Pm: 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

[pcbacon]

Can we please talk about forking these ASICs again? EIP 958

[MadeofTin]

This was posted in the Magicians Forum and seemed pertinent.
https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/final-request-from-the-gpu-mining-community/1050/4

It also talks about adding EIP 958 to the discussion around the difficulty bomb.

[MadeofTin]

@lrettig when discussing miner sentiment (especially if some miners are able to join the call) I would love it for Miner Hashrate Signaling to be included in the discussion.

Specifically:

• What if any changes to the protocol need to be made to allow this to happen?
• Is this a candidate for an EIP?
• Could the changes required be made at the client level alone?
• Would miners like to see this implemented?
• How would miners like to see this implemented?

[zsfelfoldi]

I would like to participate this call and "champion" EIP-1218 which would indeed be very useful for trustless light client syncing. Actually I would like to propose a slightly extended version of it where the same contract would also store the total difficulty. I will write a short doc about the reasons why I think this should be included too.

[5chdn]

I'll be around to champion 1234 this week. I was sick during the last meeting, sorry.

Just some thoughts that I will raise before the call:

• 858: this does not address the difficulty bomb at all. Unless someone champions to discuss this, we should drop it in this discussion. I just brought it up recently because I'm pedantic and this indirectly conflicts 1234 but should not be the focus part of this debate. it does now.
• 1227: I have not seen a single voice (apart from the author) that wants to increase the block reward, so it's safe to say we go with either status quo or reduce it (1234). Can provide some references at the call.

Also, now that hybrid Casper is off the table, we should discuss 958 again (ASIC resistance), there is a strong community sentiment in favour of having this dealt with. Edit: Just noticed, 958 is not an actual EIP. Not sure how to discuss this properly then.

[olalawal]

the three EIPs related to issuance are worthless unless they include an ASIC forking algo change of some sort. The majority of ether is being mined by large asic farms and bitmain in particular, when pos launches they will hold the majority of mined ether. For the good of the protocol they should be forked off if you intend to reduce issuance in a meaningful way

[cslarson]

@5chdn, 858 shouldn't be discussed because it's justification is not necessarily tied to the delay of the difficulty bomb? That seems strange when it's received community support through numerous discussions as well as a coinvote. EIP 858 could be edited to include a difficulty bomb delay or a separate EIP could be authored. Without a bomb delay the network would halt. Nobody is arguing for that.

[atlanticcrypto]

@lrettig Please include EIP-1295 in this discussion (https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-1295.md)

[chfast]

Small fix for EIP-1014: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/1247.

[cslarson]

Since it will hopefully make the relevant discussions easier I've made modifications (pending pull request) to EIP 858 to include delaying the difficulty bomb.

[sorpaas]

A small update on EIP-1283: Based on work by @chfast (https://github.com/ethereum/tests/issues/483), I added 17 test cases to the spec, with the two additional ones testing a slot being reset and then set again (https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-1283.md#test-cases).

[atlanticcrypto]

Presentation on EIP-1295 can be found here:

tinyurl.com/ycjec3no

[chfast]

@sorpaas can you add the two additional test cases to https://github.com/ethereum/tests/issues/483 ?

[nico9111]

Can we drop EIP-1227- Delay bomb and increase block reward to 5 ETH? It looks like a joke...

Edit: let me make myself clear:
Looking at the current price situation, if inflation i.e miners rewards remain the same or even worse increase, then that’s straight to double digits and then forget the network security, investors and miners’ profits. It’ll all go down in flame. Even Joe Lubin, super bullish on everything Ethereum fears about price going to unsustainable levels.
If rewards reduction means a change in the algo to limit asics then fine. Anyhow mining will end when POS is launched but what is of the utmost importance is what happens in the meantime. Do we let it all go down the toilets because we can’t make a common sense decision or do we act like rational people and let the journey continue. I’m working an a dapp to be supported on Ethereum and would love nothing more than to be able to continue my journey as well...

[cheeselord1]

Here’s what we can expect from miners in opposition to the block reward reduction EIPs, along with thoughts on each one.

But I’m going to have to shut off my operations!
1) Mining is a commoditized, highly competitive business. Without continuous price growth, mining costs will trend up towards mining revenue in the long term. Therefore, no matter if the inflation is 7% or 50%, some miners will always be at risk of becoming unprofitable when inflation decreases. We are not in a unique situation here.

2) If miners shut off their operations, it will be the least efficient miners shutting off first. This lowers difficulty and increases profitability for remaining miners until we reach an equilibrium. It's perfectly normal for the least-efficient miners to reach a point where they must upgrade their hardware/operational efficiency or risk becoming unprofitable. This is normal.

3) Based on historical data, reduction in block reward has a very small effect on hashrate. (source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlTEyKBV4AERGtB.jpg:large). If a miner does need to shut down because of a reduction in block reward with Constantinople, that means they were probably in the bottom few percent of miners by efficiency.

This is catching us completely by surprise!
The difficulty bomb is hard-coded into the protocol, which would have gradually decreased mining revenues in the status quo. Last year, the difficulty bomb delay was coupled with a corresponding reduction in per-block-reward. A reduction in block reward with Constantinople is not unexpected news.

