Ethereum Core Devs Meeting 45 Agenda

[lrettig]

Ethereum Core Devs Meeting 45 Agenda

Meeting Date/Time: Friday 24 August 2018 at 14:00 UTC

Meeting Duration 1.5 hours

YouTube Live Stream Link

Livepeer Stream Link

Constantinople Progress

Agenda

1. Testing
2. Client Updates
3. Research Updates
4. Constantinople a. EIP 1014 Issues b. EIP 1218: Simpler blockhash refactoring. Looks like we are dropping this one unless someone speaks up, like, immediately. c. EIP 1283: 1283 is moving forward per discussions on the previous call and the core devs chat room.
5. Three competing EIPs to delay the difficulty bomb and reduce/maintain the block reward: a. EIP-858 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 1 ETH per block. b. EIP-1234 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 2 ETH. c. EIP-1295 - Delay bomb, keep rewards to 3 ETH, change other factors such as POW incentive structure. There is renewed interest from miners to implement ProgPoW.

Different articles/links regarding potential issuance reduction conversation:

• A Case for Ethereum Block Reward Reduction to 2 ETH in Constantinople (EIP-1234)
• Reddit discussion of the above article
• Coinvote (79 participants): What should be done regarding proof-of-work issuance until Casper is ready?
• FEM Forum: EIP-1234 vs EIP-1227: Constantinople Difficulty Bomb & Block reward
• Bitfly Twitter Post on Miner Opinion
• FEM Forum: Final Request From the GPU Mining Community
• EIP 1295 Presentation
• Ethereum’s Economic Breakpoint: An Analysis

[nico9111]

@salanki the problem with your logic is that people won't "buy ETH instead of spending it on electricity", they'll wait for the price to drop even more as inflation will still be way too high. This will bring the price to such unsustainable levels that the majority will take their loss and move away.

[salanki]

@nico9111: Doesn't really matter what they do with their money for my argument, I just tried to illustrate that no one will mine ETH when it is cheaper to buy it. The point with that post is that there is a risk of losing security due to centralization if not acting against ASICs, regardless of issuance. If we act against ASICs and lower the issuance at least we know what the network demographics will be the same, albeit smaller.

[atlanticcrypto]

Network hashrate growth has been hugely supportive of the purchasing power of ETH. To not recognize this is to not understand Proof of Work economics.

When you do not change supply of a good (constant block reward), but increase demand for a good (increased hashpower), the economic value of that good increases. Look at the amount of electricity spent to mine 1 ETH as a basis for purchasing power - it is the minimum purchasing power of ETH. It is why Proof of Work systems with fixed issuance are so damn valuable.

[OhGodAGirl]

@olalawal In the current Dagger Hashimoto implementation there is power savings to be gained by switching to a dedicated piece of hardware, considering you can strip away the core and just have a ton of DDR3/DDR4/GDDR5. There is also the financial savings, as you pointed out.

ProgPoW utilizes the core in order to minimize that advantage that dedicated hardware can gain.

Remember - ASICs aren't the future. Programmable hardware, be it FPGAs or GPUs, are. The things you mine your coins on should be usable for a better tomorrow, as well as a better today.

[cheeselord1]

For visibility, I'm cross-posting my post on reddit titled A comprehensive review of miner arguments against issuance reduction

First I wanted to start by saying Hudson Jameson did a phenomenal job wrangling all these different stakeholders to the core devs meeting today and playing the part of an effective, neutral moderator. It was a really interesting meeting and great to hear all viewpoints. I'm sure many of you live streamed it as well.

I’m an Ethereum investor and active user, and I took notes on the most prominent miner arguments against issuance reduction along with my thoughts on each. Would love to hear any thoughts or any ones I may have missed.

GPUs that leave network after issuance reduction can be used to attack Network Security (Xin Xu)

Xin Xu argues that a decline in issuance from 3 to 2 (33%) will cause a drop in hashrate by 33%, and that such a large drop in hashrate will lead to an influx of GPUs on the market that can be used to attack Ethereum. This argument is predicated on the idea that hashrate will drop significantly. However, any drop in hashrate will decrease difficulty so mathematically a 33% drop in issuance should have at most a ~22% impact to total hashrate assuming a linear relationship. I don't believe that a drop in Ethereum Network Hashrate from current levels (280 TH/s) to January 2018 levels (230 TH/s) is a doomsday scenario. And the real drop will certainly be much lower for two reasons. 1) Historical data shows that hashrate is extremely resilient against drops in price as well as issuance (source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlTEyKBV4AERGtB.jpg:large). 2) Historical data also shows that all Ethereum and Bitcoin issuance reductions were followed by price increases which could partially or completely offset the decline in hashrate.

