4 ms·

How come eth doesn’t use ASICS? Also when they switch to pos how do they transfer your coins over?

by mrfusion 5y ago

TomVDB 5y ago
Ethereum mining performance relies on memory bandwidth. Designing a GDDR6 or GDDR6X memory controller is hard.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I wonder how the M1 Max fares with its 400 GBps bus.
  - TomVDB 5y ago
    It won't do well. Compare that 50 GB/s of the M1 Max to 760 GB/s of an RTX 3080. Then check prices. Even after ridiculous scalping markups, the RTX 3080 will still be cheaper.
TacticalCoder 5y ago
> How come eth doesn’t use ASICS? Ethereum was conceived to be ASIC-resistant from day one. They even considered making the coin resistant to GPU-mining but then changed their mind. It's not that hard to be ASIC-resistant and seen that ETH GPU miners are still profitable to this date, they obviously succeeded in preventing ASICs from being economically doable to mine ETH. > Also when they switch to pos how do they transfer your coins over? Ethereum is already on PoS, but partially. At the moment mining is going on both chains: PoW and PoS. In a few months it's going to be PoS only. All the coins from the "old" PoW-only chain will still exist and be usable on the PoS-only chain.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > They even considered making the coin resistant to GPU-mining This could have driven some very interesting developments in the CPU space, mostly in the memory interfaces.
nostrademons 5y ago
"How come eth doesn’t use ASICS?" It's intentionally designed to be memory-hard so that ASIC implementation is more difficult. Lots of people in the cryptocurrency world consider ASIC mining to be a misfeature, because it centralizes mining among firms that have the capital to do chip development. Litecoin's entire reason for existence is "Bitcoin, but can't be mined by ASICs". "Also when they switch to pos how do they transfer your coins over?" There's already a beacon chain running Ethereum proof-of-stake. Think of this like a dark launch for web tech - basically you run the new infrastructure in parallel with the old infrastructure, make sure it's stable, get everybody adopting it, and then cut over the UI to use the new infrastructure. There's a one-way bridge that ports state over from the PoW chain to the beacon chain. Think of this as a double-write layer; all new transactions get written both to the PoW and PoS chains. In early 2022 "The Merge" happens. This takes the form of the "difficulty bomb" - basically, Ethereum mining will get exponentially harder and eventually unprofitable until all the existing miners turn off their machines and switch to PoS, at which point there will be no point to mining Ethereum and no point to writing transactions to the PoW chain.
- mrfusion 5y ago
  Thanks. I had assumed PoS was more like a holy grail for cryptos? But this sounds like it’s entirely possible? Will PoS lead to a run on other resources like hard drives?
  - TimJRobinson 5y ago
    No. PoS is secured by miners (called validators in PoS) putting up collateral. It takes 32 Ether to run a validator. If they act maliciously that collateral gets burnt.
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    Nah, hard drive usage is about the same with PoS. It could potentially lead to a run on Ethereum. The resource used in PoS is the cryptocurrency being secured itself. Basically, you agree to lock up a certain stake when you run a validator, and forfeit it if it's found that your validator "cheats". By doing this, you make cheating unprofitable - there's a financial incentive to catch cheats, and a financial disincentive to cheat, and the cheaters eventually go bankrupt (or end up on their own isolated chain where nobody transacts with them). The financial effect of this is that a bunch of Ethereum gets locked up and illiquid. Instead of miners receiving Ethereum which they want to sell for dollars to run their hardware, stakers lock up Ethereum and effectively receive interest. This reduces immediate supply within the market. I'm wondering if a lot of the recent price movement is in anticipation of this.

How come eth doesn’t use ASICS? Also when they switch to pos how do they transfer your coins over?

TomVDB 5y ago

Ethereum mining performance relies on memory bandwidth. Designing a GDDR6 or GDDR6X memory controller is hard.

rbanffy 5y ago
I wonder how the M1 Max fares with its 400 GBps bus.
- TomVDB 5y ago
  It won't do well. Compare that 50 GB/s of the M1 Max to 760 GB/s of an RTX 3080. Then check prices. Even after ridiculous scalping markups, the RTX 3080 will still be cheaper.

TacticalCoder 5y ago

> How come eth doesn’t use ASICS? Ethereum was conceived to be ASIC-resistant from day one. They even considered making the coin resistant to GPU-mining but then changed their mind. It's not that hard to be ASIC-resistant and seen that ETH GPU miners are still profitable to this date, they obviously succeeded in preventing ASICs from being economically doable to mine ETH. > Also when they switch to pos how do they transfer your coins over? Ethereum is already on PoS, but partially. At the moment mining is going on both chains: PoW and PoS. In a few months it's going to be PoS only. All the coins from the "old" PoW-only chain will still exist and be usable on the PoS-only chain.

rbanffy 5y ago
> They even considered making the coin resistant to GPU-mining This could have driven some very interesting developments in the CPU space, mostly in the memory interfaces.

nostrademons 5y ago

"How come eth doesn’t use ASICS?" It's intentionally designed to be memory-hard so that ASIC implementation is more difficult. Lots of people in the cryptocurrency world consider ASIC mining to be a misfeature, because it centralizes mining among firms that have the capital to do chip development. Litecoin's entire reason for existence is "Bitcoin, but can't be mined by ASICs". "Also when they switch to pos how do they transfer your coins over?" There's already a beacon chain running Ethereum proof-of-stake. Think of this like a dark launch for web tech - basically you run the new infrastructure in parallel with the old infrastructure, make sure it's stable, get everybody adopting it, and then cut over the UI to use the new infrastructure. There's a one-way bridge that ports state over from the PoW chain to the beacon chain. Think of this as a double-write layer; all new transactions get written both to the PoW and PoS chains. In early 2022 "The Merge" happens. This takes the form of the "difficulty bomb" - basically, Ethereum mining will get exponentially harder and eventually unprofitable until all the existing miners turn off their machines and switch to PoS, at which point there will be no point to mining Ethereum and no point to writing transactions to the PoW chain.

mrfusion 5y ago
Thanks. I had assumed PoS was more like a holy grail for cryptos? But this sounds like it’s entirely possible? Will PoS lead to a run on other resources like hard drives?
- TimJRobinson 5y ago
  No. PoS is secured by miners (called validators in PoS) putting up collateral. It takes 32 Ether to run a validator. If they act maliciously that collateral gets burnt.
- nostrademons 5y ago
  Nah, hard drive usage is about the same with PoS. It could potentially lead to a run on Ethereum. The resource used in PoS is the cryptocurrency being secured itself. Basically, you agree to lock up a certain stake when you run a validator, and forfeit it if it's found that your validator "cheats". By doing this, you make cheating unprofitable - there's a financial incentive to catch cheats, and a financial disincentive to cheat, and the cheaters eventually go bankrupt (or end up on their own isolated chain where nobody transacts with them). The financial effect of this is that a bunch of Ethereum gets locked up and illiquid. Instead of miners receiving Ethereum which they want to sell for dollars to run their hardware, stakers lock up Ethereum and effectively receive interest. This reduces immediate supply within the market. I'm wondering if a lot of the recent price movement is in anticipation of this.