ASICs are coming fast, and we must act soon to prevent long term damage to the Dogecoin community. Please read and help convince others that something needs to be done soon!
Normally, to mine Dogecoin, you can use almost any computer with a decent video card, and each day you can claim some Dogecoins for doing your part in contributing to the dogecoin network. For as little as 200 dollars, you can get something like a 270x, and get around 2000 dogecoins a day, using the calculator here. The great thing about this is that it is not very expensive to contribute, and also you have the added benefit of being able to use the video card for other things, like running applications, playing games, and many other things that you normally use a computer for, so it is a win/win. You can also choose to resell the video card, and they are usually easy to recoup some of the cost from them.
Because of this, it makes it very easy for the average person to get involved with dogecoin. This makes it much more likely that they will be an active member of the community, and an educated shibe from learning how to get involved.
So what are ASICs and how will they be bad?
ASICs are specialized machines that are designed to mine cryptocurrency much more efficiently. Instead of spending 200 bucks, getting a PC upgrade that you can use for many other things, and getting a pretty efficient video card for mining dogecoins. You spend 5000-10000 dollars or more, and get a specialized machine that does nothing but mine dogecoins, and because it does it so well, other people using video cards can no longer compete. They are also generally very hard to purchase, and are often on back order for months.
The net effect is that the average shibe is pushed out of mining. Running their video cards to mine will no longer be worth it, and the number of enthusiastic, active shibes will be reduced. New dogecoins will fall into the hands of the new people who pay 5000-10000 or more for a specialized machine, making dogecoin much more centralized. Less people will have dogecoins to tip, and Dogecoin will begin to feel like Bitcoin, where you can read about it, but you won’t really understand how to get involved or learn from it, because you have to spend thousands of dollars for a specialized machine that can do nothing but mine coins.
For a healthy community and continued adoption of new shibes, we must stop ASICs from becoming widespread!
So how do we stop it?
Until recently, using ASICs for mining dogecoins wasn’t possible because dogecoin is based on litecoin, which used an ASIC resistant algorithm for mining. The algorithm is now becoming obsolete and ASICs are beginning to overcome it. The algorithm is capable of being upgraded, much like other digital currencies like Vertcoin have done, but we must act fast!
We need the dogecoin developers to act quickly and add in ASIC resistant upgrades to dogecoin before its too late. Help spread the word and let the average shibe stay involved in mining! Within 6 months ASICs will be all over dogecoin unless we stop it now!
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Ryan Plymire
I don’t understand why this threat is different of changing mining process from CPU to GPU ?
To me it’s a new technology (unstabble apparently) and just a fair new way to mine. And I don’t get the “money argument”. To me every one who buy a dedicated mining machine like your mining rig bring the doge mining far from my means… It’s just a matter of perspective.
And every one who have enough money, even if the ASIC usb devices become useless, can buy a fool room of mining rigs and start to exercise a form of control on crypto-currencies, no ?
Anyway I learned a lot on crypto-currencies from your website, thanks for your work, you’ve done a great job!
probably the fact that GPUs of any capacity are widely available, whereas ASICS typically are super expensive and/or rare.
I have been thinking about this for awhile. How can we protect our investment? I have been studying the Scrypt algorithm for this same reason and I think that the only way to block ASICs is to keep upgrading the software requirement to mine coins. Hardware is very expensive and time consuming to make, if we change the software more often it will force the hardware to be as flexible as possible which falls back to a GPU and more open architecture. I would like to create another coin with SHA512 and some other software requirements and then propose that we allow the conversion of the entire DOGE community for free and then we start mining under the new coin. For fun let’s call it DOGE-2. if you have DOGE you can exchange for DOGE-2 for free. If DOGE-2 software requirements keeps changing over time there is no way ASICs will be able to get into the domain.
Either we do this or inevitably ASICs will get into the domain and damage all of us. Mining coins as it is became a race and it is hard to keep up.
Litecoin was created to prevent ASICs but the flaw in this idea is the stability of the algorithm. if you keep changing the specs only computers and GPUs will be able to adapt to new requirements more efficiently than ASICs.
If anyone would like to discuss this further I’m all ears! In the mean time we have to fight for our survival!
I know it’s a bummer, but ultimately we really do need to switch to ASICs. I did the math the other day… the Dogecoin network uses right now, 1/6th as much power as the Large Hadron Collider. Just a lot more frequently than it operates, so we’re overall using more power annually than CERN. Not to mention the amount of pollution generated creating a video card versus a specialty chip.
