I wish there was more competition for ASiC products. It's been a pyramid, with CPU as the base, then $200-$400 AMD video cards. A handful (like 5?) companies then make FPGAs, now BFL is the apex predator at the very top of the pyramid. So, as the apex predator, they can make you wait as long as they want, pay as much as they want, not respond to emails/ phone calls, etc.
I only think ASIC will spell doomsday if this monopoly lasts after BFL rolls out the SC devices. People in all other areas of the pyramid will simply get frustrated and leave Bitcoin, IMO. You'll have only early adopters with plenty of disposable income citing over transaction fees.
Full disclosure: I own five singles and have pre ordered one SC single.
Topic: BFLs ASIC == BTC doomsday? - page 2. (Read 7697 times)
EDIT: As a great man once said, "you never want to be first", and in the case of decentralized crypto-currency, it's Bitcoin.
I don't know about that. I'd love to have been one of the early adopters and made (and saved) thousands of coins when they were easy to make and worth a few cents a piece.
The quote was referring to newly invented solutions, not the users. They used tivo, altavista, myspace, and xerox as examples.
how about change the algorithm and break GPU and FPGA farms?
New algorithms will not affect the FPGA or GPU. If the algorithm changes only ASIC will be deemed useless.
EDIT: As a great man once said, "you never want to be first", and in the case of decentralized crypto-currency, it's Bitcoin.
I don't know about that. I'd love to have been one of the early adopters and made (and saved) thousands of coins when they were easy to make and worth a few cents a piece.
Quote
What people need is a CPU only currency. It's not the best solution, but in terms of evenly redistributing a currency, it may be the best option, and I'd love to hear a better one.
When the last bitcoin is mined, might it not come to that? Why throw terra hashes of power at processing blocks of transactions when megahashes will do just fine? Right now it's greed that's driving the generation of coins. That's driving difficulty up as people are putting more and more money into crazy schemes from companies with horrible reputations (no names) to buy dirt cheap ASICs that might turn out to be total scams.
When there are no more coins to generate, then what?
M
It will definitely squeeze out the GPU and CPU miners, and put the majority of the bashing power in the hands of people who can afford the specialty mining hardware.
My impression is that this is the point of the BFL "Jalapeno" board - to have ASIC mining hardware within reach of consumer budgets.Not that $150 is cheap, you understand! Just within reach.
First of all, the reason Bitcoin has been adopted so rapidly is because it used hardware most people already had access to, so just about anyone could mine themselves some coins, and those who could afford to invest money in something so volatile could simply buy more GPUs with the confidence that they would at least have some decent resale value if bitcoin flopped.
Once you require specialized hardware to mine bitcoins, you alienate a very large swath of your mining user base. Which isn't the end of the world, but it makes acquiring bitcoins that much more expensive for the curious public.
Then once you consider that hashing power is proportional to how much money you invest, and that there are some very big investors out there looking to buy ASIC devices, the bitcoins you can mine with a $150 device will be a very tiny fraction of the allotted block reward.
Remember, since the rate of coin generation is constant, buying more hashing power only increases your share of the reward, not the total amount of the reward. So if everyone buys more hardware, then you're right back where you started, just with less money in your pocket.
EDIT: As a great man once said, "you never want to be first", and in the case of decentralized crypto-currency, it's Bitcoin.
What people need is a CPU only currency. It's not the best solution, but in terms of evenly redistributing a currency, it may be the best option, and I'd love to hear a better one.
how about change the algorithm and break GPU and FPGA farms?
The difference there, from my understanding, is those can be programattically changed because they are open and driven by software. ASIC, however, is stamped in the hardware, and can not be changed.
M
Now, if 2SHA256 was broken in half in a single leap of cryptographic genius, then I think we have a problem. Not because the network becomes impossible to secure; the change in algorithm can be accompanied by a reset of difficulty, so the sudden contraction of hashing power isn't a big deal. But from the time the exploit is found, to the time the hash function changes, everything is uncertain and double-spend attacks can run roughshod over the world. Of course, I think (and hope!) this is an unlikely scenario, since, as I've said before, usually crypto functions aren't broken all at once.
Being able to change the difficulty is the piece I missed.
That's good, no doomsday. And here I was working out the math and saw it coming awful close to December 21, 2012.
M
how about change the algorithm and break GPU and FPGA farms?
It is unusual for a hash function to go from "secure" to "utterly broken" in one exploit. Usually, what happens is that it gradually weakens.
So let's say there's an exploit which makes SHA-256 only 1% as hard to brute-force as it used to be. At that point, it's a long way from being broken - there's 256 bits there, after all, and finding a collision is still a 2^121 hard problem (instead of 2^128). But... FPGAs and GPUs can take advantage of that exploit, and ASICs cannot. Suddenly, BFL's devices have ceased to be worth the amount people are paying for them, and anyone with a good graphics card can mine again. And you don't need to change the algorithm, because 2^121 is still plenty hard to serve as proof of work.
