I've been meaning to write this when the BFL ASICs started shipping, but it probably doesn't hurt to get the ball rolling on this a bit earlier. I may be opening a can of worms, though; we'll see.
Inaba, I have initial questions about the existing hardware and how it maps to outstanding BFLS and BFLS.RIG shares:
1. are all (or at least a large majority of) BFLS shares backed by Singles?
2. are all (or at least a large majority of) BFLS.RIG shares backed by MiniRigs?
Whether they are or not is not that important right now (unless someone wanted to convert their shares to hardware, I suppose), but it may become important with the conversion to ASIC. Which brings me to another set of questions:
3. can you share some details of your current plan in converting the existing BFLS and RIG hardware to SC ASIC? Specifically (but not limited to):
3a. is it your intention to convert ALL existing FPGA hardware?
3b. have the upgrade orders been placed with BFL yet?
3c. are any of these orders likely to be part of the 'first batch' shipment from BFL?
3d. what is the (best guess) expected rollout schedule once ASIC shipments start and conversion begins?
And regarding BFLS and RIG share conversion:
4. will share conversion happen along the lines I've outlined here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.14550884a. will BFLS and RIG shares be combined at this point, or still kept separate? Currently the hashrates of a BFLS and RIG share are essentially identical (1.5% advantage to RIG) but after conversion an 'SC BFLS' will have 10% more hashrate than an 'SC RIG' share. This may be an opportunity to combine the two into one pot using a 1:1.1 ratio as discussed earlier.
The reason I ask is that I've been using the blockchain to track BFLS(.RIG) dividend payments in detail since the end of December. This has been straightforward because the hardware is all FPGAs and both BFLS and RIG shares hash at approximately the same rate.
But that will no longer be case once ASICs start replacing them, so I'd like to get a sense of the hardware breakdown to be able to calculate the expected dividend payments. There will be a transition period until all FPGAs are replaced; I'm not too worried about tracking that. I'm more interested in what the final hardware will be and how it will map to 'SC BFLS' and 'SC RIG' shares. Or if the two share types will be combined going forward.
A lot of questions in here, and not the type to be answered easily or quickly; I apologize for that. But I'll thank you in advance for any clarification you can provide.