Ethereum hashrate will plummet, causing the network to be vulnerable to attacks!
Based on historical data, reduction in block reward has a very small effect on hashrate. (source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlTEyKBV4AERGtB.jpg:large). Hashrate is currently well over 3x what is was at this time last year.

Bitmain will control the network if we decrease inflation, because ASICS
There’s no evidence of this. The Antminer E3 is marginally more efficient than the 1080 Ti in terms of hashes per unit electricity. Also, Bitmain has little to no ETH on their balance sheet according to their IPO docs. Yes, the new (not yet shipped/verified) Innosilicon A10 may be more efficient per hash than the 1080 ti but is also well over $5000 USD. And the NVIDIA 2080 Ti is also coming in September. Overall, this is not yet a major threat to the network and shouldn’t preclude a reward reduction at this time. There will always be competing hardware, and some people will always have access to better hardware than others. Though I do agree that it may be worth adding additional ASIC resistance into the protocol (but I’m not too informed on the tradeoffs to consider in that decision)

[atlanticcrypto]

Based on historical data, reduction in block reward has a very small effect on hashrate. (source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlTEyKBV4AERGtB.jpg:large). If a miner does need to shut down because of a reduction in block reward with Constantinople, that means they were probably in the bottom few percent of miners by efficiency.

Ethereum hashrate will plummet, causing the network to be vulnerable to attacks!
Based on historical data, reduction in block reward has a very small effect on hashrate. (source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlTEyKBV4AERGtB.jpg:large). Hashrate is currently well over 3x what is was at this time last year.

You cannot use a scenario with a coincident price surge as supporting evidence. What would have happened if price had dropped? What would have happened if price had stayed the same?

If your only historical reference is an upward sloping trajectory - it's not usable for scenario analysis.

[cheeselord1]

You cannot use a scenario with a coincident price surge as supporting evidence. What would have happened if price had dropped? What would have happened if price had stayed the same?

If your only historical reference is an upward sloping trajectory - it's not usable for scenario analysis.

Look at the dates from 5/9 to now. Block rewards have dropped and hashrate has continued increasing. There's no period in history where a block reward has ever caused a massive decrease in hashrate. None. In all cases the hashrate reduction has been small and temporary. Would love to see data supporting otherwise.

It just doesn't make sense to say that block reward reduction from $17.5M/day to $10M/day coincides with a +5% increase in hashrate but another drop to $6.6M/day (what it would be at 2 ETH/block assuming no price change) would cause a massive, network-threatening drop in hashrate. Its just conjecture.

[atlanticcrypto]

Block rewards haven't dropped - total issuance has dropped due to a reduction in Uncle rates - partially driven by a reduction in network throughput. Reduce the headline Block Reward and I almost guarantee you those Uncle rates are going to skyrocket.

What are the medium term purchasing power implications of ETH if hashrate takes a large step down and ASICs become a larger portion of the network composition (which is a result of reducing the Block Reward directly)?

[atlanticcrypto]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QSRTTPqmga3OOniGpQLtMqEahAHxESxMlfWN9v1AI2E/edit?usp=sharing

This shows mining margins net of electricity cost on a daily basis for a GPU and ASIC miner at current network hashrate and price.

As the headline Block Reward is reduced, the network ratio of ASIC to GPU will increase, both instantaneously as GPUs are priced out, as well as over time as the ASIC is significantly more economic in a low price environment. You can see from the waterfall sheet that high electricity price GPU miners (typically hobbyists, the truly decentralized) will be quickly priced out.

As is widely accepted, as ASICs become a larger portion of network composition, the network will theoretically become more centralized.

[olalawal]

No one truly belives bitmain is not hashing away in secret with thousands of thier E3 miners right? look at what happened with monero, they denied that they had secret mining farms but once monero announced thier fork Bitmain and other asic companies suddenly had cryptonite asics for sale.

And bitmain is not alone , there are lots of asic companies that do not sell gear to the public as well.

Again reducing issuance without a corresponding algo change to at the very least find out the REAL gpu and decentralized etherum hash rate is a half ass solution.

Ethier do both or leave it alone

[Souptacular]

Hey all!

Tomorrow is the meeting and one of the agenda topics is potential issuance reduction. I have invited a number of guest participants to explain their opinion.
This includes:

• a large mining pool.
• a statement from the largest mining pool (pasted below).
• a few smaller miners.
• 2 Redditors in favor of an issuance reduction.
  This is in addition to the normal participants and core developers.

I sent an e-mail to these participants and will re-post it here for the sake of transparency:

Thank you for participating in the All Core Devs call tomorrow to discuss issuance reduction. It means a lot to get different perspectives from different stakeholders in the ecosystem.

The meeting starts at 10AM US Eastern Time, 14:00 UTC (https://savvytime.com/converter/gmt-to-germany-berlin-united-kingdom-london-ny-new-york-city-ca-san-francisco-china-shanghai-japan-tokyo/2pm).

The agenda for the meeting is located here: https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/54

Here is how I imagine things going down:

1. We discuss agenda items 1-4.
2. Agenda item 5 is issuance reduction. I will have each participant involved in the discussion quickly introduce themselves and which EIP they support (if any). Please keep your intro to under 30 seconds.
3. We will first discuss if there should be a reduction in issuance at all.
4. We will use rough consensus to determine if there should be a reduction. If so we will discuss how much of a reduction.

