Elsewhere they say the difference in speed is 2.2 to 5 times as fast. That is far, far less then an order of magnitude.
CZ decided to launch a testnet, with links to the github weeks before the coin launched. While it seemed like a good idea at the time, to test his coin .. what he actually did was open it wide for people to prey on. I find it not only probable, but instead extremely likely, that there were GPU miners either at launch or within the week after it.
His unfamiliarity with the typical nature of this board left his coin extremely vulnerable and he is now left to contemplate a hard fork to stop the abuse. Please note that with this abuse he might not even have the
ability to enforce a hardfork due to potential
miner take over.
Here is what I'm talking about, and this is half of the daily emission. Thus,
50% of mining is done by his software.It does not matter if it's 2.2 to 5 times as fast, the time in which his coin has been exploited vs the time it has not been exploited is very large. Unfortunately, Claymore or another developer did not provide a GPU miner to act as a crutch until such time when an open source one was ready.
Fortunately, with the slower emission .. this has a chance to even out over time. I hope the best for him, but I do not believe he grasps the full nature of variables involved in what he's doing .. this is not knocking his ability to program.
Hmm, good points. However, he could enforce a hardfork even with a more powerful miner out there, as hardforking only requires that the people using the coin update their software. If for example the dev says, "This is the new version" a rogue miner doesn't need to accept it, true, but if all the services and majority of users stick with the 'official' chain, then the rogue miner would solving blocks that no one else accepts.