4 ms·

If I understand etherium and zcash mining, they use algorithms designed to require a lot of RAM so it is ASIC-resistant. (I.e. they want mining to be practical

by kens 9y ago

If I understand etherium and zcash mining, they use algorithms designed to require a lot of RAM so it is ASIC-resistant. (I.e. they want mining to be practical on a PC, not requiring custom hardware.) Unfortunately for the Alto, the gigabytes of data required for mining won't fit into the 512kB memory. Even swapping to the hard disk won't work, since that only holds 2.5MB. Thus, while Bitcoin would have been possible in the 1970s, etherium and zcash wouldn't have been.

deleted 9y ago
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miahi 9y ago
Not only lots of RAM but lots of very fast RAM. This is what makes it ASIC-resistant for now (it's not hard to attach a huge RAM to an ASIC, but going for hundreds of GB/s is really expensive). So unfortunately it's GPUs for now.
- xj9 9y ago
  \> unfortunately i think you are missing the point. the idea is to prevent ASICs from taking over. if you could build one that could mine ETH or zcash, it would be a failure from their perspective.
  - miahi 9y ago
    It's unfortunate because the GPU prices and availability right now are going nuts. I wanted to buy a GTX 1070 and it's out of stock with weeks of waiting on preorders on most European websites, with price increases of 40-50% in the last 30 days.
    - ven_bug_trap 9y ago
      In the short term it may seem more unfortunate, but the problem with expensive ASICs is that they make centralisation far easier, by making it less feasible for ordinary people to do the mining.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        The people behind sia coin believe differently [0] and after reading that I'm more inclined to believe them. The short version is that since "commodity" hardware can mine many things, you can't gauge how much power there could possibly be. Someone with 100,000 GPUs could turn their whole system to your coin and have over 50% of the hashing power for a day, then go back to whatever else the day after. With ASICs, the devices can't be used for anything other than that specific coin, so to "save up" your hashing power to sneak in a day that you can get majority hashing power would be stupid. You'd have to be giving up the income from them while you waited. The article explains it much better than I can, I really recommend it. [0] https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51?gi=43997fdbccfc https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51?gi...
        kens 9y ago
        What's stopping a government agency from "saving up" their hashing power so they could get majority control over Bitcoin if they needed to? Seriously, if you were the NSA, wouldn't this be a sensible thing to spend a few million dollars on? And they could use their mining hardware now, hidden through pools, so it would almost pay for itself. (Yes, I know I'm getting into tinfoil hat territory.)
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        Klathmon 9y ago
        Nothing I guess, but they also aren't saying ASIC based mining perfect, just that it's better than the alternative (GPU based mining algorithms)
        Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        In practical terms a 51% attack is not good, but actually has a fairly straight-forward solution to solve. Change the PoW. A 51% attack can't steal your coins, only restrict your spending them for the length of time they are conducting the attack. So the issue isn't that you have 51% attack possibility, but that people think you do, and furthermore think you're going to abuse it. If a government attacked it, they'd simply hard-fork away from the mining algorithm, and millions of dollars of hardware investment gets flushed down the toilet.
  - JohnTHaller 9y ago
    I think parent means it's unfortunate for those of us that are looking to buy a video card for gaming. Or actual work.
paulmd 9y ago
> Thus, while Bitcoin would have been possible in the 1970s, etherium and zcash wouldn't have been. Not with current DAG sizes, but if this system had been available in the 70s it wouldn't have the current DAG sizes. If you assume a DAG that numbers in tens/hundreds of kbyes then it would have been workable.

by kens 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

miahi 9y ago

Not only lots of RAM but lots of very fast RAM. This is what makes it ASIC-resistant for now (it's not hard to attach a huge RAM to an ASIC, but going for hundreds of GB/s is really expensive). So unfortunately it's GPUs for now.

xj9 9y ago
\> unfortunately i think you are missing the point. the idea is to prevent ASICs from taking over. if you could build one that could mine ETH or zcash, it would be a failure from their perspective.
- miahi 9y ago
  It's unfortunate because the GPU prices and availability right now are going nuts. I wanted to buy a GTX 1070 and it's out of stock with weeks of waiting on preorders on most European websites, with price increases of 40-50% in the last 30 days.
  - ven_bug_trap 9y ago
    In the short term it may seem more unfortunate, but the problem with expensive ASICs is that they make centralisation far easier, by making it less feasible for ordinary people to do the mining.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      The people behind sia coin believe differently [0] and after reading that I'm more inclined to believe them. The short version is that since "commodity" hardware can mine many things, you can't gauge how much power there could possibly be. Someone with 100,000 GPUs could turn their whole system to your coin and have over 50% of the hashing power for a day, then go back to whatever else the day after. With ASICs, the devices can't be used for anything other than that specific coin, so to "save up" your hashing power to sneak in a day that you can get majority hashing power would be stupid. You'd have to be giving up the income from them while you waited. The article explains it much better than I can, I really recommend it. [0] https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51?gi=43997fdbccfc https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51?gi...
      - kens 9y ago
        What's stopping a government agency from "saving up" their hashing power so they could get majority control over Bitcoin if they needed to? Seriously, if you were the NSA, wouldn't this be a sensible thing to spend a few million dollars on? And they could use their mining hardware now, hidden through pools, so it would almost pay for itself. (Yes, I know I'm getting into tinfoil hat territory.)
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        Klathmon 9y ago
        Nothing I guess, but they also aren't saying ASIC based mining perfect, just that it's better than the alternative (GPU based mining algorithms)
        Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        In practical terms a 51% attack is not good, but actually has a fairly straight-forward solution to solve. Change the PoW. A 51% attack can't steal your coins, only restrict your spending them for the length of time they are conducting the attack. So the issue isn't that you have 51% attack possibility, but that people think you do, and furthermore think you're going to abuse it. If a government attacked it, they'd simply hard-fork away from the mining algorithm, and millions of dollars of hardware investment gets flushed down the toilet.
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  I think parent means it's unfortunate for those of us that are looking to buy a video card for gaming. Or actual work.

paulmd 9y ago

> Thus, while Bitcoin would have been possible in the 1970s, etherium and zcash wouldn't have been. Not with current DAG sizes, but if this system had been available in the 70s it wouldn't have the current DAG sizes. If you assume a DAG that numbers in tens/hundreds of kbyes then it would have been workable.