I have been #mining #steem and tracking progress with my computer since joining Steemit for some time now. I loved the idea of it and the decentralized as well as fair way that mining worked and everything was good.
There were issues of things like the user Supercomputer who found an exploit and monopolized the chain for some time, thought this latest situation just a short time after the algorithm was updated has seen a new user "Rabbit" jump in and monopolize the queue, taking over 67% of it. Ergo past the 51% and trending towards #centralization.
This new algorithm is believed by various people to have and exploit vulnerable to closed source #gpumining, hence the massive ability of a single user to take over the chain. So what comes from here? Are we at a point where the Devs will be forced into releasing a GPU code for everyone to level the playing field? Or will we see a further revision that closes the vulnerability and brings it back into stable CPU mining?
For now I have decided to turn my mining off, the shear cost benefit ratio throws it out of the window. Likely others will follow for the same reason, some already have, well why would you mine when you only get 1 Steem for 72 hours of work? It makes no sense. Sad because it means the network supporting the currency is set to diminish and thus centralize around whoever has the option to run it on GPU.
A further effect is that the #currency is likely to drop in value. All in the hands of one processor who mines a big stack, yet everyone else loses interest. The supply and demand skews drastically out of viability.
Or will the devs do something that saves the currency yet again? We can but pray!
I read the white paper but am struggling with the technical details. If steem was seen (rightly or wrongly) as a threat to bitcoin, could a big Chinese mining pool spend a day 51%ing steem and trash the steemit blockchain?
They could, though the CPU power required would be massive. In addition it would be unnecessary due to the GPU vulnerability, all that is required is the right programming skills, something the Chinese have in abundance!
Can't the devs stop this stupid thing that is mining and create the money from an algorithm and dispatch it a fair way to everybody ?
ex :
http://duniter.org
Potentially, though the mining also serves to verify the dispersal of payouts from various activities such as posting and voting so I understand!
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