Topic: Vertcoin - First Scrypt N | First Stealth Address - Privacy without mixer - page 269. (Read 1232732 times)

Again, in case anyone missed it, I present to you, a new block explorer: http://vertexplorer.com

Well, i think if they approach dangerous hashing levels they will be detected and forked. A little asic action should not hurt the coin?

Those that do not go on sale, are not orders of magnitude faster than those who go on sale. They could be 2x faster or 3x faster. That's the difference between ASICs which aren't marketed and ASICs which are. But when you do it with GPU vs ASIC it'll be like 100x faster. That's a real problem right there. And what are you going to do if you don't even know it? You can speculate that its GPU power and risk a hard fork to another PoW that could leave a window of opportunity open for a 51% attack from a group which is serious about seizing the opportunity during the moment of transition in order to become the dominant controller of the blockchain. And if that 51% attack is successful and, say, the attacker does some pretty nasty stuff, the currency might be hurt badly.


It depends on the market cap of scrypt-N coins by that time and if their daily production is worth it. If the daily mining production of scrypt-N coins is like 1000 btc equivalent and the asic manufacturer can gain like 30% of them while masquarading as "gpu farms", it can work smoothly. It'll be like 150k USD per day income at current BTC rates rates. Over a month it'll be 4.5 million usd. And if BTC goes to 900$, double that.

I don't like PoS. No work should mean no money, just like in the real world. With this method early adopters get most coins for little work. Plus miners will only get tx fees when most bag holders do what they do; hold bags generating no tx fees..

I've listened to every podcast and read everything. I even spammed btc-e trollbox on every occasion at the risk of a ban
It is irelevant if i believe if the devs will keep their word or not. What matters is what asic developers believe, and what all coin users believe.

I mostly agree. But i don't believe the chance for stealth asics to be very high. Used asics would be worthless and development costs would be very hard to get back on a few asics. As soon as the asic% gets too high they would run the risk of being forked.

Similarly made ASICs for Bitcoin/Litecoin which do not go on sale, and used by a small group of persons for mining. The situation is even worse, because this small group is confident that no one will disturb them.

You can't tell if an ASIC did it or a GPU farm found the block. You can see hashrates etc, but you cannot know the means involved.


Nope. Neither am I planning too.


Everyone being on the same level (ie having access to ASICs) is an improvement against threats (leveling the playing field). But we've got some things backwards as GPU miners because we like to mine with GPU and not see our profits go down. A coin that pleases miners but isn't taking its network security seriously, is just deluding itself that it is better off with low-level mining equipment (when others could have developed orders of magnitude better mining equipment).

It's exactly the same with the collective delusion of cpu only coins that are at the same time mined by gpu clients that cpu miners are unaware. "It's a botnet", "it's a server farm" etc... yep, sure. That's the kind of delusion that awaits gpu miners when unannounced ASICs will take over. When you've played your own card by stating your intention that you'll shift PoW algorithm when ASICs get out, then it's simply logical that when ASICs are made, they will not be announced. They will simply mine on the network while everyone complains about how unprofitable the coins have become compared to the electricity that they are burning (because ASICs will be taking the bulk of the profit, masquarading as GPUs).

The cryptocurrency networks are more about securing the networks than benefiting a sub-optimal class of miners with excessive energy waste and low hashrates, like the GPU miners. And let's be honest here: Most GPU miners simply "love" certain coins because they can mine them and dump them. They don't care about centralization but rather maximum profit. That's why they end up in the largest pools, hurting the coins that they are mining.

I think if you are making it seem like he devs "may or may not" follow their words and make changes if asics were created for the coin you probably haven't listened to many of the podcasts have you? Have you actually listen to Boristhespider talk? The guy assured everyone that they already have a plan prepared (not might do something) it is already prepared for if asics were to happen today for vertcoin...

Your responses sound like speculation when the message from the devs are very clear. There is no need for a hardfork.

