and people who dump for profit, early in a coins lifecycle it needs to build community. We may not get the chance to build this community if we stick to scrypt. Largely because those smaller miners that provide a broad base are going to be avoiding scrypt coins. We have an opportunity to open the door to the wider community by switching, I don't think it should be wasted. Building an economy around this coin means having more people around and a low barrier to entry early on. Not creating a massive barrier early in it's lifecycle.
Again these are my personal opinions.
.. gonna boost that now!