Issuance Reduction will drive a dramatic shift in hardware composition of the network (Brian Venturo)

Brian Venturo argues that a reduction in issuance will price out GPU miners and cause the network to dramatically shift towards ASIC miners in the short term, increasing mining centralization. However, miners on the call pointed out that currently available ASICS (Antminer E3) is in-line with top GPUs in terms of mining efficiency. It’s only when we compare claims from as-yet unreleased ASIC manufacturers (Innosilicon A10) to 2-year old GPU technology (GTX 1080) that we see any risk of an efficiency gap. Second, the total Ethereum network hashrate is 280 TH/s. This is equivalent to 577,000 Innosilicon A10s, which would cost $3.3 Billion (at $5700 each). Any shift of even 10-20% in Ethereum network hardware composition will be slow and steady, and as we heard on the call, miners looking to spend significant capital on new hardware are considering major ROI headwinds from 1) upcoming shift to PoS and 2) possible exploration of new ASIC-resistant algos like ProgPOW. Both of these would brick current generation ASICS while GPUS would retain their resale value. More work needs to be done exploring ASIC-resistant POW algorithms, and there's no reason why issuance-reduction EIPs should be roadblocked in the interim.

EIP 1295 as an alternative (Brian Venturo)

Brian Venturo cites the current rules around Uncle and Nephew rewards as causing weird incentives that miners are exploiting to maximize uncle rate and squeeze higher issuance out of the network. This is a super interesting point, and one that I would love to see explored in more detail (as the downstream implications could be quite complex) in addition to EIP-1234. There’s no reason why 1295 is mutually exclusive with EIP-1234, and positioning it that way is a clever tactic to delay any issuance reduction. Brian himself suggested an issuance reduction in 2019 on top of EIP-1295.

My Final thought

I am in full support of EIP-1234 as a moderate issuance reduction to reduce Ethereum inflation and the amount we are overpaying miners for security. Looking back on it, last year’s 40% reduction from 5 eth/block to 3 eth/block has turned out to be a phenomenally good decision. Since then, hashrates have increased 3x while price has declined 20% (was $330 pre-fork), all while we reduced inflation by 40%. Another modest issuance reduction is a prudent decision that is a natural step in Ethereum’s growth and consistent with the original vision for inflation. In contrast, a difficulty bomb delay without a corresponding issuance reduction should be viewed as an issuance increase.

The quicker we can get this decision behind us, the better. As long as this question looms, investors will lack confidence in Ethereum’s monetary policy, and mining stakeholders will have massive incentive to decrease Ethereum price until Constantinople to increase the chance they can mine at inflated rates through 2019

[nico9111]

@souptacular I would like to propose something to you and the EF. I understand that no central body should make decision in regards to governance and that a community based approach is favored. Anyhow, I was quite surprised and frustrated that for such an important discussion regarding the future of Ethereum, no-one was assigned to give voice to the chat (members of the Ethereum community), to dapp developers, to investors but mainly to Ethereum developers and miners. Also, at no point in time was referenced a carbon vote process and a quick how-to proceed to vote (not everybody is familiar on how to do it). My point is that even though the EF is not meant to govern the ecosystem, it should at least assign someone organized and who is able to get to the point to be the voice for the community in voting mechanism and chatters, redditors, twittters etc... there are analytic tools that can be easily verified to suggest that a preference among a group is for this or that... Don’t get me wrong, I realize this is not your job overall to handle that kind of thing but as the host of such an important topic, it is expected of you or at least the EF to properly handle that. Thanks

[olalawal]

It was a pretty one sided discussion which is why it comes out seeming that there was consensus regarding issuance reduction with no pow algo change which is totally false. A poll on bitcointalk where alot of miners of all types freqent will easily prove as a majority they totally disagree with the above summary by @cheeselord1

we 💯 disagree with your final thoughts as a community, either leave things as they are and march towards pos with the exiting issuance rate OR fix the root problem of hashrate centralization by adopting a fork.

