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126 sats \ 1 reply \ @w0nderl4nd 25 Oct 2023 \ parent \ on: What if Bitcoin mining was ASIC-resistant? bitcoin
As a reply to your last sentence, I think the author meant: 'what if the Bitcoin protocol was designed as ASICs resistant from day-1'? I might be wrong, but I see this post as a thinking exercise.
Also, don't most ASICs allow to switch between different PoW chains? If so, they could technically hop to other currencies, they just don't do it because of Bitcoin's unique selling points compared to other shitcoins.
Yeah, I understood
what if, from the very early days, Bitcoin mining was made somehow ASIC-resistant?
to mean “in the first few month or years, but not from Genesis”. I would expect that OP would have otherwise stated “from the start” or a similar phrasing.
Also, don't most ASICs allow to switch between different PoW chains?
No, ASICs generally can only compute specific hash functions. Bitcoin uses SHA-256d. Most other networks use a different hash function, e.g. Scrypt (Litecoin Dogecoin), Equihash (Zcash), CryptoNight (Monero), X11 (Dash), etc. It’s generally a security issue to use the same hash function as a network with a much larger mining reward as that exposes the smaller network to majority attacks (aka 51%-attack). While there are a few other coins that use SHA-256d, their mining reward is too low for even a minuscule portion of the Bitcoin hashrate to profitably switch over.
We briefly saw a lot of hashrate hopping after BCH split off, but even BCH’s mining reward is now around ~0.7% of Bitcoin’s.
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