Hacker News Reader

Comment by fluffypony | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm. That's not the reason we changed it. We just got tired of tweaking things to prevent ASICs.

I'll add that there was such a large influx of miners at the outset, that (statistically) it seems any crippling of the original algorithm was fairly futile - the edge was both short-lived and minimally impactful. We're over a decade later, and nobody mining in the first month (even with that unfair advantage) was able to gain any meaningful percentage of Monero's emission.

I'll add that RandomX has proven that it is indeed possible to create a GPU and ASIC-resistant PoW algorithm. I'd encourage you to dig in further - the closest to an "ASIC" is a multi-CPU miner (Bitmain X9) with a bunch of RISC-V CPUs in it.

View on HN

Sorry, I was not quite saying my fun was the reason, but that the failure to create something GPU/ASIC resilient was the more general underlying cause.

But be careful about "proven" in that last sentence - the absence of a solution isn't exactly proof, it's more of a proof that _either_ it is possible to create an ASIC-resistant algo _or_ it has not been worthwhile to ASIC-ify it given the economics of mining XMR and the research & NRE required to do so. I haven't the foggiest which of those two it is, mind you, just that there are a few remaining valid explanations.

It's a proof that something is possible to show one example.

In this case the claim was ASIC-resistant PoW is possible, and the proof has been the historical behavior of miners after years of RandomX. Nobody said it would be eternally or entirely resistant to optimizations...

You are twisting words beyon any coherent meaning.

> It's a proof that something is possible to show one example.

Agreed.

> the proof has been the historical behavior of miners after years of RandomX.

> Nobody said it would be eternally or entirely resistant to optimizations...

These are contradictory statements. If historical behavior was a proof, then it would be eternally and entirely resistant.

The limit we set at the beginning was "no one can design a custom device for RandomX with more than a 2:1 efficiency advantage over general purpose CPUs". That is and will forever remain true.

In reality, no one has been able to build any device for RandomX that isn't actually a CPU. The closest thing to a "mining ASIC" is just a bunch of RISC-V cores.

I was intending to comment on poor wording or poor reasoning (I assume the former), not Monero.

I think what the evolving Monero team has done, for many years since inception, is wonderful to the point of inspiring. The thoughtful approaches it has consistently taken over many upgrades reflect a much greater level of competence, responsible goals, clever design, and a clearer consistent vision than all but a few alternative systems.

(Including better choices than Bitcoin, which seems to have completely elevated code stability over any problem resolution (user privacy/safety, transaction scalability, environmental damage, etc.). Stability over all non-critical features including ergonomics (i.e. transaction times) is a very strong, but legitimate choice. But not stability over basic failures/limitations relative to current function.)

Disclaimer/scope: I do not own Monero or any other cryptocurrency, but have in the past. My comments are purely about technology, with no financial/investment dimension.

Monerites - what’s the state of play for fpga mining? I did not see anything in the light documentation of RandomX that looked like it was tuned to be “awkward” for a good sized fpga.

FPGAs have no particular advantage. You could dedicate a chunk of their resources to implement a softcore CPU but it'd be several times slower than a real CPU.

The random programs change too quickly to just implement them directly on an FPGA. Reprogramming the entire chip like that takes too much time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com