Sometimes the hardest path is the correct one, if it was easy to half ass fix the inflation problem and not fix the centralization issues we would not be discussing this at all.

Dev’s don’t take the easy route do whats needed for the long term. We need to know how much ASICs dominate the network, this is the only true way to do it

Fork to progpow or cn variant 2 as linked in one of my prior posts

[olalawal]

Is like to see a poll on here and on the bitcointalk, mining altcoins thread

Somone throw up a poll

q1 Reduce eth issuance per block only q2 Reduce eth iasuance per block AND impement an anti ASIC fork q3 leave things as the now

of course the pol needs to be one vote per

[nico9111]

@olalawal https://www.etherchain.org/coinvote/poll/298

[olalawal]

@nico9111

Incomplete poll, theres nothing about an asic resistant fork as an option, why even link that worthless poll

[nico9111]

@olalawal

The main topic that needs deliberation is the rewards issuance model to follow. Once the community agree on this number we can set another poll to vote on asic resistance. It’s a valuable poll that’s going on right now that the community is voting on. I agree though that next step should be to agree on asic resistance or not...

[atlanticcrypto]

That poll has 86 participants.

There are approximately 228,000 community members mining on the top 6 pools. They were represented today by SparkPool and Ethermine. Don't forget them.

Do not invalidate a miner's opinion because they are a miner - they choose to invest in the Ethereum ecosystem in a different manner - their hardware, while holding some optionality, is directly tied to the value of Ethereum, just like your holdings.

The ecosystem wants the price of Ethereum to go higher. It's better for investors and miners alike. Doing so by messing with monetary policy in large fits and jumps can only work for so long.

[nico9111]

@atlanticrypto 86 votes now, waiting for the miners to vote too. Nobody invalidates anybody. Just vote...

[olalawal]

we will not vote on a poll that does not cover our MAIN concern, there is no point

[nico9111]

then propose a carbonvote on etherchain.org that covers: a. EIP-858 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 1 ETH per block. b. EIP-858 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 1 ETH per block. + ProgPOW c. EIP-1234 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 2 ETH d. EIP-1234 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 2 ETH+ ProgPOW. e. EIP-1295 - Delay bomb, keep rewards to 3 ETH, f. EIP-1295 - Delay bomb, keep rewards to 3 ETH, + ProgPOW and see where it goes. If this is something you really want, you have to go ahead with it. It's an open based community. No one makes any unilateral decision before a voting happens which means the community needs to get its act together and make reasonable proposals to be voted upon. That's what Hudson Jameson meant when he said that the community needs to act to get things done and not just let it go hoping things go their way...

[cheeselord1]

@nico9111 but even that list doesn't cover all the options. Sounds like there's no chance ProgPOW can happen in Constantinople. Simply not enough time for such a large and complex change. So there would need to be differentiation, e.g. between (b-1) EIP-858 - Delay bomb now. In the next HF, reduce block reward to 1 ETH per block and implement ProgPOW (b-2) EIP-858 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 1 ETH per block now. In the next HF, Implement ProgPOW

[nico9111]

@cheeselord1 good points indeed. Timing and technical realities are issues to take into account. Since everybody seem fine with delay bomb now, all EIP votes should include it. And since ProgPow won't realistically be implemented in Constantinople, the following EIP proposals should be:

a. EIP-858 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 1 ETH per block now + NO ProgPOW in next HF b. EIP-858 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 1 ETH per block now + YES ProgPOW in next HF c. EIP-1234 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 2 ETH now + NO ProgPOW in next HF d. EIP-1234 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 2 ETH now + YES ProgPOW in next HF e. EIP-1295 - Delay bomb, keep rewards to 3 ETH now + NO ProgPOW in next HF f. EIP-1295 - Delay bomb, keep rewards to 3 ETH now + YES ProgPOW in next HF

How about that?

[olalawal]

when is the next HF scheduled? and algo change is a trivial update if an existing Algo is used in the iterim.

Progpow could be implemented in the next HF so I gets the testing it needs.

