Bitmain 'Asic' Ethash Miner and Community Development Recap (Last Update: 9 Apr 2018)
On 3 Apr 2018, Bitmain officially released [1] their miner product Antminer E3 for cryptocurrencies with hashing algorithm Ethash. Cryptocurrencies impacted are ETH, ETC, EXP and a bunch of other small coins.
Bitmain's batch 1 Antminer E3 miners were selling at 800 USD. Batch 2 released on or before 8 Apr 2018 are selling are 1800 USD. Both batches are expected to be shipped during 16-31 July 2018.
Prior to this ASIC miner, ETH and other Ethash coins are mined with Graphic Cards (GPUs). This Bitmain announcement is sort of devastating to the GPU miners because ETH was the most profitable coin to mine with GPUs. When this E3 miner ships, there will be a huge hash power upward swing, making existing GPU miners' share of cake (much) smaller and return on investment lower.
The response of the ETH community looked promising for GPU miners when EIP: Modify block mining to be ASIC resistant. #958 [2] was getting traction and scheduled to be discussed in Ethereum Core Devs Meeting on 6 Apr 2018 [3].
However, as of writing (9 Apr 2018), the Ethereum Core Devs decide to take no action and leave the EIP open.
[1] Batch 1 of Antminer E3 announced on twitter: https://twitter.com/BITMAINtech/status/981169456411021312
[2] https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/958
[3] 6 Apr 2018 Ethereum Core Devs Meeting Minutes: https://github.com/ethereum/pm/blob/master/All%20Core%20Devs%20Meetings/Meeting%2036.md#eip-958-modify-block-mining-to-be-asic-resistant-3206
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