Dev would you be so kind to give your opinion about this matter? I thought the new algo where supposed to make it not profitable for botnets to mine zcoin anymore and im not aware of any asics for zcoin seems highly unlikely, so how can this be? What do you think about this enormous hashrate?
The Lyra2z algorithm was meant to make it much less profitable for botnets to mine Zcoin since GPUs were viable and had some advantage over CPU. I don't think it has a lot of memory though especially when compared to the original algorithm.
Blake256 first round and Lyra2 (timecost = 8, r=c=8). Remember this was a placeholder algorithm.
Given that this is a transition algorithm that is due to be phased out when MTP comes along, it is pretty unlikely that an ASIC has been developed and plus we're a new coin in a rapid state of change.
Previously we were made aware of a sizeable private Nvidia GPU farm that was mining Zcoin since the Lyra2z switch on their own private pool but we really don't know if it's them.
The last I tried mining Zcoin with my Nvidias, it was less profitable than other coins but not THAT much so to make it unthinkable.