Miners need relief from the asics now , especially if the block reward is dampened

[olalawal]

@nico9111 i would support that voting proposal

[nico9111]

I believe Hudson Jameson said something like 6 to 8 months after if I'm not mistaking.

@olalwal cool:) we 're moving forward. Who is an Etherchain carbonvote specialist? This proposal combination seems fair.

[olalawal]

@nico9111 why are we married to progpow though, I am in support of it but it has not been implemented in any live blockchains as far as I know yet , which creates a risk...there are other asic resistant algorithms out there.

I would prefer if you modified the vote to : ProgPow or a proven Asic Resistant Algorithm

[jean-m-cyr]

I believe progpow is predominant bc it mirrors ethash enough to be recognizable by miner ETH devs, but different enough to block the current wave of ASICs. Not arguing for or against... just trying to answer.

Also only proposed EIP.

[olalawal]

@jean-m-cyr that’s understandable, @ohgodagirl was involved with the delopment of ProgPow , she can provide further insights, honestly if it is a simple block of code that needs to be changed I don’t see why this can’t happen in the current proposed HF

[MoneroCrusher]

I think the best path forward would be decreasing issuance to 2 ETH per block and at the same time kick ASICs off in Constatinople HF. It doesn't matter if it's ProgPOW or another algo like Monero's Cnv2 (which is already deployment ready). So for Constatinople take whichever algo is deployable, and in the end (maybe fork after constatinople) introduce ProgPOW (if it can't be finished/deployed by constatinople). ASICs need to be off the network fast and not in a year. End-users don't even care if the POW changes and it has no effect on the underlying protocol whatsoever, so Ethereum could as well just take a Monero approach and change POW every 6 months until POS, which is a rather trivial thing to do.

Also I disapprove that there's no ASIC resistant option in the poll above. They have to be dealt with at the same time as miners are also part of the community, securing the network.

[johnEth]

I believe the best path forward to improve the health of our Ethereum ecosystem is a compromise where each party gets something they want.

1.) Reduce issuance by 40% to 1.8 ETH/ block (This is based on our most successful reduction from 5 ETH to 3 ETH. This should be done next month with the Constantinople update since it is a simple algorithmic change.) 2.) Institute some type of ASIC resistance be it ProgPOW or some other form.

Issuance reduction will inject confidence by not wastefully over spending and positively affect the price. Some type of ASIC resistance maybe ProgPOW will support miners and increase security although we are already at 3x the security of Bitcoin.

[nico9111]

@johnEth yes the best case scenario in my opinion and fair for all parties. If we have to put a vote upon it we have to make proposals for carbonvote. It'll also help define a better way for the community to govern itself fairly and openly. We got to learn from it and set up tangible standards that will define Ethereum for years to come!

[olalawal]

Here is the current profitability with a 2000 mhs farm , *edited to include power costs for 77 gpus hashing at 28 mhs each pulling 150 watts ( normally 130ish but added a few watts to factor in efficiency loss and motherboard/cpu/memory)

https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr=2000.0&p=10700&fee=2&cost=0.1&hcost=0.0&commit=Calculate

-$380 made by the farm the entire month after power

Now here is an updated chart with issuance reduced to 2 and with a pow fork where the hash rate goes down by 50 % due to asics being forked.

https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr=2000.0&br_enabled=true&br=2.0&d_enabled=true&d=1.754483184844324e%2B15&p=10700&fee=2&cost=0.1&hcost=0.0&commit=Calculate

-$900 usd made the entire month for the farm

as you can see the profitablity is way better with a fork even with the issuance reduction.

Finally this chart shows issuance resuction with no fork, a farm of 2000mhs is basically running deep in the negative.

-.70 cents made by the farm for the entire month!

https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash?utf8=%E2%9C%93&hr=2000.0&br_enabled=true&br=2.0&p=10700&fee=2&cost=0.1&hcost=0.0&commit=Calculate

its pretty plain to see what will happen if you do one without the other.

Also bitmain is doung this new kyc thing where they are gathering user data for purchased equipment.

Its the Chinese government putting pressure on bitmain to disclose who is buying crypto mining equipment since unlike GPUs where you can use for rendering, gaming, folding etc.

Are these the people you want to give the keys to your car?