Here is where I think things stand right now. Miners seem to care more about implementing a new PoW algorithm in order to disable ASICs from mining on the network. There may be able to be a sort of compromise between issuance reduction and implementation of a new PoW algortihm such as ProgPoW (https://github.com/ifdefelse/ProgPOW#progpow---a-programmatic-proof-of-work). The timing of such a change is still up in the air, but as it stands getting it into Constantinople seems unlikely due to our timeline to prevent block times from increasing drastically. All of the above is speculation, but something to keep in mind.

Here is the statement from Ethermine mining pool:

We have reached out to our miners and from their response it is clear that the most important point for them is to include a PoW change to obsolescence ASICS. Regarding the block reward, their opinion is somewhat ambivalent, some prefer an increase (obviously), some argue for it to remain the same and a small fraction wants it to be reduced. Regarding the difficulty bomb most of the argue for a delay and no complete removal. This is also the position Ethermine will take as a proxy for our miners.

[olalawal]

https://github.com/aionnetwork/aion_miner/wiki/Aion-equihash_210_9--specification-and-migration-guide.

Aion is an Erc20 token and they have forked to a unique specification of Equihash , although i would prefer the Devs to pursue Cryptonite variant 2 , since Ethereum has been traditionally an Amd heavy algorithm similar to monero.

https://github.com/monero-project/monero/pull/4218

cn v 2 also will use far leas power thab the existing dagger algorithm and also provide much better resistance to fpgas as well.

[cheeselord1]

No one truly belives bitmain is not hashing away in secret with thousands of thier E3 miners right? look at what happened with monero, they denied that they had secret mining farms but once monero announced thier fork Bitmain and other asic companies suddenly had cryptonite asics for sale.

This is a conspiracy theory that has been proven false. Bitmain released its IPO investor docs last week. Their share of revenue from mining operations is small and shrinking (<10%). Nearly all their revenue is from selling mining equipment. Unless you think they are lying to their investors....

[olalawal]

proven false by who? Bitmain is a chinese company no one except a few insiders truly knows what is really on thier books.

Even if they are not mining directly as they claim I would expect they have some subsidaries not linked directly to the parent that they have sold thousands of Asics to.

Remeber the hash rate spikes of oct 2017 and January 2018 , were all in times of extreme gpu shortages. A basic brand rx580 was selling for $700 , A nvidia 1070ti was at $900 and all retailers were limiting sales to 1 gpu per month in somecases or 1 of any brand per order.

yet the hashrate went up that month from 200k if i remeber to 240k

No one could sell that many gpus at the time. The october jump was even a worse scenario.... gpus were basically unavailable

to the point larger farms were renting entire aircraft to buy directly from the source.

In that case the hash rate went from 90k to 150k in two months.

If you cant put two and two together still , you must work for an Asic manufacturer lol

[OhGodAGirl]

I am _tickled pink_ to see a resurgance in ProgPoW interest. Know that if the Ethereum community decides to adopt ProgPoW, they will have the full support of IfDefElse, SQRL (http://squirrelsresearch.com/) and Mineority (https://mineority.io/) behind them, and our assistance in implementation in consensus level code.

We support decentralized hardware, and decentralized mining, first and foremost.

[DennisBPeterson]

This paper analyzing attack scenarios on Ethereum's proof of work is probably relevant:

https://fc18.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/bitcoin18-final17.pdf

According to the paper, a 51% attack via AWS rentals would cost $1 million/hr, and a bribery attack would only be $125K/hr assuming miners are susceptible.

[johnEth]

We need a 1.5 to 2Eth per block reduction tomorrow or it could be disastrous for this whole ecosystem.

When they did not make a decision two weeks ago we slid from $515 to now $273. If the core dev doesn't reduce the inflation the market will do it for them. This whole crypto space is 20% of what it was when we were dishing out 3Eth / block. The market will just not allow the miners to profit at a tune of $3,000,000,000 in mining awards. It is absolutely wasteful and irresponsible. The market is 20% what it was in Jan so miners should also receive 20% or .6 Eth/block at this point to equal the same decline that holders and developers have to bear.

[olalawal]

There is basically zero profit right now for normal gpu miners , The majority of the inflatonary eth you are so worried about is going to large asic mega farms. Dropping the issuance with no algo change basically seeds the entire pow network to them and thier Ilk.

No sane proposal would advocate for this

Lol if you think its bad for the holders of eth imgine the pain for miners , 20 percent less value of the mined asset and a 30 percent increase in the global hashrate as the sugar on top.

Most miners I know have already quit

[johnEth]

Yes, there are entirely way too many miners at this stage. A tsunami of miners flowed in back in January when this space was overheating. Now that this space has declined 80% to 90%, unfortunately, this space cannot support a billion miners anymore. What can I say? No one said life was fair. We all suffering here not just miners. No one has $3,000,000,000 to give to a billion miners anymore.

Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. It's like pulling a cavity tooth. Yes, it hurts for a day but then you come out on the other end and you get better health afterward.

Trust me as an economist, once Eth price starts to go back up miners will be happy again.

[olalawal]

A billion gpus? you cant be serious, Nivida and Amd combined can’t produce enough gpus to explain to total ethereum hash rate.