I am saying that if/when vertcoin really gets big asic producers will do what they do. You know it, they know it, the devs know it. At this time we can assume the devs will act as they more or less said so. This may be enough to scare the asics away but we can't be sure of that. If a mechanism exists to make a hardfork easier then asic developers will not be as willing to even think of developing one for scrypt-n.
It doesn't have to be too fancy either. Any action to show asic producers to keep away helps. Something like a popup in the wallet every 2 month to check for updates helps. A mechanism that detects updates for wallets and notifies the client is even better.

LTC devs simply thought memoRy requirement was going to be too expensive to build an asic for. They pushed that thought to the community i was guilty to think that an asic scrypt require gddr5 like gpu. It's not..gridseed uses cheap sram. LTC devs are play it safe people make a robust design, work around until fork is inevitable, like SAP people. If they decide to go the route VTC takes they would've done it back when Gpu mining was first demonstrated. Not sure why you need to push VTC devs to prepare for a fork, i guess they are already inline with that thought.

But in any case it is better than to sit and wait for the ASICs, the more that VTC could at any time change the POW function and ASICs remain out of work. In addition there are already services that allow to collect statistics on production of new blocks in the VTC network. And developers of VTC look on her.
P.S. What are you doing here? Bought ASIC for scrypt ? Go to accelerate the difficult of scrypt forks :-). I made select - VTC is my favorite cryptocurrency. RIP LTC for me. Cryptocurrency must be improved against new threats. How to constantly improving methods security of banknote and banking systems. If this doesn't happen - cryptocurrency dies.

This is no guarantee. If Vert, says, attain Litecoin #2 status and goes to, say, 100-200-500mn market cap, an ASIC manufacturer could create 100 VTC asics and never announce them as such but simply use them to gain an enormous share from the mining (that more than pays out his own development cost). He'd simply spread his hashpower around to various pools so that his hashpower doesn't seem very concentrated, and then rape the network while everyone is thinking that its just GPU-farms hashrate since "there are no ASICs".

What then? If there are no announced asics how can the devs take the initiative to proceed to a hardfork? Based on what? The mere suspicion that there are ASIC miners out there in the wild?

Thats the problem right there. Litecoin devs also said their coin was asic resistant. Maybe they didn't say they would ever change to a different PoW when the neede arises, but whats in a word? History shows that coins once released do not get updated very often if at all. What happens in 2 years from now? And 5? I say stop with talks and act. Prepare for a fork beforehand because the need to fork is inevitable. Only when the coin's users and the asic developers know for sure that no asic will be allowed in now or in the future is a coin asic resistant/proof.

+1.
Vertcoin developers are the only ones who said that they are ready to change POW function for VTC if ASICs will threaten VTC.
I sold 350+ LTC and bought 3700+VTC.

Once a coin becomes mainstream.
Mining will transform into a daily routine and all we talked about elitism in ASIC will be mere history.
At that time everyone will have ASIC chip in their tablets to help process transactions.
VTC is the only coin with devs laying out plan from the beginning to fight against ASIC.
I havent seen other coin devs mention they realize an active defense against ASIC is necessary.
Elitism is bad, so ASIC is bad for now before VTC goes mainstream.

My 2c.

Miners are pretty competent in doing this on their own (see how they use mining pools, allowing a network to be attacked easily).


Once they exist, their existence as good or evil becomes philosophical and the fact is that everyone should be able to have them as a counterbalance.

MineP.it VTC Pool

Register now, if you haven't already done so, and prepare your workers get mining.

Stratum connection example:
stratum+tcp://vtc.minep.it:3339 -u MinepitUsername.anything -p anything

MinePit Pools

• One registration to access all our pools
• Auto payouts every minute
• Super fast, powerful, scale-able servers
• Unbeatable DDOS protection
• Unique, custom interface and back-end infrastructure
• Super fast compile times - we aim to be one of the first pools running at every launch

Register Now!

Quote bonanza!
Or i better just react to a few points. Btw, keep 'em comming. The more input the better the(my) understanding!

