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We explore the possibility that this miner contains a new more advanced form of technology, which is less efficient than ASICs, but potentially partially immune to PoW algorithm changes.
We then conclude that whether this particular Ethereum chip is capable of this or not, this type of technology may eventually end the era of anti-ASIC PoW changes designed to improve decentralisation, such that crypto-coin communities may have to accept the inevitability of ASICs.
Bitmain have recently launched a new Ethereum miner, widely believed to be an ASIC, and it is expected to ship in late July However, many in the Ethereum community oppose ASICs and prefer GPU mining, since GPU companies are primarily concerned with gaming rather than crypto-coins, which should mean that the hardware is distributed more widely and fairly, improving decentralisation. Therefore a risk to Bitmain could be that the Ethereum community decide to hardfork to change the PoW algorithm, which could devalue the Bitmain machines and result in a large wasted investment.
In this report, we speculate that Bitmain may already be one step ahead of the Ethereum community. Developing a custom chip requires a considerable financial investment and therefore we think Bitmain may have taken some countermeasures to avoid another loss. This could make an Ethereum hardfork PoW change mostly pointless. Even after factoring in the sharp increase in value of the Monero coin, this is an extraordinary growth rate.
After Monero developers announced plans for a hardfork, Bitmain began to sell Monero ASICs on their website, indicating that they could indeed have been mining in secret. After the PoW change, as Figure 1 shows, the Monero hashrate dropped off significantly. Although this coin had a lower value than Monero, it had a higher hashrate, since there was little else for the Monero ASICs to mine.
There was no replay protection implemented for the split, however Monero increased the ring signature limit, therefore one can split Monero and Monero Original by first initiating a transaction on the Monero Original chain with fewer ring signatures than are allowed on Monero less than 7.
Figure 1 — Monero hashrate compared to Monero price. Figure 2 — Monero hashrate compared to Monero price — Rolling day percentage growth of 7-day moving average.
In the 7 days following the PoW hardfork, the hashrate rolling average excludes the period prior to the hardfork. As we mentioned above, Bitmain has recently launched a new Ethereum miner, which is expected to ship around late July Given the history with Monero and the fact that many in the Ethereum community, including those mining Ethereum at home on GPUs, are likely to be unhappy at a new Bitmain product, Bitmain may be concerned.
One downside to the new miner could be increased miner centralization, but in addition to this, the product may also receive hostility from some in the Ethereum community due to their financial interests in the existing Ethereum miners, GPUs. The advertised specification of the product is disclosed above.
As the table below illustrates, a back -of-the-envelope calculation could imply this new Ethereum miner is less efficient than one would expect if it was an ASIC, based on comparisons with the efficiency gain measured on some of the other ASICs related to other coins. In contrast the new Ethereum miner is only c. However, we appreciate that the below table is a crude approximation which ignores many crucial variables and factors, such as the memory-intensive nature of the Ethereum mining algorithm.
But although the calculation is inaccurate, the figures can still potentially illustrate a point: Figure 4 — Approximate miner efficiency calculations. In , ASICs designed for specific hash functions emerged. Figure 5 — Crypto-coin chip type timeline. The inclusion of Vector Processors VPs towards the end of is speculative.
It might be possible that Bitmain has developed a new type of chip, a Vector Processor. The architecture of this chip could be designed for PoW hash functions in general, but not for a specific hash function. It is possible that the new Ethereum miner falls into this category of chip, although this is mostly speculation on our part. Figure 6 — The evolution of crypto-coin chip types. Ethereum ETH — onwards. However the chip itself, which is the area that requires by far the most financial investment, could be more general and not specifically designed for Ethereum.
Therefore if Ethereum conducts a PoW change, it could be possible to direct the chips into a new device as they leave the foundry or perhaps even recover the chips from the old device put them into a new Ethereum miner.
Although again, at this point we are speculating. They are doing very well. We expect them to slowly move to the AI area. Q1 earnings call. Since any such chip may be able to switch between hashing algorithms, at a stretch, one could argue this falls within the scope of AI.
It remains to be seen if the chip is merely programmable, like modern GPUs, or if there is a trick up its sleeve that could give it an efficiency gain vs. GPUs in most cases. If present, this advanced technological capability is likely to be seen as a major achievement for Bitmain. Such technology may also be even more expensive to develop and more specialised than the technology in ASICs, which could make the decentralisation problem even worse. Despite the above, we have not yet seen any strong indications of the deployment of the new chips on the Ethereum network.
Figure 8 — Ethereum hashrate compared to Ethereum price — Rolling day percentage growth of 7-day moving average. Despite what we have said above, most of the content in this article should be considered guesswork. However, even if we are wrong about this particular chip, we still think it is reasonably likely that at some point in the future, Bitmain or another company, will develop a general-purpose hashing chip, which is more efficient than GPUs for almost all hashing algorithms.
