My stance on Ethereum, ProgPoW, and the ASIC Question

By Theodor Ghannam on The Capital

How it all begin…

I feel compelled to write. As PoW Cryptocurrency mining is a great passion of mine(You can read my story how I started here). I’ve spent hours, days, months, tending to my Cryptomining farm ran out of my garage. I’d sit, turn on Iheart Radio to ’80s/90’s classic rock, then start my work on the farm. After work I would come home to tweak settings, restart crashed rigs, and play with them. Forever seeking that elusive golden hash to watt ratio. I’d spend hours on my weekends fixing or problem solving troubled rigs. At my day job, I would spend lunch hours devoted to finding the best BIOs modification for AMD RX GPUs or some tricks/tips others may have found.

RX5700's Mining ETH

I tell friends and family, new acquaintances, people I’ve just met at the bar, and girlfriends that I’m cryptomining. “What’s that?” so, I’d pull out my phone show them pictures, videos, or in person show them my farm. I’d say “It’s basically a ton of graphics card, computers, that solves an algorithm supporting a decentralized network and I earn money” They are all stunned. “Wow, that’s amazing”. They ask me all sorts of questions and I’d roll into stories about it all.

I take to online forums or discords helping others who are new to the space with settings, problems, what the best GPU to mine Ethereum or other PoW cryptocurrencies with.

My personal Ethereum Mining Farm, shutdown as of 2020

It’s because of those interactions and my own drive, that I am remarkably passionate about Ethereum and PoW mining. Because it was Ethereum that onboarded me back into the cryptomining sphere in mid 2017 when I dropped out in 2014 due to cryptos being solely dominated by ASICs. If Ethereum was just a PoS coin or another ASIC coin, I never would have even bothered. Ethereum PoW GPU mining gave me a chance to participate in the ecosystem and share it with others. My passion lies with computers, technology, and hands-on with the hardware. Being able to GPU mine cryptocurrency again was exciting. It wasn’t just me. Many new people who never heard of Ethereum, Bitcoin, or even built a computer were going out buying up GPUs and making their first-ever foray into the cryptosphere.

Does anyone here know someone who said: “yeah, I went out to BestBuy, or bought parts on amazon and built an ASIC and it was fun!”? Unlikely. ASICs farms are unique, I’ll touch on that later, there are few, and far between that are at-home ASIC miners. It’s extremely uncommon. People seem to have forgotten that BTC was once GPU mineable. Go Reddit and see the community forums that center around GPU mining, the custom rigs they build, others helping with problems, it’s a unique community that I love. These exist simply because of PoW and more importantly because of Ethereum.

Reddit has many posts like this with people customizing there ETH-hash rigs

Not being fully altruistic here, but I’m not afraid to say it, ProgPoW would directly benefit me, my interests, and my investment in GPU mining. I’m a strong supporter of ProgPoW, I’ve written two articles comparing GPUs in ProgPoW. I’m a strong supporter of any GPU mineable coin. Simply because of what it means to me. Thankfully we have quite a few these days, but none with the weight or name recognition of Ethereum.

Keeping GPU miners in Ethereum’s ecosystem is for Ethereum’s best interests in the long run. However, us miners should not feel that they are owed anything by Ethereum 1.0 Dev team. We participate in the Ethereum Eco-system, just as the Dapps, Investors, and others do. We simply asked to be listened to, and we were. So what happened?

The ProgPoW debate (Again)

By now, everyone in the Ethereum community, both miners and investors, are tired and sick of hearing the ProgPoW debate. As of February 29th, debate roared again as ProgPoW was put into an acceptable state and would be included in an HF. As of March, 6 it was decided that no action would be taken. That would be accepted but not put into an HF. The only thing agreed between the parties was to not cause a chain split.

The fear is ProgPoW is contentious with the (non-miner) community it risks a Hardfork wherein two Eth 1.0 chains will exist. Thus wreaking havoc on the DeFi and smart-contracts associated with it. Mind you, a Chain split can only occur if the miners choose to mine that chain, and overwhelming support was for ProgPoW by Ethereum GPU miners.

ProgPoW has undergone so much scrutiny, audits, multiple Dev calls, over the past 2 years more than any EIP. It was approved in 2019, and ready to be implemented and we’re whacked with “The Ethereum Community(not the Ethereum miner community) doesn’t want it.”

T he early 2019 ECH sentiment collection is no longer valid. It has been nearly a year since that sentiment collection occurred and things have changed. The community has come together to loudly show dissent for reasons listed in my pros/cons list. -James Hudson

The ASIC Question

I get the sentiment that many investors, developers, and GPU miners fail to understand PoW ASICs and the role they play in cryptocurrency ecosystem. I want to make this clear, PoW ASICs are not “the bad guy.” It’s an entirely unique ecosystem compared to GPU mining. When you have “ASICs on the network,” the ecosystem is going to slowly change from at-home miners to large industrial scale sized miners. This shifts who becomes truly invested into Crypto projects, because it will no longer be likes of me, people I tell, or others.