50% or more of the pow network is owned by asics and specialized hardware like fpgas ans asics.

There can be a fair playing feild again if the developers implement the proposed algo change , which should go hand in hand with issuance reduction if that passes.

[johnEth]

I cannot speak to the hardware aspect. This is not my specialty. But I do understand there is a correlation between speed and the cost of the hardware. So it seems the more money you throw at it the more Eth you are able to mine.

As an economist, all I know is that we need a swift 1.5 to 2 Eth / block reduction like a month ago.

[johnEth]

I've also heard when Eth price starts to decline, miners start to sell their hardware and buy Eth. Sometimes it is better to just buy Eth than to mine Eth especially when you can now buy 5 Eth for the price of 1 Eth back in January.

[olalawal]

So you would prefer that the entire eth hashrate is run by asiscs

You most definitely know nothing about hardware or decentralized blockchains.

please stick to youe voodo economics.

For the reccord I was an economics minor in college even got recommended for the graduate program...

there were no classes on block chain based economies no one really knows what a reduction of issuance along with the pushing out of gpu miners will do for the price , its all speculation.

I can guarantee though it won’t be good in the long term if only Asics can secure the network. You think fees and gas is high now ?
😂😂😂

[rufus210]

A billion gpus? you cant be serious, Nivida and Amd combined can’t produce enough gpus to explain to total ethereum hash rate.

Current ETH hashrate is around 3 TH/s, roughly half of which was added during Jan-Mar. A typical GPU (GTX 1070 or RX 580) is around 30 MH/s. So there are on the order of 10 million GPUs hashing on the network, and roughly 5 million were added during Jan-Mar of this year.

AMD + Nvidia ship 20-25 million GPUs per quarter: https://www.jonpeddie.com/store/market-watch

Miners buying 20-25% of the typical GPU supply for the quarter is completely believable, and would explain the channel shortages and inflated prices.

[johnEth]

Let us not forget the Ethereum community does not coddle to the whims nor exist to serve the miners. The miners exist to serve Ethereum. Getting any Eth through mining is a privilege, not a right.

Putting in the difficulty bomb was the right move. And we must follow the spirit of the difficulty bomb and make it harder and harder to mine Eth.

If the core devs are indecisive this morning again and we fail to cut the inflation significantly ASAP then we go down a death spiral that we may not recover from where prices get cut in half and miners bitch about not making enough money etc. Pick your poison, the miners will never get their $3,000,000,000 not in this market no way hosay.

[holitics]

Let us not forget the Ethereum community does not coddle to the whims nor exist to serve the miners. The miners exist to serve Ethereum. Getting any Eth through mining is a privilege, not a right.

I cannot totally agree with you there. It may be a privilege, but the community should not expect miners to lose money. Mining costs money (hardware investment + electricity), most miners are not doing it for the good of the community, they are making an investment. Once mining becomes unprofitable (like right now), they will stop mining and simply buy ETH, like you said above.

[blurpesec]

Let us not forget the Ethereum community does not coddle to the whims nor exist to serve the miners.

This is also true for investors. Investors are the only group in the ecosystem that advocates for decreased issuance, apart from maybe ASIC miners (due to their increased market share of the hashrate), because they're the ones who care about price when, ultimately, the price only matters to the point where it drives new developer and user interest in the ecosystem.

A high ETH price negatively affects existing users, because cost of transactions rise.

[ghost]

@vbuterin @OhGodAGirl @Souptacular @5chdn @sorpaas @chfast @lrettig If ProgPOW is rejected today EOSC development team will launch a hardfork of ethereum with ProgPOW implementation.

This is not a joke

[jean-m-cyr]

Why bother, there is already ETC.

[nico9111]

Today is a major day for the future of Ethereum. Let’s be rational and put logic and common sense first! Don’t mess it up, crypto is watching!

[johnEth]

Bingo we need more Eth buyers, not miners.

This is the perfect thrust we need to put us on the right trajectory.

[salanki]

@johnEth: This whole crypto space is 20% of what it was when we were dishing out 3Eth / block. The market will just not allow the miners to profit at a tune of $3,000,000,000 in mining awards.

It is absolutely wasteful and irresponsible. The market is 20% what it was in Jan so miners should also receive 20% or .6 Eth/block at this point to equal the same decline that holders and developers have to bear.

You do realize that miners already make 20% of what they used to make, as the mining reward is in ETH and not in USD? What you are arguing for is that miners should be making 20%*20% of what they were making previously, basically you want to reduce miner revenue by 96%. That's a great way to alienate the providers who secure and run the network.

[olalawal]

I listened to the meeting, it was a sham imo , they had mining pools , but no small to mid size miners , all they kept talking about is issuance and prog pow , like there are not other asic resistant algos available

[salanki]

@olalawal: Agreed. The decision on which PoW to choose can be handled later, the decision to try to combat ASICs or not is really what it is about.

[olalawal]

@salanki exactly, the algo change to even hex,x16 , eqihash flavors or eveb progpow or cn variant 2 , was not even discussed in any seriousness.