At this point the era of anti-ASIC PoW changes could be over, with crypto-coin communities having to make a choice between two potentially unfavourable outcomes: Unless of course proof-of-stake systems prove robust enough. Whilst many claims made in this note are cited, we do not guarantee accuracy.
In this piece we examine proof of stake PoS consensus systems. We look at their theoretical advantages and weaknesses. We then analyse the specific details of some of the most prominent and novel PoS systems attempted thus far, where we learnt that some pure PoS systems becomes increasingly complex, to the point which they became unrealistic.
We review the latest Ethereum proposal, which we think is a significant improvement compared to previous attempts and it could provide net security benefits for the Ethereum network. However, the system may still be reliant on proof of work PoW , which is still used to produce the blocks and at this point it is not entirely clear to us if the PoS element of the process contributes to ensuring nodes converge on one chain.
Essentially one is trying to construct a data structure with the following properties: PoW uses the most accumulated work rule to decide between competing valid chains fork choice rule. This is not only an apparent solution to criteria three above, but the PoW mechanism also inherently solves the block production and block timing issue. While total accumulated work is the fork choice rule, a block producer is also required to include an element of PoW in each block, a stochastic process, and therefore the issue of who produces each block and when each block is produced, is also be addressed by PoW.
PoS is the general concept of a fork choice rule based on the most accumulated stake i. However, unlike PoW, this does not necessarily directly address the issue of who produces each block or when blocks are produced. Therefore these issues may need to be addressed by alternative mechanisms. PoW is also a solution to the coin distribution problem, something which may also require an alternative solution in PoS based systems. Theoretical overview of PoS. Essentially the issue is about timing and how to determine which updates to the ledger occurred first.
Actually if one third or more of the actors are disruptive, the problem is provably unsolvable, from a mathematical standpoint, as Leslie Lamport proved in It is shown that, using only oral messages, [reaching agreement] is solvable if and only if more than two-thirds of the generals are loyal; so a single traitor can confound two loyal generals.
The Byzantine Generals Problem PoW can therefore be considered as an imperfect hack, which seems a reasonably strong Byzantine fault tolerant system, but certainly not a mathematically robust one.
It is in this context, of imperfect systems, which one should analyse PoS alternatives, as like PoW, these systems will also have flaws. In PoS there are two competing philosophies. One of which is derived from PoW. PoS is typically looked at in the context of PoW, as an alternative which solves or mitigates against negative externalities or problems inherent in PoW based systems: Perhaps the most widely cited advantage of PoS systems is the absence of the energy intensive process which PoW requires.
If PoS based systems can achieve the same useful characteristics as PoW systems, environmental damage can be avoided. Another major problem with PoW based systems is that the interest of miners may not align with that of coin holders, for example miners could sell the coins they mine and then only care about the short term, not long term coin value.
Another issue is that hashrate could be leased, with the lesee having little or no economic interest in the long term prospects of the system.
PoS directly ties the consensus agents to an investment in the coin, theoretically aligning interests between investors and consensus agents. Another key advantage of PoS based systems is potentially improving decentralisation. PoW mining has a number of centralising forces which are not applicable to PoS: General and economic weaknesses of PoS.
PoS only appears to be a proposed solution to the chain selection problem, leaving the other problems open. Although these other issues could be less significant than the chain selection issue. One of the most common criticisms of PoS systems is that they allocate new funds in proportion to the existing holdings. If one invests in a PoS system at the start, you can maintain your share of the wealth, alternatively in a PoW system your wealth is diluted as new rewards are distributed to miners.
Indeed, if rewards are allocated in proportion to the existing holdings, one could argue its not inflation at all and that the reward is economically equivalent to adding more zeros to the currency. Therefore one can even claim the reward system is pointless and does not provide an incentive at all. However this only applies if all users become PoS validators, while in reality some users will want to use the funds for other purposes.
Another issue is that staking requires signing a message from a system connected to the internet. Although it may be possible to mitigate this downside by having a private key only entitled to stake for a short period of time, after which the balance reverts back to the owner.
Although if there is a slashing rule punishment for voting on two conflicting chains , a hacker could conduct action which destroys the funds even if this mitigation strategy is used. Another potential mitigation strategy could be the creation of specialist hardware for staking. Core to the consensus problem is timing and the order of transactions.
If two blocks are produced at the same time, PoW solves the problem by a random process, whichever block is built on top of first can take the lead and then miners are incentivised to build on the most work chain. In contrast this process in PoS based systems is not entirely clear.
If two blocks are produced at the same time, each conflicting block can build up stake. Eventually one block may have more stake than the other, which could make it the winner.
The problem here is that if stakers are allowed to change their mind to back the winner, such that the system converges on one chain, why would they not use their stake on multiple chains?