any given asic owner should theoretically make more money by pointing their asic at a hashrate market instead of directly at a particular pool, but only if there is no broker.
Super begins with a paradox: renting an asic seems like it would be less efficient than the owner of an asic pointing its hashrate wherever the renter planned to point it.
instead of the owner making all the money, the owner's machine is pointed at something paying X sats to the renter, and the renter is paying the owner an amount presumably slightly less than X sats, while keeping the rest. That must be less efficient for the owner than if he just pointed his asic directly at whatever endpoint the renter is pointing it at, and kept 100% of the earnings.
Well, sure, but what if the renter has something the owner doesn't? What if the renter has some knowledge to which the owner of the asic isn't privy?
When an owner points their asic at a particular pool, the rate they receive might be the optimum rate available at the moment they chose that pool, or so close to it that the difference is negligible. But market conditions change moment to moment, so even if you chose well in the morning, by noon there may be a better rate at another pool.
Maybe there is a better pool out there that the owner doesn't know about. Maybe not.
Theoretically, a hashrate market can improve this situation, especially due to the following insight: you can rent from yourself. If you do good research at the beginning and discover that Antpool has the best payouts right now, at 5000 sats per day for your equipment, you can still point your asic at a hashrate market instead, then set your "minimum rate" to 5000 sats per day, and rent from yourself. Then point that self-rented asic at Antpool, just like you were going to do, and get the optimum rate you found.
But here's the advantage: if you were wrong, due to not having perfect knowledge of market conditions, and someone else knows better than you, that person can come to the hashrate market, knowing there's a better place where an asic like yours can earn 6000 sats per day. He can rent your asic for 5500 sats per day, which beats your rate, and it's a win-win. He gets to redirect your asic to an endpoint that pays more, you get more than you would have, and he gets some too.
Super thinks this could all work out...except that usually the market itself involves a broker (whoever is running the website or facilitating the hashrate market):
But there is a problem with such a theory: the broker. Brokers such as Nicehash charge a 3% fee. So you can't just "rent from yourself" on such a pool with no downside. If you put 50,000 sats into Nicehash, and "rent from yourself" for 10 days, pointing the asic at Antpool who pays out 5k sats per day, you aren't guaranteed to get 50,000 sats out. In fact, you’re likely to only get 48,500 sats out, due to Nicehash's 3% fee.
Super concludes with this observation:
So, if anyone can make a "brokerless" hashrate market that works as well as an ordinary one, with no custodian, and if you can set a minimum price for your unit, and rent it from yourself while you wait for a higher bidder, then I think, based on the above reasoning, it would theoretically be a more profitable place to point your rig than if you pointed it directly at a mining pool.
Of course, Super has tinkering with such a brokerless market:
https://gist.github.com/supertestnet/a4278a4145dc4afb85867718ff350091
This is the core of his idea:
Get rid of the broker. Instead, have people with asics publish an ad on nostr or similar stating how much hashrate they control and a price for renting it. People who want that hashrate contact them and give them a stratum link that points to their own node.
Then, the renter uses lightning micropayments to make near-constant small payments for a near-constant stream of "not winning" valid work from the asic owner. The asic owner basically submits his best work to the renter every minute or so; the renter checks that the block matches his desired template and has the expected amount of proof of work for the time his counterparty spent hashing. If it all checks out, the renter pays for the proof of work submitted so far.