Announcement from Sia team :
Bitmain has announced ASICs for Sia, shipping in 7 days. 1275w, 815 GH/s, ~$3200 USD. They are more expensive and less efficient than the Obelisk SC1, but they ship several months sooner (7 days as opposed to several months).
Bitmain has a long history of being abusive towards coin communities, their customers, and towards coin developers.We prepared for something like this by adding an extra feature to the SC1. We can do a soft-fork that slightly changes the PoW algorithm which would invalidate the bitmain ASICs, but allow the SC1 units to continue working. In the event of an attack from Bitmain, we can activate this soft fork. At this time, I do not think it is necessary, but if they start mining empty blocks or otherwise prove problematic for the network, we have recourse that does not involve destroying the usefulness of the SC1 units. This fork would of course require community adoption, it's not something the devs could decide to activate on their own. It would be a UASF, because the majority hashrate would not be standing behind the soft fork.
Overall, I do not think we have much to worry about. Hopefully (and very likely), this soft-fork will never be necessary. But I wanted to remind everyone (including Bitmain) that, at the end of the day, it is the community that has control, not the miners. If ASIC manufacturers act in a way that is harmful to the network, we have recourse.
Just chest thumping. That would be suicide to Fork in response. They could lose most of, if not all miner support. Bitmain could just re-flash the firmware to respond? Initiating the fork could actually give control to the ASIC's miners, of the entire surviving coin. I suspect Bitmain would like this attempt. Bitmain are some cagey cats man. They know what they are doing.
Its especially ironic considering last year Sia was waxing poetic about how great ASICs will be for the network and how they are so much better for security than GPU mining. I guess that only applies when they are profiting off of the ASICs? This seems like a giant strawman argument. What the hell do they mean by "an attack by bitmain?" And why would the A3 mine empty blocks. I bought an A3 but I would almost like to see them go through with this soft fork idea to watch their coin implode. I don't know how they would implement it seeing as the people providing 100% of the hashrate will be owners of the A3.
Another piece of irony: Obelisk bagholders are on here bitching about Bitmain selling 6000 of these units (which I don't think there is any way to verify this) but they seem to conveniently forget that Obelisk was trying to sell 10,000 in their pre-sale! The actual number came in under 2000 though since most people don't want to tie up $2500 worth of bitcoin for a year. What Obelisk should have honestly done is create a Kickstarter. Would have went out to a larger audience and there would be less expectations.
Sia explaining how awesome ASICs are: https://blog.sia.tech/choosing-asics-for-sia-b318505b5b51