ASICs don't appear to change the scale dynamics, in the long run.
In the beginning, it made sense for the first few ASIC producers to run their devices internally. That world seems to be passing into history, rather than growing.
Topic: BTC no more real p2p ? (Read 776 times)
Depends on the aspects of Bitcoin you're looking at.
Mining is getting somewhat centralized - both through the formation of pools, which has been going on for quite some time, and through the mining activities of ASIC manufacturers.
However, as long as hashing power is distributed enough such that a 51% attack is unlikely, this is not a big problem for the security of Bitcoin. Depending on your economic beliefs, the concentration of mining rewards at the ASIC manufacturers (either directly by operating rigs or indirectly by taking premiums from rig buyers) can be seen as unfair concentration of wealth or as well-deserved return on investment.
The other aspect (distributed transaction processing) is still mostly p2p as long as enough people operate full nodes, even if they don't mine. I don't know the numbers, but I think there are still plenty of them.
Onkel Paul
Mining is getting somewhat centralized - both through the formation of pools, which has been going on for quite some time, and through the mining activities of ASIC manufacturers.
However, as long as hashing power is distributed enough such that a 51% attack is unlikely, this is not a big problem for the security of Bitcoin. Depending on your economic beliefs, the concentration of mining rewards at the ASIC manufacturers (either directly by operating rigs or indirectly by taking premiums from rig buyers) can be seen as unfair concentration of wealth or as well-deserved return on investment.
The other aspect (distributed transaction processing) is still mostly p2p as long as enough people operate full nodes, even if they don't mine. I don't know the numbers, but I think there are still plenty of them.
Onkel Paul
As I see year from now there will be no miners with small power, not counting GPU miners, that is already almost dead for mining btc, but small power that will be 100GH/s per miner next year, because as it looks like there will be just few big asic farms that will hold the bitcoin network, because network will rise so much that for all small miners will be not rentable.
So my conclusion is that btc is loosing peer to peer system, if all ends on 10 peers we will again have system that is in hands of few. Ok shares of many people in that hashing power but all infrastructure will be centralized, power will not be in peoples hands if you understand me.
Am I wrong or this is next level of evolution of bitcoin?
So my conclusion is that btc is loosing peer to peer system, if all ends on 10 peers we will again have system that is in hands of few. Ok shares of many people in that hashing power but all infrastructure will be centralized, power will not be in peoples hands if you understand me.
Am I wrong or this is next level of evolution of bitcoin?
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