Ethereum Developers Advocate Anti-ASIC Fork And Hard Cap

There have been several proposals made for Ethereum development. On  April 1st, Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, suggested the  introduction of a hard fork which would cap the supply of ETH tokens at  approximately 120 million. While several days prior, developer Piper  Merriam advocated that Ethereum conduct a hard fork in order to  “demonstrate a willingness” to resist “ASIC-based Ethereum mining,” News  Bitcoin reported. 

Ethereum’s co-founder has published an  Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) suggesting the introduction of a  hard cap on the total supply of ETH at 120,204,432 – “exactly twice the  amount of ETH sold in the original sale.” 

Vitalik states that the proposal has been made “in light of the fact  that issuing new coins to proof of work miners is no longer an effective  way of promoting an egalitarian coin distribution or any other  significant policy goal.” Mr. Buterin also argues that a hard cap on  supply will “ensure the economic sustainability of the platform under  the widest possible variety of circumstances.” 

In order to implement the proposal, Vitalik states that “During the next  hard fork that alters reward distributions (likely phase 1 Casper),  this proposal requires redenominating all in-protocol rewards.” 

Vitalik adds that “If for some reason this EIP is adopted at a point  where it is too late to set a max cap at 120 million, it is also  possible to set a higher max cap. I would recommend 144,052,828 ETH, or  exactly 2x the total amount released in the genesis block including both  the sale and premines.” 

Meanwhile, Ethereum Developer, Piper Merriam, posted an EIP suggesting that the ETH community contemplate a hard fork that would “Modify block mining to be ASIC resistant.”

Merriam states that “According to ‘the internet[,] there is an ASIC[-]based Ethereum miner on the horizon,” citing a Technews.cn article as potentially comprising the original source of the rumor. Merriam also notes a Reddit thread hosting speculation that Bitmain may already be mining ETH using ASICs. 

The EIP concludes by asking the two questions – “Should [Ethereum] hard  fork to make ASIC mining harder and to demonstrate a willingness to hard  fork any future ASIC[-]based Ethereum mining,” and “What changes should  Ethereum make to implement this increased ASIC resistance.” 

Ethereum is currently trading at [FIAT: $381.23] according to Coin Market Cap at the time of this report. 

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