ASIC Resistance Is Still Worth the Fight for Egalitarian Mining, This Time With Merkle Tree Proofs

ASIC resistance is worth pursuing egalitarian mining with our new Proof of Work algorithm, Merkle Tree Proofs.

Although some projects have given up on ASIC resistance seeing it as an unattainable goal, we at Zcoin believe it is premature to throw in the towel.

ASIC resistance is akin to an arms race, a battle between algorithm designers and ASIC designers.

Having an ASIC resistant algorithm discourages ASIC developments, allowing those with commodity hardware such as GPUs and CPUs to mine coins on a more or less even playing field.

The more important role of ASIC resistance is that it enables a wider coin distribution.

What this argument ignores is that unlike these companies where cryptocurrency mining is a small part of their business and their major goal is to sell as many of their chips as possible, ASIC manufacturers have a disincentive to sell their ASICs if it is more profitable for them to make them through mining themselves therefore, they will only sell it at a price that also factors in the potential gains from mining, as was the case with Bitmain, who altered the price of its Ethereum ASIC from 800 USD in the first batch to 2150 USD in the second batch, implying that its cost price maybe many times lower.

There is a growing group of people who believe that ASIC resistance is futile and there will always be ASICs for any algorithm.

MTP, as implemented by Zcoin, uses 4 GB of memory, and can still use higher values like Ethash, which is already reasonably ASIC resistant, only refreshes its memory pad once every 100 or so hours, MTP requires a refresh every block.

This is why we believe that research and implementation of algorithms such as MTP are still a worthwhile endeavor in providing a sound basis for ASIC resistance.

To achieve the original goal of making cryptocurrencies a truly global digital currency, we would like to encourage researchers and the community to not give up the fight for ASIC resistance.