Couple of months back, Bitmain, a prominent manufacture of ASIC miners, released equihash minier. This was seen as a big threat to all coins that made use of equihash algorithm, including Bitcoin Gold. The coin BTG was forked out of Bitcoin to take away decentralization from Bitcoin, which is only mineable using ASIC machines – something that cannot be bought in a general computer store.
So why hate ASICs?
One argument for the ASICs is that they help to improve the overall network security. One downside is that, Bitmain currently has monopoly over the market when it comes to ASICs. This allows them to wreak havoc by controlling majority of hash-power of a particular cryptocurrency network with their machines.
Bitcoin Gold is all about giving power to the people. To mine BTG, all you need is a powerful graphics card and make it run equihash PoW (proof of work) algorithm. Now, if you take away this power from the people, you will be giving control the centralized unit called Bitmain. Remember, Bitcoin has full monopoly over ASIC-based mining.
While one can themselves buy a Bitmain equihash miner, they are usually much more expensive and these machines can be used only for mining. Graphics cards can be used for anything - not just mining.
Bitcoin gold definitely fulfils the decentralized vision of Bitcoin as put forth by Satoshi Nakamoto.
The team behind Bitcoin Gold reworked the equihash algorithm and by changing parameters, they have effectively rendered ASIC miners ineffective. The team calls this updated algorithm, Equihash-BTG.
Bitcoin Gold team is committed to fair mining and ASIC resistance. After all, the major reason behind creation of cryptocurrencies was not to have central point of failure. Also, increased centralization increases the chances of network failure.
I really hope all cryptocurrencies, not just Bitcoin Gold to join the fight against ASICs to fight for decentralization and better security of each respective networks.
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