Re: Is Bitcoin infrastructure too Chinese? What should be done technically?
@theymos, thanks for the contribution (and the merits by the way). I'm seriously delighted seeing prominent bitcoin figures are so much concerned about this issue. 
Actually, I was somewhat disappointed and confused if not frustrated about why the situation with ASICs and pools is simply overlooked or its severity is underestimated at best.
As I understand you are more concerned about ASICs and although I share a lot in this regard with you, I'm sure you know far better than me how sophisticated would be an Anti-ASIC hard fork:
From a pure technical view point, unlike what most people in bitcoin ecosystem are used to say, implementing an Anti-ASIC algorithm and integrating it into bitcoin, is not impossible or that hard. We have ProgPoW and a few talented people who could offer even more effective alternatives. But for bitcoin such a transition is not feasible overnight. Nobody would be happy, security will drop, price will drop, ... a lot of chaotic consequences are predictable and should be addressed. Nobody is interested in following the path bitcoin Gold went through.
I have this idea for a long time, a 2-way concurrent PoW algorithm with a 2-3 years smooth migration from ASICs to the alternate cpu/gpu PoW method e.g. ProgPoW. I'm thinking of starting with a 10:1 ratio in favor of sha2 ASICs and a gradual transition to 1:10 ratio against them.
But as we have already experienced with SegWit reaching to a consensus and adopting above or any other hypothetical solution raises another challenge: Pools.
I have written too much about pools, among them in An Analysis of Mining Variance and Proximity Premium flaws in Bitcoin, I have mathematically proved that as long as we are trapped in bitcoin's winner_takes_all approach to mining the resulting Bernoulli distribution pushes miners toward pooling.
Pools are evil but when they are concentrated in China, you have serious problem. I have drafted a framework for improving this situation, Proof of Collaborative work (PoCW), based on a new implementation of PoW which is no longer winner_takes_all.
Conclusively speaking, I believe we are able to fix the issue with Chinese by a double attack: getting rid of pools and imposing a gradual transition to an ASIC-resistant algorithm.
Actually, I was somewhat disappointed and confused if not frustrated about why the situation with ASICs and pools is simply overlooked or its severity is underestimated at best.
As I understand you are more concerned about ASICs and although I share a lot in this regard with you, I'm sure you know far better than me how sophisticated would be an Anti-ASIC hard fork:
From a pure technical view point, unlike what most people in bitcoin ecosystem are used to say, implementing an Anti-ASIC algorithm and integrating it into bitcoin, is not impossible or that hard. We have ProgPoW and a few talented people who could offer even more effective alternatives. But for bitcoin such a transition is not feasible overnight. Nobody would be happy, security will drop, price will drop, ... a lot of chaotic consequences are predictable and should be addressed. Nobody is interested in following the path bitcoin Gold went through.
I have this idea for a long time, a 2-way concurrent PoW algorithm with a 2-3 years smooth migration from ASICs to the alternate cpu/gpu PoW method e.g. ProgPoW. I'm thinking of starting with a 10:1 ratio in favor of sha2 ASICs and a gradual transition to 1:10 ratio against them.
But as we have already experienced with SegWit reaching to a consensus and adopting above or any other hypothetical solution raises another challenge: Pools.
I have written too much about pools, among them in An Analysis of Mining Variance and Proximity Premium flaws in Bitcoin, I have mathematically proved that as long as we are trapped in bitcoin's winner_takes_all approach to mining the resulting Bernoulli distribution pushes miners toward pooling.
Pools are evil but when they are concentrated in China, you have serious problem. I have drafted a framework for improving this situation, Proof of Collaborative work (PoCW), based on a new implementation of PoW which is no longer winner_takes_all.
Conclusively speaking, I believe we are able to fix the issue with Chinese by a double attack: getting rid of pools and imposing a gradual transition to an ASIC-resistant algorithm.