Now, if 2SHA256 was broken in half in a single leap of cryptographic genius, then I think we have a problem. Not because the network becomes impossible to secure; the change in algorithm can be accompanied by a reset of difficulty, so the sudden contraction of hashing power isn't a big deal. But from the time the exploit is found, to the time the hash function changes, everything is uncertain and double-spend attacks can run roughshod over the world. Of course, I think (and hope!) this is an unlikely scenario, since, as I've said before, usually crypto functions aren't broken all at once.
Not that $150 is cheap, you understand! Just within reach.
So let's say there's an exploit which makes SHA-256 only 1% as hard to brute-force as it used to be. At that point, it's a long way from being broken - there's 256 bits there, after all, and finding a collision is still a 2^121 hard problem (instead of 2^128). But... FPGAs and GPUs can take advantage of that exploit, and ASICs cannot. Suddenly, BFL's devices have ceased to be worth the amount people are paying for them, and anyone with a good graphics card can mine again. And you don't need to change the algorithm, because 2^121 is still plenty hard to serve as proof of work.
Now, if 2SHA256 was broken in half in a single leap of cryptographic genius, then I think we have a problem. Not because the network becomes impossible to secure; the change in algorithm can be accompanied by a reset of difficulty, so the sudden contraction of hashing power isn't a big deal. But from the time the exploit is found, to the time the hash function changes, everything is uncertain and double-spend attacks can run roughshod over the world. Of course, I think (and hope!) this is an unlikely scenario, since, as I've said before, usually crypto functions aren't broken all at once.
It will definitely squeeze out the GPU and CPU miners, and put the majority of the bashing power in the hands of people who can afford the specialty mining hardware.
My impression is that this is the point of the BFL "Jalapeno" board - to have ASIC mining hardware within reach of consumer budgets.Not that $150 is cheap, you understand! Just within reach.
It will definitely squeeze out the GPU and CPU miners, and put the majority of the bashing power in the hands of people who can afford the specialty mining hardware.
If you are going to change the algorithm, you can also reduce the difficulty at the same time. Nothing forces the devs to keep the same difficulty if devs are making a change as drastic as changing the algorithm.
There are tons of threads out there about BFL's ASIC, how it's good, how it's bad. I doubt I've read them all, but I've read a good number, and I don't think I've yet seen anyone say this.
Based on what I've seen, I was thinking we have a doomsday scenario on our hands for bitcoin if the following comes to pass:
1 - BFL delivers on their promise of ASIC throughput, at the cost they say. Doesn't matter really if they are 3 months late, 6 months late, or even a year late.
2 - Network hashing power rapidly increases immensely, to the point that ASICs are 99% of the hashing power on the network. Who's going to run a measly 5g h/s setup when there are multiple terra hash rigs out there?
3 - A critical flaw is found in the encryption algorithm of bitcoin. Either a flaw, or computing power makes the existing algorithm easily breakable. Some people are saying this is more of an WHEN not an IF.
At that point, we have two choices, both of which spell the end of bitcoin:
a - Leave the algorithm alone, causing it to be hacked and unreliable, and bitcoin dies.
b - Change the algorithm and break ASICs, which are 99% of the hashing power of the network. Difficulty at this point is astronomically high for the remaining 1% of the die hard FPGAs and GPU users. Yes, difficulty adjusts periodically every so many blocks. But what if it takes weeks to solve a block with the remaining 1%? That's essentially the end of bitcoin.
Yes, no, maybe so?
M
Based on what I've seen, I was thinking we have a doomsday scenario on our hands for bitcoin if the following comes to pass:
1 - BFL delivers on their promise of ASIC throughput, at the cost they say. Doesn't matter really if they are 3 months late, 6 months late, or even a year late.
2 - Network hashing power rapidly increases immensely, to the point that ASICs are 99% of the hashing power on the network. Who's going to run a measly 5g h/s setup when there are multiple terra hash rigs out there?
3 - A critical flaw is found in the encryption algorithm of bitcoin. Either a flaw, or computing power makes the existing algorithm easily breakable. Some people are saying this is more of an WHEN not an IF.
At that point, we have two choices, both of which spell the end of bitcoin:
a - Leave the algorithm alone, causing it to be hacked and unreliable, and bitcoin dies.
b - Change the algorithm and break ASICs, which are 99% of the hashing power of the network. Difficulty at this point is astronomically high for the remaining 1% of the die hard FPGAs and GPU users. Yes, difficulty adjusts periodically every so many blocks. But what if it takes weeks to solve a block with the remaining 1%? That's essentially the end of bitcoin.
Yes, no, maybe so?
M
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