The Zcash community will not stand up to mining monopolists

Members of the Zcash community voted yesterday to not prioritize research aimed at preventing ASIC mining.

In a vote held by the Zcash Foundation on Thursday, the question “should we discourage the use of ASIC miners in favor of GPU mining?” 19 people responded positively, 45 voted against. The management group includes 64 elected people who participated in seven others before this vote. 

The results were not to the liking of many, especially those who do not have enough money to buy an ASIC and who have to use a GPU. Some believe this approach could create a more decentralized market, an idea that has been opposed by large mining pools like Bitmain.

Andrew Miller, president of Zcash, said he was “surprised” by the outcome voting:

“This is a pretty strong signal of community disagreement. The decision has been made and we will not make any hasty decisions or spend large amounts of resources on preventing ASIC mining.” 

However, this does not mean that this problem will no longer be addressed. In another ballot, board members voted 38 in favor and 26 against research into long-term solutions such as more “thermodynamically efficient” consensus algorithms, as well as research into open-source hardware. 

At a mining workshop on Tuesday, Zcash employees said that a clearer position on ASICs will be announced in October with the release of the Sapling update.

Operating independently from Zcash, the Zcash Foundation plans to decentralize decision-making power on the network by creating a governance commission. Speaking about this at the conference, Miller said that this commission will inform the public about the fund's plans for the year. 

According to coindesk.com