Is Ethereum going to resist Asic mining? No, this is a rumor

Ethfans Editor-in-Chief Ajian: There is no consensus on the anti-Asic ProgPoW upgrade.

Author: Wang Jiajian

In the past two days, the news about Ethereum's resistance to Asic mining has become popular. Mining machine manufacturers are anxious when they see it, and miners are also paying attention to it.

It is reported that the core developers of Ethereum have reached a consensus on upgrading the anti-Asic algorithm ProgPoW, and the hard fork upgrade is tentatively scheduled for July. This means that after the upgrade, the two current Ethereum Asic mining machines, Innosilicon A10 and Bitmain Ant E3, will either switch to mining ETC or be "laid off".

However, according to Ajian, editor-in-chief of Ethfans, at the Ethereum core developer meeting held on February 21, 2020, the EIP-1057 protocol involving ProgPoW was not without controversy, so there is no reason to say that everyone has agreed.

In other words, this information that was previously widely circulated was a misunderstanding of the developer conference by the media.

Ajian said that the widely reported Ethereum fork, which is tentatively scheduled for July and will upgrade the ProgPoW algorithm, is only because James Hancock, a strong supporter, discussed whether it should be released at the same time as EIP-1962 because of the importance of the matter. This does not mean that the participants have agreed to start discussing when to launch the ProgPoW algorithm.

In fact, even the EIP-1962 protocol is not without controversy. Developers of Geth and Parity both said that this EIP is too large and not suitable to be added all at once.

Ajian further introduced that whether and when ProgPoW will be launched will not be known until at least the next core developer meeting.

Therefore, it is inaccurate to say that Ethereum will fork in July and will implement a fully anti-Asic algorithm.

What is ProgPoW? Whether it can be launched is essentially a game of chance

The full name of the ProgPoW algorithm is Programmatic Proof-of-Work. It has a long history and was proposed as early as April 2018.

Simply put, it can be understood as an upgraded version of the Ethereum consensus algorithm Ethash. It roughly modifies Ethash to improve the efficiency of GPU mining as much as possible.

Once Ethereum is upgraded to this algorithm, even if Asic mining machines appear, the mining efficiency of these mining machines will not be much improved compared with graphics card mining machines. This further suppresses the development of Asic mining machines in Ethereum.

If the algorithm is to be upgraded, a hard fork of Ethereum will have to be completed. Of course, if the community unanimously agrees to upgrade, the fork will not actually happen.

However, the Ethereum community has been discussing whether the ProgPoW algorithm is worth upgrading for about two years. The reason why there has been no conclusion is that the differences come from many aspects, including whether the ProgPoW algorithm is safe, whether Asic mining machines will be born under the ProgPoW algorithm, whether Asic will bring about the centralization of computing power, and whether Ethereum needs anti-Asic mining machines.

Whether to upgrade the ProgPoW algorithm involves many stakeholders, such as development teams, Dapp developers, miners, coin holders, mining machine manufacturers, and even GPU chip manufacturers such as NVIDIA. Therefore, this is undoubtedly a multi-party game process.

▲Ethereum mining machine profit rankings provided by Spark Mining Pool

The ProgPoW algorithm problem makes the development of Ethereum Asic mining machines a dilemma?

Bitcoin was born in 2009. In 2012, Canaan Creative founder Pumpkin Zhang created the world's first ASIC mining machine, Avalon.

Ethereum was born in 2014, but it was not until April 2018 that Bitmain launched the Antminer E3 Asic mining machine. To this day, there are only two types of Ethereum Asic mining machines, in addition to the Antminer E3, there is also the Innosilicon A10. From what Babbitt has learned, the mining efficiency of these two mining machines is not high.

Ethereum's algorithm is Ethash, which is a memory-hard proof-of-work algorithm. It is difficult to design Asic mining machines based on this algorithm. Qiu Xiaodong of Spark Mining Pool told Babbitt that Ethereum's algorithm requires a file to be written into the video memory, so GPUs with video memory particles have more advantages. Asic mining machines can also stack video memory, but the cost is higher. In addition, Ethereum is going to switch to the POS algorithm, so Asic mining machine manufacturers are more cautious in designing Ethereum mining machines.

Qiu Xiaodong estimates that the current computing power of Asic mining machines may account for less than 5% of the total computing power of the Ethereum network.

Previously, Chen Min, a chip engineer who resigned from Canaan Creative, founded Linzhi in an attempt to get involved in Ethereum mining machines. After some brief announcements, there has been no further news. In addition, Zhejiang Microcomputer Technology, which was previously invested in by Canaan Creative, also revealed that it is developing Ethereum mining machines, but there has been no further news.

Du Chao, head of the ETC Fans Chinese community, told Babbitt that the ProgPoW algorithm problem did affect the attitude of some Chinese Asic mining machine manufacturers in deploying Ethereum mining machines, putting Asic research and development in a dilemma.

“In resisting Asic, the Ethereum community may be considering fair mining, and that computing power should not be controlled by certain institutions, but in fact, Asic has greatly increased Bitcoin’s computing power. In addition, mining machine manufacturers do not monopolize computing power. They must sell mining machines, and they cannot afford the heavy asset operation work. In addition, if Ethereum continues to resist Asic, it may give opportunities to other newly emerging powerful public chains. For example, Grin and Conflux. Microcomputer Technology has announced that Grin mining machines will be available soon (but their Ethereum mining machines are on hold).”

Du Chao said that there are different opinions in the ETC community about the ProgPoW algorithm, but he personally believes that we should not resist Asic.