Jihan Wu to newbies: “ASIC Miners make the network more decentralized”

Jihan Wu (Co-founder of former Bitcoin Mining Giant, Bitmain) recently told a bunch of new people at a cryptocurrency conference that ASIC (Application specific integrated circuits) chips make the network more decentralized.

“ASIC miners – powerful processors designed for crunching specific algorithms – are less of a centralizing force than more general purpose graphics processing units (GPUs) that are also commonly used in cryptocurrency mining.”, said Jihan Wu.

He further added, that even though ASIC resistant algorithms exist, like Ethereum ProgPOW ( Progressive Proof-Of-Work ), there will still be ASIC miners for these blockchains.

“While we have seen various network upgrades that aim to become ASIC-resistant, such as Cuckoo cycle and ProgPow, but what we can foresee is that, very likely, there will still be ASIC miners for these two algorithms.”

Jihan Wu further attacked Ethereum’s ProgPOW algorithm which will automatically block ASIC chips for mining, stating the developers of Ethereum will be making the network more centralized.

“To me, ProgPow is clearly an effort to achieve centralization, in an attempt to exclude other integrated circuit designers to participate in Ethereum mining. And GPU hardware is strongly protected by patents, so having a tailor-made algorithm for this type of hardware is certainly a way to avoid a fully competitive market.”

Blockmanity’s Take

Bitmain is the world’s biggest producer of ASIC chips, and Jihan Wu being the company’s founder has to protect his company’s interest.

But Jihan Wu’s claim that banning of ASIC chips will make the network more centralized is false and complete nonsense. ASICs are expensive and consume more power than GPUs making them ideal for big mining farms. GPU, on the other hand, can be afforded by individuals.

Thus, on the contrary reliance on ASIC is going to make a network more centralized.

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