Quote from: bitkapp on February 21, 2016, 10:09:38 AM

Quote from: HR on February 20, 2016, 05:48:53 PM

Oh, I know I'm the bad guy, but bear with me. I'd just like to officially go on the public record with a prediction I made in private.

. . . mark my words, the difference between becoming the cryptographic currency used worldwide to which it aspires, and a slow certain death, will be whether or not the proportionate payout per unit of electricity invested in variable costs is made equal among algos. Its as simple as that: success or failure will depend on making GPU mining equally profitable with specialized ASIC mining on a per unit of electricity cost basis. It's the difference between thousands of active nodes that slowly diminish to a handful of people whose only common bond is their virtual friendship, and hundreds of thousands that grows to millions based on a common use of a serious and stable, extremely safe cryptographic digitalized money and means of exchange.

Just as important as previous innovations have been in getting DigiByte where it is, the complete leveling of real economically rational participatory opportunity is the cornerstone for whether DigiByte will be taken to the next level or not, and without it, a truly worldwide distributed network is impossible. Mark my words.

And, for anyone who might be wondering, that's not THE issue. It's the OTHER issue that's much much more important.

I'm sorry but this is incorrect.

The point behind having 5 different hashing algorithms with variable electricity costs is to decentralise the system further, not make it more centralised. Take this example; Alice lives in the US and is a pro-gamer, she loves gaming and has come across digibyte gaming, learnt a little about blockchains and would like to mine some digibyte. She already has an awesome gaming rig and she's been told by awesome members of this community that she can mine some digibytes using her gaming rig, she thinks awesome, hooks up here gaming rig to the digibyte network and voila shes mining. Alice has cost of electricity x per hash.

Now Bob comes a long and he's a big chinese crypto geek who owns an ASIC mining farm. He finds digibytes and thinks, what an awesome coin! Im going to start mining some of that. Bob has cost of electricity y per hash.

Now Alice and Bob being in the US and China obviously have different variable electricity costs (for sake of argument lets assume that the US is more expensive). Lets put some numbers in the game. Let x=10 cents per hash (these are imaginary numbers) and y=5 per hash. Now if ASIC and GPU mining would have the same electricity cost per hash (as I believe your suggesting) it is obvious that Bob would be able to mine more digibytes. On the other hand if we leave digibyte the way it is (also taking into account the wisdom of Jared on this one) Assuming Alice gets twice the amount of digibytes than Bob (for sake of argument) they will actually be mining the same amount of digibytes!

My point being this; your not taking into the account the variability of electricity costs around the world. I think the intention of having the 5 mining algorithms as they are is precisely to get a better distributed/decentralised network (especially geographically).

Also implementing your suggestion on a programming level would be quite hard because you would somehow have to take into account the time variations of electricity costs around the whole world and constantly keep updating this as one of your parameters. Not only that but you would immediately create unequalness due to the geographical variation of electricity costs.

And some people have "free" electricity, but the fact that this variable "varies" should not preclude serious analysis using the scientific method isolating independent variables using real numbers and a baseline independent variable such as the national average US electricity cost (the fact that electricity costs vary even within the US is going to prevent us from doing a serious baseline comparison between algos?). Or, even if you like, a random number for that independent variable of per unit electricity cost. Can you show us how the ROI on operating costs is equal between algos using the same fixed variable for each? My analysis based on The Blocks Factory data suggests not (one must also remember to adjust hashrate equivalents between algos - 1GH/s of SHA = 1MH/s scrypt, for example - etc.). The idea that a huge increase in the hashrate of any one given algo only affects the diff of that particular algo and thus magically levels the playing field is also ludicrous, unless, that is, there was a major undocumented change in the DigiSpeed update. Please don't take this as unfounded criticism. My numbers suggest something very different from what you suggest, and I think that my analysis is quite rigourous and merits serious response - I'm asking for clarification and/or documentation so I can better understand; I am not attacking.