Mining will yield ZERO income if the Bitcoin community decides ASICMINING is a threat and changes the hashing algorithm so our ASICs don't mine valid blocks.
I'm really disappointed someone as prominent as you would make these misinformed suggestions over the rise of ASIC. It's not like this hasn't been debated thoroughly over the years here.
I'm not suggesting it be done, just concerned about the risk that it might be considered necessary by the community (no one man can do it).
If they haven't yet - the mining pools should introduce variable share difficulty. P2pool supports it. This way strong and weak miners can coexist peacefully.
That only solves the share/result side of the problem. You still need to getwork for every 4 GH/s.
An ASICMINER chip is expected to make 1GH/s so a getwork request so 1getwork/4s per chip, while a japaleno makes 3,5 GHash/s? I wonder why you come on this problem here and not in an BFL thread.
I was asked here. The same "problem" applies to BFL ASICs and any other super-high speed mining device. I assume anyone making ASICs (and I know for sure including BFL) has given thought to the problem by now, and it's not like there isn't a solution developed already.
There
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1122034 you stated:
There are currently zero legitimate grounds to justify even wanting ASICs broken.
And now as BFL gets an competitor this isn't still true? Sounds like BFL lobbying.
BFL says they are selling 100% (or close to it?) of their ASICs immediately, and a bunch at the same time to prevent any one person from having a chance to abuse it. ASICMINER has announced they plan to hoard their first batch and mine with it before anyone else has ASICs, thus centrally controlling a Bitcoin-threatening amount of hashrate. See the difference? As for "BFL lobbying"... while I do stand with BFL, I also stand with ASICMINER - I want them to succeed, and am even a shareholder; but that doesn't make these risks/concerns just disappear either.
All that being said, I'd like to note the following for anyone considering changing the algorithm:
- It sounds like ASICMINER's total will be under the 50% required to do anything evil, even accounting for some variance.
- With BFL (and other vendors) shipping ASICs to consumers within 2 months, any opportunity time for abuse is very limited.
- Most 51% attacks can be dealt with after the fact; that is, the algorithm change would be more or less just as effective if it is only IF abused. So there is no need to cut it off just for holding (near) 51% short-term.
- While the "time travel" attack remains a risk that cannot easily be dealt with after the fact, the practical reality is that it takes much longer or much more percent of hashrate to pull off, which ASICMINER probably won't have (less than 2 months and not much more than 50% if that)
- Changing the algorithm breaks all old clients and miners, requiring more work for developers and forcing every miner to update.