The true Asics hashrate needs to be flushed out NOW even if some brands of cards are not as good on the new algo as others at the very least we can find out the ASIC penetration percentage

[nico9111]

I have never been so concerned about the future of Ethereum and I've been part of the community since the early stages. Basically we are being held hostages by a group of people that is going to be obsolete sometimes soon (When POS damnit?). While we're waiting for interests alignment with POS (validators are investors with a single agenda) we're running the risk that ETH will trade at double digits in the fall and we all know the consequences of it. People running out, miners not buying ETH because inflation will still be too high, dev salaries not paid, black swan event, bye bye Ethereum and all its potential. Unless EOS (which I don't like) hard forks it and proposes inflation reduction in the form of EIP-1234 or 858 and then what happens?
We're at a turning point where a big decision has to be made. Is ASIC a bigger threat than reducing inflation? absolutely not, POS is around the corner!!! I'm certain miners with cheaper electricity will continue mining with rewards at 2 ETH as their holdings will gain in price. That's simple. We are overpaying for security right now and if we don't do anything about it, it could get ugly and fast!!
Use common sense, look forward and don't abide by one group's agenda. EIP 1234 now!!

[Eliovp]

Combat ASICS, fully agree, going for ProgPow is just doing a 360 turn and ending up with the same issue and worse.

Here's some very interesting replies to the "ProgPow" idea.

https://medium.com/@alex_6580/disclosure-my-name-is-alexander-levin-jr-president-of-gpushack-com-60e5543ef6ef

https://medium.com/@g4merdelight/id-give-this-argument-more-credit-if-it-was-transparent-about-how-the-author-works-in-the-interest-1b3cf21854ed

Further no comment

[olalawal]

@Eliovp agreed fully.

One concerning thing i heard in the meeting was one of the panel members stating that due to dagger hashimoto being memory hard there are no intrinsic advantages for Asics such as the bitmain E3.

If you remeber after the cn7 fork bitmain was worried about ethereum forking as well and listed thier E3 batch one at $800!!

thats means they make these things for far less than the price of one GPU.
thats 7 gpus worth of hash for $250 lets say production cost. You cant eveb buy a new gpu for that.

Memory bandwidth doesn’t matter when they can use cheap ddr3 in huge banks since its dirt cheap.

also factor in economies of scale and the advantages ballon even more.

[cslarson]

@olalawal the cost for new equipment is not really a concern if we don't want hashrate to grow or if we want it to decline (my preference).

[salanki]

@olalawal: The point that panelist missed is that by building specialized hardware (with a lot of cheap GDDR3 modules) they are making it much cheaper and more efficient than a GPU miner available to anyone. It is not an ASIC specifically that makes it that much better, it's a combination of customized hardware for this specific purpose.

@cslarson: The cost of equipment is still a concern when one party (the ASIC vendor) can build a lot of highly efficient equipment cheaper than anyone else did. It allows them to with little capital add enough hashrate to push normal GPU-miners into loss. This will make the regular GPU hashrate disappear and all of a sudden one actor has control of the network.

They do not have to build miners to match 51% of the hash rate today. With an issuance reduction it is already hard to make a profit for most miners. If the ASIC vendor has a 2x more efficient miner, he would just have to add ~20% of the hashrate to push most people into the red while he remains in the black.

It is naive to believe that more than a few percent of the network hashrate are miners who mine "for the good of the network" and do not care about profits. People in general don't like losing money, and will support ETH buy buying ETH instead of spending it on electricity.

One important point that was missed during the meeting is that during the last reward reduction, it wasn't a direct issuance reduction as the block time was reset at the same time. The issuance of ETH generated/day was essentially the same, which is why it had a smaller impact on miners.

[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. :-)

[MoneroCrusher]

@OhGodAGirl I think it would give the community a positive impression if you could set that whole thing up in a testnet and people can see it working.

[OhGodAGirl]

@MoneroCrusher You can also make a testnet. ;)

@jean-m-cyr You are interesting. I like you. Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp?

[MoneroCrusher]

My observation and gut feeling tell me ETH devs should definitely listen to the community here, if somebody were to fork ETH and implement ProgPOW I think there would be great support for it.
@OhGodAGirl tell me more tell me more about the E9

[OhGodAGirl]

I just reviewed the meeting notes very briefly at https://github.com/ethereum/pm/commit/f5805df13a76ead07b3a65dccc6760d70406d14f - as always, props to @Souptacular for doing these.

There is so much misinformation about ProgPoW, it's not even funny.

"Reduces DAG Size" - no, it doesn't affect the bloody DAG.

"Unoptimized" - actually, we've gone on record many times saying it _is_ optimized. The only other optimization would be fully writing the damn thing in ROCm, which is on my list to commit soon. Again, we use local mem to exchange a global address, but CUDA uses __shfl to do direct. We just need a way to do a direct exchange, which ROCm provides.

"Lists of randomly selected operations" - Wut. Did you read the damn whitepaper? This has nothing to do with operations. Silicon doesn't care about your damn operations. It has everything to do with utilizing the core, as well as the memory, thus normalizing the efficiency gap when compared to putting it on a piece of dedicated silicon. The goal is to normalize the difference between a dedicated-ASIC and a GPU.

[MoneroCrusher]

Suggestion: Reduce DAG size to 1GB
DAG was made with ASIC resistance in mind, if ProgPOW is implemented, this renders the "DAG ASIC resistance" argument useless.
Therefore it makes sense to reset DAG size to 1GB and keep it there, this will allow smaller GPUs to mine too and further diversify the GPU landscape.
Disclaimer: I own RX 550s 2GB and would love to mine Ethereum besides UBIQ & Monero.

