3 ms·

I understand. What did influence that decision? I expect it would be your overall appraisal of the viability of a particular blockchain and future expectation

I understand. What did influence that decision? I expect it would be your overall appraisal of the viability of a particular blockchain and future expectations of activity. Is that accurate?

latchkey 5y ago
ETH is where the mindshare and developer resources went. ETC became too fringe. BETA vs. VHS. It really had very little to do with some quorum of powerful people. Many people don't understand that GPUs don't have the same hardware race war as bitcoin ASICs. Older GPUs actually have better ROI because the ethash algo is constrained by memory controller speed, not as much by nm scale or clock rate. The GPUs we use today were new old stock from many years ago. This is why we don't see a large influx of ASICs for ethash... it just isn't profitable. We can sell (or use) the GPUs at a later date for other purposes than just mining. In fact, as we race towards "the merge" and PoS, it astounds me that someone isn't working on something all these miners can switch their compute resources to mine profitably. It is crazy to think that ETC could actually become a viable chain again (but they have some plans to switch a more friendly ASIC algo, which I don't think will work out well for them). Note that ETC is a mess right now, exchanges have 6+ day holds on transfers because nobody trusts the chain. I'll be transparent and admit that there are some other significant non-technical factors as well, but can't discuss them here.
- fatbird 5y ago
  Thanks for the detail. BTW, "quorum of powerful individuals" (QOPI) means the core ETH people who decided to execute the hard forks. I think you're demonstrating my point for me. It's not that QOPI led you all by the nose or that you acceded to a vote; it's that the core ETH people decided to hard fork and you made a pretty rational business decision to stick with ETH and not ETC in part because, as you put it, "nobody trusts the chain". It's about trust because "code is law" is pretty obviously marketing rather than foundational principle.

I understand. What did influence that decision? I expect it would be your overall appraisal of the viability of a particular blockchain and future expectations of activity. Is that accurate?

latchkey 5y ago

ETH is where the mindshare and developer resources went. ETC became too fringe. BETA vs. VHS. It really had very little to do with some quorum of powerful people. Many people don't understand that GPUs don't have the same hardware race war as bitcoin ASICs. Older GPUs actually have better ROI because the ethash algo is constrained by memory controller speed, not as much by nm scale or clock rate. The GPUs we use today were new old stock from many years ago. This is why we don't see a large influx of ASICs for ethash... it just isn't profitable. We can sell (or use) the GPUs at a later date for other purposes than just mining. In fact, as we race towards "the merge" and PoS, it astounds me that someone isn't working on something all these miners can switch their compute resources to mine profitably. It is crazy to think that ETC could actually become a viable chain again (but they have some plans to switch a more friendly ASIC algo, which I don't think will work out well for them). Note that ETC is a mess right now, exchanges have 6+ day holds on transfers because nobody trusts the chain. I'll be transparent and admit that there are some other significant non-technical factors as well, but can't discuss them here.

fatbird 5y ago
Thanks for the detail. BTW, "quorum of powerful individuals" (QOPI) means the core ETH people who decided to execute the hard forks. I think you're demonstrating my point for me. It's not that QOPI led you all by the nose or that you acceded to a vote; it's that the core ETH people decided to hard fork and you made a pretty rational business decision to stick with ETH and not ETC in part because, as you put it, "nobody trusts the chain". It's about trust because "code is law" is pretty obviously marketing rather than foundational principle.