Smaller, centralized, and tons of capital invested

The Ecosystem ASICs favor is Large-Scale deployments, usually started up by a single guy or girl, who has a passion for cryptocurrency just like many GPU miners like myself. They have employees and are a collaborative investment effort. These are typically massive farms, expensive, and take orders of magnitude to run. The farms are 100+ ASIC units, centralized in cheap electric locations, and are making 5 years or more investments. They order ASICs in large quantities from Bitmain, Innosilicon and other ASIC manufacture. These farms are businesses that are run professionally.

Being concise here, GPU-mining, as we all know, is far tougher to manage. GPUs have more problems and harder to deploy on a large scale. Many farms simply avoid GPU mining due to the amount of headaches that come associated with it. GPU-Mining is best done on smaller scales. These are typically done unprofessionally at-home, in a garage, or shed.

Example of just a small professional business BTC ASIC mining farm.

Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t.

This is where the problem lies currently Ethereum PoW. The suggestion is to stay on Eth-hash with ASICs, with a move to Eth 2.0 sometime later. Only larger farms are going to be willing to hedge that risk to setup ASICs. Not only that but it’s an even bigger risk due to the potential risk EoL Eth 1.0 in the near future once PoS gets fully deployed. I can’t foresee anyone, similar to the smaller BTC farm above, willing to take that risk to support Eth 1.0 network with large-scaled deployed ASICs. This would leave the majority of the network solely in the hands of a few who can deploy Eth-hash ASICs overtaking the small to medium size GPU farms. This leads to further centralize the network. As we saw with XMR ASIC fork, multiple chains split to support ASICs. It’s purely my speculation but when Eth 2.0 PoS hardfork occurs it’s likely they will want to keep the Eth 1.0 chain alive. Then a contentions HF isn’t going to be about small PoW to PoW change.

Why right now is unique situation for ETH

We have a unique situation to totally avoid any chain split if the action is taken soon. The Bitmain E3 and the Innosilicon A10 will fall off the network in the coming months due to DAG size. This creates a situation where the major majority of the mining hashrate will be coming from GPUs. If ProgPoW is implemented this year the risk of a chain split will be low to none. If no action is taken this year. GPU’s will enjoy a brief quiet time then we’re left with Bitmain and Innosilicon, along with others, releasing more powerful ASICs for Eth-hash. With those ASICs only landing in the hand of a few massive farms that can afford the quantities needed for orders and risks it provides. No-action effectively kills any PoW change and any at-home GPU miners will slowly leave the network.

Why a compromise fails all parties

Ben DiFrancesco suggested a compromise. Keep ProgPoW active in the back pocket of Eth 1.0 and trigger it should it be needed. This negates a major fact that keeping Eth-hash, which currently has ASICs on the network, there is not going to be any GPU miners left to switch over to ProgPoW. Additionally what is this undetermined time to switch be decided? At present time there are an estimated 60% GPU mining on the Ethereum network with 40% coming from Eth-hash ASICs based on Kristy-Leigh Minehan research(cited in Dev call). At present time this isn’t a issue but If no-action is taken Eth-hash ASICs, which are far more efficient than GPUs currently, will simply take over the majority of the network hashrate in the coming years. GPU miners wouldn’t come back to Ethereum, it’s not that simple, many were busted by 2017-2018 run, few stuck around, and word of mouth is that Eth is all ASICs now.

While I’m frustrated about the whole development, Go, No-Go, of PoW change we faced this past year. ProgPoW isn’t fully dead, as James Hudson has said.

Miner Community must come together!

This seems to be the split: The mining hash power on Ethereum voted overwhelmingly for ProgPoW but they aren’t talking about it publicly much, other than these guys. Recently there have also been some proponents on GitHub, too. (CoinDesk)

I really implore the GPU mining community to come together. ProgPoW EIP has been approved but will not be included into a future Hardfork as of this time. Micheal Carter aka BitsbeTripping will be leading the ProgPoW EIP. Give your support however you can. By sharing these videos, my medium post, and having civil discussions. We all need to reach out to Dapps Developers and anyone else who signed against ProgPoW or doesn’t fully understand mining and where this contention is coming from.

Drew Vosk, like me, got his start GPU mining Ethereum.

Share your stories with them! How did you start mining Ethereum? Has DeFi or other Dapps do you use?Hell I even use DeFI myself to help fund my mining farm! Let’s get the broader ETH community onboard with the Ethereum GPU miners.

BBTs analysis of Hudson’s write-up

We support a GPU mining, something that started me and many others into our first taste of cryptocurrency. Because it allowed us to participate, which gave us the chance to learn, grow, and further develop in the crypocurrency ecosystem. We want to continue that ability, there is no risk of a split if the Ethereum Community bands together, in full understanding of what a PoW change is, does, it’s impact on everyone. I am hopeful that mind’s change due to understanding of our personal stories. As well as facts that I have pointed out here along others on the Eth-Dev call by Kristy, Carter, and other developers.