[chfast]

@OhGodAGirl Do you have binary OpenCL kernels for ProgPoW? AMD miners depend on them.

[jean-m-cyr]

@OhGodAGirl No DAG size reduction? I must have been asleep when I read the code! It would have been a big draw for 3-4GB card owners.

Whatsapp, preferably Signal. For email just replace the dashes in my sig with a dots and send it to gmail.

[atlanticcrypto]

The EIP discussion thread for 1295 is full of community members pushing for a PoW algo shift:

https://github.com/atlanticcrypto/Discussion/issues/1#issuecomment-416183130

Until the day that PoS comes, the mining community should and will continue to innovate and make the network as secure as possible. I believe the push to an alternative PoW algo is representative of that will, and the voices behind it are growing in number and intensity.

As @jean-m-cyr mentioned, the issuance conversation is happening regardless of the PoW algo shift right now. We believe that any reduction beyond EIP-1295 puts the security of the network at undue risk. We will be publishing our logic behind and quantification of the drivers that led us to propose EIP-1295 and our beliefs that a larger scale reduction will significantly increase the probability of a project ending attack.

Let's make that clear - if the Ethereum network is successfully attacked, the entire ecosystem will be irreparably damaged.

Our analysis will be published and linked on Medium at: https://medium.com/@brianventuro/eth-issuance-part-1-dd6e9acc00b7

[nico9111]

No reduction of issuance AND Asic resistant? Yeah sure. That’s the problem when we all try to find a fair middle ground that would work for everybody and one voice gets greedy... negotiations don’t work like that. It’s not just about miners, it’s also about devs, dapps entrepreneurs, network users, investors, etc... The community overall is voting for either block reward reduction to 2 eth or 1 eth per block. Asic resistant can be part of the negotiation but the community won’t budge, block reward will decrease before full switch to POS. With your greedy input, we, the non-miners, can’t wait for the full realignment of interest i.e hodlers and security handled by the same validating entity!!

[atlanticcrypto]

@nico9111 You clearly didn't read EIP-1295. It reduces issuance by 11.4%.

If you have a castle fortified with 3 walls, and you have an army outside your walls with siege ladders - and the person responsible for your security told you that you needed all 3 walls, would you knock one down and chance it? That is exactly what you're talking about doing. And what for? 1pct difference in coin float over 12 months? This is a probabilistic exercise - not one of compromise.

Guess what happens if the network is attacked - your devs, dapps entrepreneurs, network users, investors (including miners) all find another job.

[nico9111]

Yes we all read it. Reduction via uncles is not enough. Again it’ll be either reduction by 1 or 2 eth per block. During the call, after your lenghty background intro, you even said that you could back EIP 1234 as long as ASIC resistance would be implemented. Now you are threatening the network with your fear tactic and show greed going back to 1295. That’s not the way things work in life. You’re not alone, you can’t threat anyone when you know that POS will make you obsolete sometimes soon and that comparable chains like Bitcoin and ETC pay much less for security and function all the same. 1295 will not happen and if you don’t like it you can always mine some other chain. Other miners will take your spot!!

[atlanticcrypto]

@nico9111, I believe the developer community is comprised of some of the smartest systems designers on the planet. I fully believe they will make a decision based upon a probabilistic assessment of risk/reward, and I will respect it. Before they do, I will make every effort to quantify and defend the reasoning behind EIP-1295 for Constantinople. This is adult swim, empirical analysis is required.

[nico9111]

Some reddit link for further discussion. You will not hold us hostage Brian, not now, never!!
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/9apnco/an_ethereum_miner_atlantic_crypto_is_threatening/

[nico9111]

@atlanticcrypto your rethoric of fear spreading and behavior don't reflect empirical analysis. It only reflects greed as you're trying to juice out everything you can from Ethereum without caring about its community and potential. This behavior doesn't belong to the negotiating table, it's dangerous. Your paper on Medium shows exactly who you are and what you're after even though you already gave us plenty of hints during the conf call!!

[atlanticcrypto]

@nico9111 With that comment and tact I will no longer respond to you.

[nico9111]

I say things as they are. Truth can hurt sometimes but is very much needed. Bye

[atlanticcrypto]

Part 2 - Our discussion of the Purchasing Power of ETH and the deflationary nature of ETH's Proof of Work system.

https://medium.com/@brianventuro/eth-issuance-part-2-deflation-13775c651a42

[nico9111]

All the credit goes to @econoar for this well sourced and informed paper:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/9arwc2/comparing_the_issuance_eips_network_security/

[Snuff]

Hi everyone,

I wrote an article on this issue. Join the discussion!
https://medium.com/@whalesburg/ethereum-block-reward-suppression-part-1-90ed04475786

[MoneroCrusher]

@Snuff How can you say ASICs are only 10% of the network? I can also say it's 60% of the network. Both are opinions.
Actually let me show you some arguments supporting my claim for ASICs making up ~40% of the network:
According to your own article you say $1.7 billion (in GPUs) were invested from September to March. Yes, it would have cost $1.7B in GPUs if the hashrate came solely from GPUs, but it didn't.

