The SiaCoin Blake(2b) ASIC miner debate. What happens when ASIC miners get introduced to a new algorithm / cryptocurrency

cubanhacker (28)in #sia • 7 years ago (edited)

ASIC miners are the next generational mining step in any algorithm after GPU's

Turmoil has ensued into the small Sia Coin community, a very promising project for an alternative (cheaper than amazon) storage solution that is being backed by multiple applications. As a growing cryptocurrency coin and blockchain project that promises open source access to storage technologies backed by the Interplanetary File System attached to block chain technologies, it is facing the growing pains any minable coin will face in the advent of ASIC technology.

It has happened in the past to Bitcoin, Dash and many other coins once ASIC miners hit the market. But it was not news to anyone !

Obelisk was previously accepted by the Sia Coin community in order to produce ASIC hardware, deliverable in 12 months, orders were placed, promises were made and money was exchanged.

On January 2018 Bitmain came out of the woods with their Blake(2b) ASIC miners, the Antminer A3 and at that point the previous GPU miners, Obelisk investors started campaigns to try to stop Bitmain ASIC miners from touching the Sia Blockchain.

The developers have issue a notice that they could fork the coin to run out of business the current Bitmain. They have ace up its sleeve. They have the ability to soft fork the network, which would invalidate Bitmain’s machines.

Divided community between GPU miners, investors on the Obelisk hardware and Antminer A3 buyers have been posting images like these on reddit:

Forking Sia will make an strong precedent that attempting to out-capitalize Nebulous’ hardware game will cause them to react by invalidating the machines that are causing the problem.

What Bitman has done is perceived as covert and somewhat underhanded by the existing miners and Obelisk investors that want to defend their profits. On the other hand, nothing they’ve done is illegal and beating a competitor to market is the nature of capitalism.

Sia developers have a choice to make, whether to simply stand clear of the problem and accept the reality that competition exists in a free world or declare that they are ultimately a centralized entity and that the entire project ,idea of a open source, decentralized coin/file system is worth nothing.