[olalawal]

Even Zcash is regretting handing their network over the ASICS , They are a privacy oriented coin, with no more GPU miners , now ASIC manufacturer's are requiring buyers of the ASIC's used o the Zcash network to register their personal information LOL .

Ethereum is not a privacy based coin but this just illustrates the dangers of handing over your network to an unconcerned uncaring centralized 3rd party.

https://forum.z.cash/t/bitmain-real-name-authentication/30967/61

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[VoskCoin]

Ethereum mining is what ultimately led to cryptocurrency consuming my life (in an amazing way), and that would have never happened if Ethereum was previously an ASIC mined coin. The grassroots impact of ETH GPU mining should not be overlooked. ProgPoW seems to be the best available option to preserve this, if the developers deem it worthy to be preserved.

[MoneroCrusher]

Absolutely agree. Exactly the same for me. I was looking to be part of the network and help make it better and at the same time make money off of it without having to resort to speculative trading. And the bridge between the two worlds was a GPU, and I already had one in my PC! I tried it and I liked it and basically got into crypto. Now if an ASIC was required all this would have never happened. I think decentralized GPU mining led a lot of people into crypto, let's keep it that way.

[SidneyOtt]

Etherium is the 2nd most important crypto, but it might disappear. A fork would bring back the grass root miners. ProgPoW is the way to go.

[jean-m-cyr]

We all know that the day GPU and ASIC mining for ETH comes to an end is on the horizon; it's baked into the plan. Let's celebrate the waning of this golden era of GPU mining for ETH with a little in it for everybody.

Seriously, I'd support a reduction in block rewards to 2 ETH (meet you half way). Investors predict that would affect the valuation? Add to that a tweak to ethash to disable ASICs. There may be much simpler tweaks than ProgPow that can be applied to ethash to disable ASICs. Far less disruptive for ALL the codebases affected... maybe even deliverable for the next fork?

[OhGodAGirl]

So much misinformation about ProgPoW here, and what it does, and how it works.

First and foremost, it's not just a tweak that invalidates ASICs. Anyone involved in the development of hardware knows that these tweaks don't actually do anything when a sequencer and a creative architecture team comes into play, and with the development frame of ASICs, you're looking at about two months before a new revision with an alt-mask comes out.

Secondly, CNv2 and all Cryptonite variants are historically flawed. On a side note, when you go to tune something for multiple variations of a hardware, you run into the issue of actually becoming less centralized-resistant. It's (part) of the reason why ProgPoW is tied to 32-bit, rather than 64-bit.

Thirdly, ProgPoW actually takes very little work to implement in Constantinople. It requires client asistance, but that's about it. The hard part - the GPU architecture - is done. With enough serious adoption, I wager that larger companies will even throw their development efforts behind it. The ask for CNv2 to be adopted is baffling to me, because anyone in the know already knows that there are masks for the damn thing. Should I just start a Medium page, with designs for all these algorithms? If you don't believe me, go believe someone who lives and breaths silicon (someone like David Vorick, for instance).

Fourth, just because code hasn't seen widespread adoption in mainnet coins, doesn't mean it is a risk to implement. That is why the code is open source - you can pretty much catch any issue before being deployed. That's called peer review, folks. Innovation requires taking a chance sometimes.

You don't want to break existing ASICs, you want to tune the algorithm to a piece of hardware (a GPU) that everyone has access to, that is used for other things (not just cryptocurrency mining), and has natural resale value. Actually, there's a ton of neat tricks you can do (like ensuring its specialized on a single card, rather than multiple to benefit Average Joe Miner).

Fifth, ProgPoW is designed to not break ASICs, but to encourage development of open-source GPU cards. Creating an "ASIC" for ProgPoW will end up just mimicking a GPU. Open-source hardware is a wonderful thing. We need more diversity in this space, rather than the big three (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA). Imagine the kind of innovation we can see in a programmable world if everyone and their aunt has access to open-source graphic cards...

The constant whack-a-mole game with ASICs is tiring and a waste of development efforts. Please, don't go down that route.

I am really tickled pink that folks are pushing for ProgPoW, but please understand the algorithm's purpose isn't just to preserve cryptocurrency mining: it's to preserve a future powered by the most energy-friendly, compact, programmable pieces of hardware out there (GPUHoarder, don't you dare start).

