Momentum Is Building to Block Ethereum ASICs

Several ethereum miners and developers have come forward with the goal of stopping specialized mining hardware from effectively operating on the network.

Underway since April, the controversy surrounding application-specific integrated circuits (or ASICs) on ethereum rose after news broke last Thursday of a new line of specialized mining hardware that claims to generate more than six times as much profit as that of the product of its main competitor, mining giant Bitmain.

Following the news – and citing concerns regarding the lack of action taken by developers to stop the growing use of ASICs on the network, which many believe would effectively price out smaller miners – some proponents called for an all-out "strike" by GPU miners.

One GitHub user going by the handle "Mdaria510" said:

"The only plausible way forward for GPU miners is to 'go on strike' and commit to continuing to mine the existing chain and undermine the unity of ethereum and force compromise."

In support of this sentiment, another user by the name "MoneroCrusher" added that requests from the ethereum mining community to implement ASIC-resistant measures have been "blatantly ignored" and promised to join the revolt with their hash power.

Still, in the wake of the outcry, certain ethereum developers have stated that a code change targeted at blocking the growing number ASICs could perhaps be implemented as part of a system-wide network upgrade.

The algorithm in question is part of an ethereum improvement proposal (EIP) dubbed "ProgPoW."

As detailed by CoinDesk, ProgPoW is aimed at minimizing ASIC mining on the platform by maximizing the effectiveness of GPU-specific traits, such as memory.

But most developers believe the upgrade would need to be executed only after Constantinople, the network's forthcoming hard fork upgrade that's slated for October or November this year.

Speaking on Github, Martin Holst Swende, security officer for the Ethereum Foundation, wrote: "I do not think we should cram it into Constantinople."

He continued:

"The implementation of the algorithm is one aspect, but there are other things that need to be done to ensure a switch goes smoothly, and those things need testing ... My opinion is that we should consider a dedicated [proof-of-work] switching hard fork shortly after Constantinople."