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The number one supercomputer on the TOP500 list, Summit, is able to majority-attack about 95% of cryptocurrencies that are GPU-mined: https://twitter.com/zorina
by mrb 8y ago
The number one supercomputer on the TOP500 list, Summit, is able to majority-attack about 95% of cryptocurrencies that are GPU-mined: https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1007005472505978880 https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1007005472505978880 That's one advantage that ASIC-mined currencies have over them. Specialized chips raise the security bar so high that the pre-existing installed base of GPUs cannot attack them.
- Arbalest 8y agoThat sounds good in theory, but I can't help but wonder if this has actually contributed to the huge power draw. Sure they're more efficient, but due to their limited availability, it encourages the big players to consolidate, knowing the barriers to entry are very high for would be competitors. This results in a technological arms race among the biggest players, confident that there will be no added competitors who will come out of nowhere. As they add to their holdings, they also necessarily increase their power consumption, making for an opportunity cost of that otherwise cheap power to other uses.
- mrb 8y agoThe trend of power consumption is no different between GPUs and ASICs. Either way, miners will always be competing to add more and more capacity.
- Arbalest 8y agoWell my point was that, the confidence of not having serious new competition encourages even further investment, beyond the alternative. This is because their future returns are more predictable.
- fulafel 8y agoSupercomputers are expensive because of the investment in interconnect & i/o bandwidth & latency. So using one for a trivially parallelizable, low-communication task like crypto mining would be wasteful - very low bang for the buck. (There are other cryptanalysis workloads that benefit though, eg parallel number field sieve).
- mrb 8y agoYou are right that Summit is overbuilt if it was going to be used just for raw crypto mining hashpower. However, even so, it would be quite profitable... The last double spend attack on BTG stole ~$20M. There is no reason to think it couldn't steal $50M or so. Repeat the attack on a handful of other cryptocurrencies and you would quickly recoup the cost of Summit ($200M)...
- tux1968 8y agoGenuinely curious about what would make this stealing? Isn't it just playing the crypto game better than the competition? What makes it criminal?