362 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount 22 Jun \ on: Could Bitcoin use other mining algorithms? bitcoin
The cool thing about ASICs is that nearly 100% of the chips that could be mining BTC are actively hashing right now. If you wanted to attack the network, you'd have to commandeer these machines and make them do the attack instead of mining cooperatively as they are doing now.
If a PoW algorithm can be mined competitively using general purpose hardware, it means there is always a large pool of computation that could be used to attack it.
Just a guess, but I'd assume that less than 5% of all CPU cycles in production are being used to mine a CPU-minable coin. This means that there is a pool of 95% of CPU cycles (that are agnostic to any blockchain) which could be diverted to attack that CPU-minable blockchain.
This could go both ways. If the CPU-coin is attacked, its also easier for honest participants to bring more honest hash online to thwart the attack. Almost everyone has a CPU with extra clock cycles to spend on something they're passionate about. But not everyone has access to an ASIC.
Good point.
For what it's worth, I was imagining a gradual (say 10-year) process of introducing other mining algorithms. Like introduce CPU mining but make it so difficult, only 1 percent of blocks would be mined this way. Do the same for other mining algorithms, then gradually increase their use (decrease the difficulty). You could keep the max CPU mining to 20% (or whatever) to prevent spontaneous spin-up attacks.
Or maybe alternate blocks so each block has to be mined with a different algorithm from the prior block. Certainly would add some complexity, and possibly MEV.
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