Since 70% of power for 70% of shibes is generated from coal and fossil fuels, we’re really doing a lot of damage to the environment by mining with video cards. Not all scrypt ASICs are really expensive either. Some are even less expensive than video cards, like Gridseed and Zeus.
http://www.coinexperts.org/2014/03/30/environmental-impact-of-dogecoin/
I can see your reasoning and if it were that simple I would agree, however that feel good sentiment is wrapped tight in a blanket of naivety and with head ducked beneath that cozy down comforter of ignorance, playing “peek a boo” with truth, your eyes can not see the writing on the wall. Let me list just a few of the fallacies: # 1 sure Gpus do consume more energy than asics of comparable hash rate however the Gpu is durable whereas an asic is disposable. The average useful life of an asic is what? About 6 months or so? And because it can only perform that one limited function it becomes a useless paperweight in the landfill while newer ones are constantly being manufactured. Yet the hashrate of uncle joe’s old 5990 is still superior to a brand new r9 290x and if it ever does cease to serve as mining hardware there are many uses for a gpu (folding, hashing passwords, heck even playing video games) that keep it out of the landfill and in the service of man. #2 “there are inexpensive asics” hahahahaha sure a gridseed can actually mine NOW but in a month when the big money big hash rate “real asics” roll out those gridseed will become a novelty souvenir, a useless toy like the bitcoin usb miners that u can pick up for 20-60 bucks and generate maybe .0000000023 bitcoin a month. The truth is it becomes a race of whoever has the upfront cash to buy the most hashrate first and its all disposable and worse for the environment than using electricity. Besides think of how little driving gpu miners do since we can’t leave the house because all the time baby sit gpu rig lol. The disaster should be obvious. And for the person to say “well good , you not n eing able to afford asic is like me unable to afford gpu” is just pure haterade. At least with gpu u can save a little and still jump in but asic race once that race is on u need a second mortgage and a 6 month preorder just to hope to jump in and ROI. Why is there not greater support to hard fork onto N-Scrypt? Because the devs probably ordered asics, once u have asics you get excited at the ease in which you’ll mine a quick doge buck…..well guess I could always just repurpose my 7 MH of GPU that I got way too late to running hashcat or some other password cracking app and pay a virtual visit to the nuevo rich asic owners
muahahaha
You know you are completely contradicting yourself. GPUs are made for gaming PC’s = playing = no work, only consumption. How mush energy and pollution have the PC industry and users made, to develop the perfect entertainment machine, before BTC came online. That ppl with gaming PC’s have found to utilities this power to something a little more useful is A BONUS, not a given!
If all gaming PC users began using their PCs to produce coins at night, do you then really belive the ATI and Nvidia will begin the same race the ACIS miners are doing now?? Well the answer is pretty obvious, since ATI and Nvidia already are in a race to build the best effortable gaming GPU. Do you really think ATI and Nvidia doesn’t develop in the crypto direction because they don’t want to? Again a obvious answer.
Damnit forgot: So if ATI and Nvidia actually had gone into this coin race. They will have had do focus the development on a more powerful Mhash output making the pure gaming performance less powerful.
Now just to be sure you understand: They DON’T do that. Thats the reason “uncle joe’s old 5990″ isn’t completely useless yet when comparing it to new more powerful GPU’s
The litecoin developers had a very good post on why they will not be updating their Proof of Work (POW) algorithm and is a must read in this case: https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=18166.0
“Running their video cards to mine will no longer be worth it”
If the only worth you are getting out of mining is monetary* then you have to participate in the upgrade race too (CPU -> GPU -> ASIC) and realize that if there is money involved, and there is a way to make more money (ie the jump from CPU to GPU, etc) , someone will figure it out and do it.
As for hard forking (which is what would happen with algo changes) every few months. Sure if you have a small community of users that are dedicated and computer savy that might be a possibility. But once you start encompassing casual users and tell them “first you have to upgrade your wallet, and you also have to take all your old coins and transfer them through this service (a service that would somehow be free) to your new upgraded wallet because your old dogecoins wouldn’t work because you know
terrorismASICs” And make sure everyone does it. Also factor in merchants who are probably more focused on running a business then keeping up with crypto-currency updates and would rather a stable crypto-currency (which there would be many… bitcoin, litecoin being two) above anything. Seems a bit of a reach to me.The algo changes would have to be programmed and tested in secret (neither of which are a good thing) because once someone saw which algo was going to be used in the update they could start planning an ASIC design for it because if there is money to be made they’ll do it. So during the programming and testing time, someone would be working on an ASIC, which would then cut into the ASIC-free time period. Any algo change might also need changes to software miners, so you would need them to update, and might also affect hashrates of current GPUs, which might mean current GPUs would be unprofitable due to electricity draw.