According to Jon Peddie research ( source: https://www.jonpeddie.com/press-releases/gpu-market-declined-seasonally-in-q4-cryptocurrency-provides-smaller-offset) a total of 3 million GPUs, worth $776m were sold to miners in 2017 by both manufacturers.
In Q1 2018 GPU sales went down by -10% compared to Q4 2017 (source: https://www.jonpeddie.com/press-releases/gpu-market-increased-year-to-year-by-3.4/).
And according to this article (https://www.ccn.com/declining-gpu-sales-to-cryptocurrency-miners-healthy-amd-ceo/), AMD and Nvidia both confirm sales of $165m and $289m to miners, or $454m for Q1 2018. Amd reported sales of GPUs to miners in Q2 2018 to be $65m (https://www.coindesk.com/amd-sees-q2-drop-in-gpu-sales-to-crypto-miners/).

So now we can do some math: If $454m worth of GPUs were sold to miners in Q1 2018, and it was down 10% from Q4 2017, then during Q4 2017 approximately $500m worth of GPUs were sold to crypto miners or a total of $954m worth of GPUs in Q4/17-Q1/18.
If we take a RX 570 as a benchmark (doing 30 Mh/s) and say it sold for $300 (that's a low price for a Q4 2017 RX 570), then the hashrate should have increased by 95 TH/s.
From the 1st of October to the 1st of April 2018 (Q4-Q1) the network hashrate rose by over 160TH/s.

Now what about the rest of 2017? According to our numbers, $276m worth of GPUs should have sold during that timeframe to miners (Q1 virtually nothing, because crypto wasn't hyped back then, and then it slowly rose during Q2 and at the latest by Q3 people were crazy for GPUs and crypto).

At the start of 2017 the network hashrate for Ethereum was 5.96 TH/s (https://bitinfocharts.com/de/comparison/ethereum-hashrate.html). Therefore by the end of Q1 2018, we should have had a total network hashrate of $776m+$454m/$250 per RX 570 = 4'920'000 RX 570 or 147.6 TH/s. We had 110 TH/s more than that by end of Q1 2018.

Where did that come from? Yes, probably Bitmain and other ASIC manufacturers (as was also evident in Bitmain secretly mining Monero and owning over 80% of the hashrate).
So the network hashrate of Ethereum as of this moment is more likely to be 35-45% ASICs, according to my estimations. Open for debate.

[nico9111]

Carbonvote https://www.etherchain.org/coinvote/poll/298
Almost 100k ETH participation and 78% approval for EIP-858 followed by EIP-1234

The community is voting!

[salanki]

With 100 votes it's quite a small sample. Since carbonvotes are weighted by amount of ETH someone has it doesn't necessarily represent understanding of network security and long term economic policy. It only represents "I have a lot of ETH, I don't want anyone else to get new ETH so I can sell mine for a lot of $$$".

As earlier commented, the poll doesn't include a PoW change nor does it include an option for EIP-1295. At least it should be updated to reflect the different options that people actually want.

[atlanticcrypto]

@salanki how dare you use logic. i'm going to post a reddit thread about you being a terrible human and shackling baby kittens to a one lane highway divider.

[nico9111]

Haha lol @atlanticcrypto the master engineer PHD of space and science
@salanki a weighted vote is still a vote. 100k eth has been voted. It’s an economic reality that voters with more at stake have the right for a bigger vote. I’m not saying it’s the best but it also can be much argued that a non-weighted vote would be unfair.
Secondly, this is a vote that the community is voting upon. Constantinople is coming up and we need to have something ready. If you wish to propose for a vote that makes more sense for you, be my guest. Nobody’s going to do it for you. If you don’t, you can’t complain. If the current proposal doesn’t include anything about asic resistance, maybe is because it might not be needed. I didn’t create this vote.
In my opinion, EIP-1234 would be best and if the pill can go easier with asic resistance, so be it as long as the core dev can implement it into the update (that I can’t say...)

[MoneroCrusher]

@nico9111 so 0.1% of ETH holders should decide for everyone?
In my opinion ASIC fork off + reduction from 3 ETH to 2 ETH would be a good solution for everyone, the network stays secure + is more decentralized & at same time issuance is decreased by 33%.

[nico9111]

@monerocrusher Decentralized governance is a hard thing to manage but we have tools and etherchain carbon vote is a good one. I agree it needs to better managed i.e how many are not voting because they think they’ll have to share their private keys. So yes more education is needed but as time goes by we need some result and the clock is ticking. If you don’t agree with this vote because you think it doesn’t represent the community then you’re welcome to offer solutions.

[salanki]

I wonder how people would like if we changed the way democratic voting works in parliament elections to give people with more in their bank accounts more votes.

Without verified identity it's hard to make a better anonymous voting system, that is for sure.

[nico9111]

@salanki, it’s called lobbying. At least with the blockchain only the owner of a wallet can vote so easy to verify the “being part of the community” aspect. One of the proposal I have is that for each and every vote proposals, there’s one option that always says “I don’t agree with this vote”. If this last option wins, the entirety of the vote is nullified. What can be challenging is the vote proposal step. I feel a proposal needs to be promoted and agreed by a mininum number of community members, pretty much like for presidential election where a list of candidates is proposed and only a few move on to the actual election.

