Ethereum: New Rules for Mining, Staking, Set for Casper Update
Mining Ethereum will remain viable for a while, but will start to be phased out, firstly by lowering the block reward for mining to 0.6 ETH. At the moment, the reward has been lowered to 3 ETH, as a part of the Byzantium update.
Serving as a validator on the Ethereum network will happen through a Casper smart contract, where users would pledge their coins and set the size of their stake. The new proof-of-stake mechanics would serve to define which is the “canonical” blockchain.
One of the dangers of Ethereum is an inadvertent fork, where clients find themselves on two separate, incompatible networks. The new staking mechanism would help resolve the conflict and point clients to the correct blockchain.
But the staking of Ethereum would be much less lucrative, with the final plan of receiving just 0.22 ETH per block. This is due to the much more economical nature of staking compared to mining.
Ethereum Turns Against ASICWhile Ethereum is mostly mined through GPUs, in theory all coins can see a specialized machine, or an ASIC, produced. A proposal has been made to make changes to the Ethereum protocol, which would make any available machines obsolete.
Opinions on ASICs vary, and some believe that the high hashing power increases security. Others believe this leads to centralization. Now, a new proposal has been made to create ASIC resistance for Ethereum.
It must be noted that there are limited sources on the Ethereum ASIC creation.
Allegedly, a Chinese entity, Bit Continental, has engineered, or even uses the machine. The voting on a potential hard fork counted 766 votes for, and 31 against the fork.
Ethereum’s hash rate has also tripled since December, with more miners coming online, but so far, it is unknown whether ASIC mining has entered the equation. WOWIs that what keeps the ETH price falls?Ether centralization issue obviously makes ETH falls?What is Vitalik strategy to increase Power ETH?Hopefully : hope of returning to the moon