Cheap asics are as bad as expensive asics. Yes, a simpler PoW will allow cheaper asics (just look at BTC), but as always manufacturers will want to make faster versions (and sell them at a higher price, again look at BTC) so the prices for the asic miners will go up, and the number of asic producers will go down resulting in more centralisation. Expensive asics will lead to centralisation from the moment of release.

I am not going to defend the miners' ethics. A coin is developed with a set of features, at least one of them should set guidelines for miners they cannot circumvent like being 'asic resistant'. Miners will always choose the path of the biggest profit and switch to asics if they can. Miners with asics are no problem as long as there are more miners (in hashing power) than mining factories. The only way to guarantee that is by banning asics from your coin.

The problem of cpu/gpu miners is not a problem from the coin's perspective. Neither method is centralised (if you ignore botnets) and a switch from scrypt-n back to a cpu-only PoW shouldn't create too big of a problem (except for miners with tons of gpus). The centralisation of mining power would not change much.

and a quote
Asics are not neutral. Their existence destroys decentralisation sooner or later. Whether the asics are run by a (possibly hostile) government , a factory or rogue investors makes no difference. The only safe place for an asic would be at Joe Generic Miner, but once they exist you cannot rule out that they will get in the hands of the other parties.

 

Yep.


It wouldn't be if ASICs were mass-manufactured, affordable and far friendlier with the electric bill than GPUs. But yes, I get the point.


It depends on the scope one has. If all people care about is who mines what and our daily profitability, then ASICs are a nightmare. Let's not kid ourselves. The average miner doesn't give a shit about the centralization of power. Case in point the way miners behave with big pools, while a coin is still in the GPU-only phase.

If one's scope is broader, in that they understand that cryptocurrencies present a threat to the multitrillion fiat scam and that cryptocurrencies might come under attack by governments through ASICs (that the governments can afford), then there is a huge problem. For a small ASIC manufacturer won't go for an ASIC implementation but a government-employed ASIC manufacturer will. And then a government can switch their newly delivered ASICs on and rape a network with 51% and suddenly a coin becomes WORTHLESS because its hashrate security was lacking, as the developers were "busy" promoting the evils of ASICs and how good their gpu coin was.

As long as there is no level playing field between the miners and someone who can obtain something which is order of magnitudes faster = there is an enormous problem / a ticking time bomb. It's like CPU coins that are fearful of GPU miners lurking somewhere in secret, but even worse in scale.


Heh...


No premine. Just a diminishing return formula. Whether it is done on a tight time-schedule (like Doge did with launching half of its coins in like 2-3 months), or with a diminishing block reward, it doesn't really matter.


And that's not good for the future of scrypt-n coins when they get to the asic stage and asics are expensive to buy for the average joe.


Miners have a vested interest to not destroy a coin otherwise their equipment or coins will be useless. But as I said earlier, let's not kid ourselves: Miners don't give a shit about decentralization and the proof is in the fact that people go to large mining pools rather than p2pools, just to avoid variance. Whether we are talking about litecoin, dogecoin or even bitcoin.


Asics are neutral. Neither good or bad. I'd rather have the possibility of having an ASIC rather than knowing that a laboratory somewhere, or a government agency has them, and we the people do not. And I'd rather for them to be cheap and affordable, instead of being mighty expensive.

They are certainly not as useful as GPUs or CPUs for other tasks, and that's a huge minus, but what can you do... if they are energy-saving they will pay for themselves in the long run with the saved electric costs that 50 GPUs would require.

Welcome to all new Vertans | Vertcoin Miners | Investors | Hobbyists!

Firstly, tough times ahead for Cryptocurrency mean that we need to be supportive more than ever of our community to get through this. I remain positive and upbeat in regards to Vertcoin's long-term, and it is my main coin of investment.

I also operate a Vertcoin Pool https://pool.verters.com - this has been around since mid february, and has been slowly gaining users.

I'm hoping to get this pool to be one of the big three, and therefore spread the hashrate more evenly among the bigger pools. I would appreciate your support.

Thanks for your time.