It would be a tireless arms race, for what looks to me to be little gain.
Again, the litecoin developers had a very good post on why they will not be updating their Proof of Work (POW) algorithm and hits on points much better and more thorough then I have: https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=18166.0
There is also the lesson that unfortunately some investments just don’t work out.
*I guess I just come at with a different perspective. It wasn’t a monetary type of investment for me. I didn’t think I would make the cost back of my video cards (then again I am only sporting two GTX750ti, and I didn’t buy any other computer components specifically for a rig). I was more interested in helping out the community and find the dogecoin “tips” idea to be really interesting and a worthy cause. Then again I used to use BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) just because it was helping science (and with BOINC there was no possible monetary gain for me at all) and bought a video card specifically for the purpose (a card that at the time, four years ago, cost the same as my two recent GTX750 purchases, amazing the progress in such things).
yes, you’ve hit the nail on the head, friends I think that’s a very creative decision that should be forwarded to the dogecoin developers please make a point, I’m new to this and I only read articles regarding mining and how you can no longer mine bitcoins because the asic watever and recently I tried litecoin, the same happened, I’m left out of the domain. please if anyone has information, update me stepwise on how I can start mining dodgecoins I’m new to this so please provide simple explanations. I’m so enthusiastic.
shin or gill,,,, please make a point.
thanks.
Yes, ASICs really are a problem…if before everyone with a GPU could make a profit, because of ASICs, look where BTC is now…ever heard of INFLATION ?! with the introduction of ASICs the difficulty will go up into the billions like with BTC. How will you mine then to make a profit ?! by buying more ASICs…but when will you get your investment’s worth back ?! NEVER. especially if you’re late to the party because ppl will just buy more and more ASICs to make a profit hoping to get rich overnight, and that’s when everything will just blow over…just look at all the ppl trying to sell their ASICs now because of how bad BTC got and for 1/5 the price they bought them.
ASICs are what’s ruining the cryptocurrencies right now…and it would be a damn shame to see DOGE get overrun with that garbage, because before long, DOGE will just slowly start dying, instead of evolving. Greed and stupidity is what ruined BTC.
Mitch have you “ever heard of INFLATION ?!”. Since that’s not at all what has happened to BTC. What has happened to BTC’s price is called Puming and Dumping. It’s a hence-fronts specialty, you know the big dogs on wall street. This “can happen” to ANY product currently in the stock market or/and in the supermarket
Is coin mining anything but “Pumping and Dumping” ? The issue is that you’re no longer seeing any ppl mining BTC with GPU-s…in order to make any sort of profit off BTC you need to invest into ASICs, and last I checked they don’t cost 20$ so the ppl that were late to the party, ofc will be left out and lose their damn investition with how fast the difficulty is going up even if they were to buy ASICs now.
The coin will never grow if more ppl don’t don’t get involved, instead it will just be the same ppl until it will die out. Everyone has a GPU, but how many have ASICs..Nothing will ever grow if more ppl don’t get involved.
Right. I see your point and your absolutely right, but i just don’t think that ASICs will cause crypto’s to die. We are ATM beginning to see the real value of BTC when released as open, unregulated currentcy, on a otherwise thightly closed and controled markets. I’m here thinking of contrys like China, Affrica, som of East Europe.
So i must definitely don’t think ANY of the large cryptos are gonna die within a few years. Dogecoin is properly right on the edge. I’m unsure if it will get large like BTC, since a LOT of people think of Dogecoin as a joke. That another thing about Dogecoins that are actually pull the crypto market down. There are ATM so many new crypto’s and with names like Dogecoin I’m 100% sure it gets way harder to get the “regular society” to accept crypto’s as currency. Now that i see as a mush, mush bigger threat then ASICs.
Ugh, and I was thinking of getting into this whole crypt-currency thing. Not really, anymore. Such discourage.