Again, as I have said, if there is serious adoption this time by the governance of Ethereum, I am willing to spend the (personal) money to not only staff up, but lead the development effort.

[MoneroCrusher]

I didn't say CNv2 was ASIC resistant, according to devs it just makes specialized devices with on-chip memory 16x slower and specialized-devices with external memory 4x slower and kicks out current ASICs. This buy them another 6 months to find an algo that can also include CPU mining and is permanently ASIC-resistant. So I suggested doing the same (with little tweaks) if ProgPOW can't be implemented until Constantinople. But now that you say that it can easily be implemented into Constantinople, let's go! Very nice to see interest in ProgPOW is growing 💯

[olalawal]

@OhGodAGirl Say no more you definitely have convinced me with details of the full direection the ProgPow movement is focused on. Being also that it is easy to implement, thats just a bonus and we neeed to push for it to be implemented in the Constantinople fork ASAP.

Moving away from centralization is the whole point of the santoshi Nakamoto project that gave us semi decentralized cryptos and I have to agree with you , Even gpus at this point of centralization since only two companies make them and directly profit from thier purchase.

Open source gpus with designs that can be submitted to small fab labs and created with minimal intial overhead or even via group buys wherr miners pool resources to pay for the tape out and share production costs is at welcome alternative to the current system. Kudos to @ohgodagirl and your team for moving the narrative forward ❤️

@monerocrusher I am with you, ProgPow should be implemented for sure in this hardfork since from the preivous posts it seems like an easy and straight forward code change.

[jean-m-cyr]

An expedited spin at TSMC is about 12 weeks, not 2 months. Longer for a normal spin. That's from tape out to 1st samples. Add another month for volume production. That doesn't include design time leading to tape out.

Spending development resources on risky and extensive algorithmic changes seems unwise at this time given that the end of ETH mining is in sight (not many whacks left at the whack-a-mole game). For these changes to have any effect they would need to ship with Constantinople. Nobody really knows how programmable the E3 ASICs are but it’s likely that minor ethash tweaks could defeat it and be realistically achievable in the Constantinople timeframe without the addition of an army of developers. The timely delivery of Constantinople trumps all.

I don't see a hard push ProgPow. It is currently the only proposal out there which might explain the perception that miners are chomping at the bit for it. Personally I'd favor a simple, less disruptive, ASIC impediment with a better chance of making it in Constantinople.

[MoneroCrusher]

@jean-m-cyr She just said she can easily implement it in Constantinople. So my suggestion: Testnet ASAP and then merge into mainnet with Constantinople HF and be done with this debate once and for all. You don't know when POS will be implemented, so why risk having to do this all over when OhGodAGirl and her devs offer us their solution on a silver platte, for free, without consuming ETH dev time? Absolute no-brainer.

[jean-m-cyr]

Sorry, I don't buy it! There's a whole lot more to be updated and coordinated than sample miner code. Parity and Geth nodes will need revisions, not to mention pools. All of it with rigorous testing. I don't sense a great deal of appetite for this among core developers... let's not make it too hard to swallow.

[olalawal]

@jean-m-cyr Ill make it simple for you , there will be no support for an issuance reduction from the pools or or grassroots mining community withoute an Asic resistant fork be it progPow or something intermim , You do not get one without the other.

Fine we can table all the EIPs related to issuance and Asic reistance till the next fork in 2019 ... happy?

[jean-m-cyr]

Never mentioned issuance (actually I may have mentioned it somewhere further up). However, the possibility of an issuance reduction without ASIC resistance is very real. Combining ASIC resistance with a issuance reduction is the compromise that might make everybody happy (at least less disgruntled)!

[MoneroCrusher]

@jean-m-cyr It's not about making "anyone happy". The issued ETH go out there no matter where the hashing power is coming from. Now do you want that to be a big decentralized community of miners and crypto enthusiasts, or do you want that to be 10 mining companies or less? Yes, cryptocurrencies are about decentralization, you get the opposite with issuance reduction only. Ask yourself, are you fine with Ethereum transactions being processed by a handful of companies only? Do you also know what drives ETH price down? Yes exactly, 10 companies mining all issued ETH and selling them the second they mine it. The big grassroots community is more likely to hold onto their coins, rather than putting constant selling pressure on the market.

