Is our hashrate "stuck?" Do we want more miners?

Mining
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We were recently asked:

I have a question: why is our hashrate stuck between 30 to 50 Mh/s for 6 months??? More miners more involvement in coin. Only previous miners no new are are coming any group or anything?

This line of thought misses something critical about hashrate and pools - the purpose of the Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm is to ensure that the average block time is 10 minutes. This is the critical and fundamental goal of the system, and leads to a self-balancing effect.

If more people joined the pool, block time would become too small (more mining power means blocks are found more quickly), and the DAA would need to increase the difficulty to slow it down… the overall profitability would then be lower, and many miners (who choose their coin based on profit) would leave for another coin - bringing the block time back to the 10-minute target, and returning the pool size to where it was.

On the other hand, if more people leave the pool, block time would become too large, and the DAA would decrease the difficulty to speed it up… the overall profitability would then be higher and many miners would join because it’s more profitable than other coins - bringing the block time back to the target, and returning the pool size to where it is.

The hash pool reaches a natural balance point, relative to the other GPU-mined coins. The thing that changes that balance point is the profitability… if BTG rises in price relative to the other GPU-mined coins, the profitability brings more miners. And if BTG rises relative to others, some miners leave. It’s always about balance.

Note that if BTG rises, but the other GPU-minable coins rise in EQUAL degree, then there is no change in pool sizes; it’s about the ratio.

If more people take up GPU mining, the overall numbers grow for all coins; the DAAs cause the new miners to be balanced among the current coins.

TL;DR: it’s a mistake to think that the pool size is an indicator of support; because many (most?) miners choose their coin based on highest profit, the pools size will tend to assume a balance point relative to the profitability of mining each coins.

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Been mining BTG since January and its now hashing about 50% of what it was when I started, yet its 25% higher than what it was 2 months ago… Looking forward to the subtle climb.

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An ASIC for equihash from bitmain is soon to come.

Zcash management are not responding fast enough to protect their miners by changing the POW algo.

If BitcoinGold team will act fast this may tempt most zcash gpu miners to move to BitcoinGold
and that will give a big push to BitcoinGold.

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Funny you say that. I am a long time Zcash miner with a small farm. We are about to move our equipment over to BTG soon because of the announcement BTG devs made around resistance.

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For us, it was no decision at all; we were founded on the idea of returning mining power to commodity hardware like GPUs instead of ASICs.

I’m still hopeful that Zcash Co. will come around and support all the people who’ve been mining and supporting them for so long… perhaps when BTG shows that it’s possible and helps provide a “smooth path” to transition, they will find it to be an easier decision to take.

Meanwhile, we’ll work hard to get it done… with the help of the independent developers of mining software, like @Funakoshi. (I don’t know if you’ve heard of his relatively new Funakoshi miner.)

It’s important to remember that the developers of mining software have collectively put in thousands of hours to produce their software, promote it, built up bases of followers… if Equihash fell to ASICs, those software developers would also have their hard work cast aside.

BTG won’t abandon the mining community.

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UPDATE! I’ve just learned that Zcash did, in fact, come around on the issue last night, and I missed it. (Had my head down in other things and missed it.)

https://z.cash.foundation/blog/statement-on-asics/

They’ve haven’t committed to an exact action, nor an exact date, but they’ve responded to the community and will be working towards ASIC resistance for now.

Good news for all of us.

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Thanks for sharing this @MentalNomad. This is very good news; however we have made our decision and will be bringing our equipment over in the coming few weeks.

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If more people leave the pool, block time would become too large, and the DAA would decrease the difficulty to speed it up. The overall profitability would then be higher and many miners would join because it’s more profitable than other coins.

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