Such discourage, too. Dogecoin was supposed to be accessed/mined by regular computers and regular GPU’s. “For the people and for the doge.” It becomes specialized and mined by “Professionals” with ASIC’s. Such wimper…
OMG!! How in the world can you even being to justify using 300-1000% more power, more energi to produce, just to preserve your precious little community. There isn’t a single one of your arguments that doesn’t say “I’m making money and are lead dog now, i’ll lose that to ASICs”…..
Actually I quit growing (7k watts hps) to free up some power, take a break from that and join a movement I believed in. You do the math. The whole elec argument gets old. Elec is being generated one way or another and there is less pollution in that one known variable than all of the toxic byproduct of constant new asic production. If you are that passionate that go work toward clean renewable elec! Its close and with that then our gpu are fine, thank you.
Seriosly now you just being stupid. So what i can see is that you before was a lazy assed criminal living of weed production, and you knew that so you switched over to dogecoin production.
But sure the “how mush energi do we need/consume” talk is completly stupid and have no place in this world, it’s not like 20% of the population that gets of cancer 1/3 them dies from it. That has ofc nothing to do with 2 nucalar plants goin pop……. But f**k it pollute away and see if you kids can go outside in the (acid)rain in 20 years. And no i passionate about this, however I’m just not stupid enough to ignore it.
Yes electronics production is poluting. This includes the GPUs. ATM i have a HD7970 GPU (the old version 925 MHz) in my computer and it way WAY overkill to run my 1920*1080 screen. I run everything at max, BF4 runs at ultra with 52 FPS. Buying any more GPU power is WAST for a 1920×1080 screen. There are simply no argument to buy more power and what? Do you think that because GPUs are cheaper that they are less poluting to build? Do you realy use you own Coin-PC for gaming when you have time and only let it mine when you’re not home….
Hi,
I have the following solution.
1) Abandon mining
This way there will be no need either for expensive graphic cards and absolutely no need for ASICs.
2) Starting in January or so there will be 5 bln coins a year to mine. Instead of mining, a wallet or a separate, specialised, easy to install, lightweight application for transaction clearing would be in use. For example, for each transaction a person running this app would be rewarded 1 doge as a payment from parties of a transaction (more or less like it is now) plus 1 doge would be rewarded as ‘mined’, until a pool for a year (period) exhausted.
Advantages:
- low energy usage
- no ‘arm race’
- more decentralised and ‘democratic’ access to new doges
This is my idea; as I have rather limited technical knowledge in this area – no idea how feasible is it.
I realize now after much wasted typing that none of these naysayers even mine or if they do its a cpl cards and they never actually took any of this serious anyway. The sacrifices and literal blood and sweat that went into my rigs….. [email protected][email protected]$ non miners shouldn’t even pretend to give direction to something that doesn’t affect them while if enough of their whiney little coices chime the same arbitrary whim at the right time could have a real effect on the life and passion of real people doing something that is just a passing whim to them. They think the doggie is cute and they lime to tip so they wanna have a say on matters that very well may destroy peoples lives (at least what they lived for which is the same when u have real passion and out everything into that passion). [email protected]#$ k u and your opinions. At the the asic buyers have greed, your just pointlessly stupid.
What difference does it make if you put your money into ASICs or GPUs, monetarily? At least you can still sell the GPUs.
A lot of time went by since my first post here. I was worrying too much about ASICs but in order to continue in the mining business I have to admit I had to migrate over to them.
So like somebody else posted here power consumption was the first reason and hash rate was the second reason for my move.
If you want to mine as a hobby then GPU is fine and you should make $3 or $4/day. Ask yourself a question, are you in this business to make $4/day? maybe if you get free power you don’t care. But who are you hurting in the process to get free power? your parents?! college? landlord? in the end this is somehow stealing!
If you want to be competitive and profitable you have to drop GPUs and go with ASICs, it is the reality!
Cant stop progress. Shit or get off the can my friend.
I think you are all missing the point. Dogecoin was intended to be the coin of the masses where anyone, with a simple graphics card, could mine and take part in the community. If it becomes too expensive to mine, you will be at the mercy of those who have the funds to buy and mine dogecoin and they will be able to set the price by limiting or flooding the market. Bitcoin has a limited supply, Dogecoin does not. Dogecoin could easily become a viable cybercoin, used by billions. Bitcoin will always be a tier 1 tech millionaire’s toycoin. That said, as the owner of both, I must admit I use dogecoin far more for playing slots, tipping, etc.
Coins with no caps are essentially pyramid schemes….and we all know the fate of such endeavors . TC