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Top Ethereum devs cause online stir with talk of a hard fork in protocol to combat mining centralization.
Ethereum developer Piper Merriam opened Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) #958 on Github on March 30, presenting the idea of a possible hard fork in the Ethereum (ETH) protocol to invalidate ETH ASICs.
Vlad Zamfir, another developer with the Ethereum Foundation, posed the same question on Twitter March 28. 57 percent of respondents voted yes.
Both developersâ polls emerge amid rumors that the China-based ASIC manufacturer Bitmain is on the brink of shipping its first Ethash compatible ASIC miners. Ethash is the Proof-of-Work (PoW) hashing algorithm used by Ethereum and a variety of other altcoins.
Buterinâs Ethereum White Paper suggests the protocol already has a twofold resistance to mining centralization.
First, the algorithm requires miners to return the hash for data that has been ârandomly selectedâ from transactions in the preceding block. Since âEthereum contracts can include any kind of computation,â âan Ethereum ASIC would essentially be an ASIC for general computation - ie. a better CPU.â
The second means of defence is to âpoison the well,â which Vitalik characterises as âultimately an adaptive human solution rather than a technical one.â If a certain type of computation becomes prevalent, then conventional miners can introduce âa large number of contracts into the Blockchain specifically designed to stymie certain ASICsâ.
As Cointelegraph reported in February, Bitmainâs profits outstripped the US GPU giant Nvidia in 2017. Research by Bernstein analysts estimated Bitmainâs profits to be between $3-4 bln for 2017, holding 70-80 percent of the market for BTC miners and ASICs.
Ethereumâs informal poll regarding a possible hard fork follows Moneroâs rejection of centralized hashpower last month. Monero devlead Riccardo Spagni warned that the coinâs protocol would be changed every six months to stymie ASIC monopolies. Rumors regarding possible deployment of Ethash compatible ASIC miners impacted Ethereum markets, according to some commentators.
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