[jean-m-cyr]

I'll let others worry about the economics. I'm more preoccupied with finding a pragmatic way to settle this political hot-potato issue in the very short term.

[OhGodAGirl]

@jean-m-cyr

1. Design time for an ASIC is generally a few weeks, at worst. Accurate is three-four days with lots of RedBull. Remember that it's generally just one architect for the overall design, and then its just P&R/synth that takes a while.

2. The E3 isn't the actual concerning ASIC; the Innosilicon ASICs and Bitmain E9 (codename) are what I would hope folks are more concerned about.

3. Tapeouts all depend on your connections, your preexisting contracts, your process node, etc. It's definitely not 12 weeks for certain process nodes. For instance, a certain fabless company has tapeout @ TSMC in September, and could have been contracted for X16R back in early August.

4. We have already done a lot of the client/node work. You're best to check the repository for our updates. Geth was the latest. ProgPoW has never just been 'miner code'.

[jean-m-cyr]

@OhGodAGirl I know a little about ASICs. Spent the last 20 years designing for a very large chip co. You've never done a complex ASIC if you think two weeks is all it takes for design. A gate level sim alone can run for a week on a large server farm! I'd be interested in finding where you can get 10nm quick turn on the cheap? 10nm is where it's at for mining... higher clock rates... lower power... you know, stuff like that matters for mining.

All of that aside, I'm also painfully aware of the drag bureaucracy and politics can place on a project. I'm sure you know the old adage: Multiply your estimates by two and you'll only be late instead of disastrously late.

[MoneroCrusher]

I also think that there's a false narrative of "miners are greedy". Well of course they're greedy, that's the only reason a decentralized blockchain disincentivizes 51% attacks. Do you think Bitmain is less greedy than the average Joe home miner? The critical question the ETH devs imo should ask themselves is: which of those 2 "greedy groups" aligns themselves - consciously or by chance - more with decentralization?

1. Is it the one that buys GPUs from AMD/Nvidia, which are not crypto companies at all and sell GPUs to everyone, forming an inherently chaotic and unpredictable group of individual miners? Or
2. Is it the coordinated group with billion dollar budgets, smartest engineers, solely set up to produce cryptocurrency mining equipment, pre-mining & delivering dust & backdoors in their devices? With investors behind it to get them the maximum profit possible.

I think the answer which of those groups provides more decentralization is pretty obvious. Both groups are not incentivized to perform 51% attacks or censoring transactions, but which group do you think is easier to overturn with political or other pressure? The one with thousands of miners across the globe, or the one with 10 companies operating in a few low-cost countries, sometimes with oppressive, censoring & controlling regimes?

[jean-m-cyr]

@MoneroCrusher I'm all in on the idea of mitigating the incursion of ASICs, but look at it this way: What are the odds of shepherding ProgPow through the EIP process onto integration in time for Constantinople faced with only lukewarm support from the core? Wouldn't a simpler, less disruptive, tweak to ethash achieve the same goal in the short term with less friction?

[MoneroCrusher]

@jean-m-cyr ETH has an issuance of roughly $6-7million ETH per day worth in current fiat value. Bitmain and other manufacturers will have an ASIC ready on day one if it's not ASIC resistant by design (like ProgPOW). And she already said all the major work is already done and she can very easily implement it in Constantinople HF, so let's see if we can setup a testnet with it ASAP and then test it a couple weeks, if it works, merge it.

Edit: but it has to be made sure that neither Nvidia nor AMD GPUs are favoured, I feel like Nvidia are a little favoured in the current implementation in terms of dollar paid/hash. Feel free to explain me that they're equalized, if I got it wrong somehow.

[jean-m-cyr]

Go for it! I wish it were that simple.

[OhGodAGirl]

@jean-m-cyr Cryptocurrency ASICs are not in any way 'complex', by design. And 10nm isn't the right target. No one in their right mind uses 10nm for anything other than SHA256. It's simply not cost effective enough for a lot of algorithms. 28nm is where its at. #28NM4LYFE.

[jean-m-cyr]

Seems like we could argue all night about it, but that would be wildly off topic. :-)