[olalawal]

Again the little guy gets screwed , failure to fork off the corporate ASIC mining conglomerate is a huge mistake byt the ethdev team, no half ass vote can hide this fact. Why would a miner even bother to vote, 4 options and none carry the MAIN concern of miners.

Miners really don’t even care about issuance that much becuase you could double issuance and all that means is ASIC builders will ramp up even more and normal miners get the same tiny peice of the pie.

Forking Asics however is a Re-leveling of the playing field and would get alot of votes.

Reduce issuance with no fork will probably kill the network for gpus , If thats what the team wants have at it.

[MoneroCrusher]

Completely agree, the decentralized miner community wouldn't care if issuance was increased even to 6 ETH :-)
You know why? Because they wouldn't get it, Bitmain and Innosilicon and their big partners would.
Only way to avoid a community split is to respect the miners that secured the network for years and made it big. Ethereum is supposed to be decentralized after all, isn't it?
Issuance reduction would put 90% of the hashrate in a such low number of participants you could count them with your fingers.
I'm failing to understand how such a huge number of people don't get that concept. All they can think about is "miners are greeeeedy!!!!111, let's not give them more!!1"
I think issuance reduction is out of question, and I support it as a miner. But ASICs have to be destroyed at the same time unless you want a community split. Good luck ETH devs.

[Snuff]

Hi @MoneroCrusher!

Thanks for the research, it seems your version is more trustworthy than mine. When I was working on the article I took the data on a total NVidia & AMD sales, so 10% seems ok. I'm working on the second part of the article on ASICs, ProgPOW, and other possible solutions of ASIC issue. What do you think of ProgPOW?

[olalawal]

@snuff you need to go back to the drawing board, even a layman with zero research could tell you there is far far more than 10 percent of ASIC powered hash on the network

@monerocrusher your numbers are even conservative, if you consider the fact that , people buy gpus to mine neoscrypt, cn7 forks, Ethereum forks , and a multitude of other algorithms.

So even looking at the millions of dollars worth of gpus sold for crytocurrncy mining maybe only 75 to 80 percent or lesss of those are pointed to the Ethereum network which even pushes the scale of ASICS higher than 50 percent, this is an informed educated guess.

[atlanticcrypto]

Folks, I want to put the BTC vs ETH analysis in perspective. Let's compare the networks at the same age (meaning, 100 days of operation for both). If we do that, we get to see ETH issuance versus BTC issuance at the same network age.

I'm not sure the ETH network has EVER overpaid relative to BTC. It seems to be years away from doing so.

Bootstrapping network security is expensive in terms of monetary supply. The ETH dev team should be celebrated on every street corner in the digital world for how cheaply they've done it so far.

On a length of network life adjusted basis, ETH is no where near overpaying.

[chfast]

Legend:

• blue - BTC
• red - ETH

@atlanticcrypto you forgot to subtract the ETH created in the genesis block.

[atlanticcrypto]

ETH in the presale and ETH mined should be fungible. I didn't think I should subtract it?

[jean-m-cyr]

@atlanticcrypto I'm not sure using time since inception is a relevant factor unless both started at the same time. Otherwise the different start times occur in different socio-economic contexts.

[chfast]

@atlanticcrypto because you are counting percents by comparing issuance to the current supply while BTC started from 0 and ETH from 60 millions.

[atlanticcrypto]

@jean-m-cyr Absolutely. And now I get to make my point. Comparing ETH to BTC is a dumb relative metric. It is unusable. The ETH network is composed of a different type of hardware and is much more decentralized. It has a different USD street value of components. It takes longer to scale. There are so many things that are different that invalidate any comparisons between ETH and BTC in terms of "under" or "over" paying.

All I can say is, we operate a ton of mining hardware. If people believe that makes me untrustworthy, whatever. What I am yelling at the top of my lungs though is that if we cut the issuance here by more than we proposed in EIP-1295, we believe that the portion of hashrate that falls off the network is going to be large enough that it will put the security of the network at risk. That's all I can really do - I've published a ton of data to support it - now I have to trust in the developers to make the best call as they see it.

[atlanticcrypto]

@chfast I understand your point, but does issuance as a percent of mined coins matter or does issuance as a percent of all coins matter? The fungibility makes me believe it's the latter? If you mined a coin at block 2, it's not like you had 50% of the coin float, whereas in BTC you did.

[jean-m-cyr]

@atlanticcrypto Unfortunately the outcry from both miners and investors unjustly places the core developers (or whoever will ultimately decide) between a rock and a hard place...

[salanki]

Cross posting from #55 as that thread is less active, I apologize for the spam:

There seems to be concern of possible centralization risk with EIP-1295 and also concern about the network impact of EIP-858 and EIP-1234. I've submitted a EIP that proposes a reward reduction similar to EIP-1295 but without changing the reward structure. This EIP is intended as a measured decrease to provide data for making decisions on further decreases in latter hard forks.

[olalawal]

Link to 55,
https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/55

It seems the same voices are talking to each other out there, basically thier own echo chamber.

AGAIN NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE BS EIP VOTE.

ita like a ballot with only one candidate, worthless , worse than rigged banana republic elections.

stop pointing to its results , its a farce

[lrettig]

Closing in favor of #56