Ethereum News Today – Headlines for March 10

  • Ether community engaged in a debate over ProgPoW proposal
  • Some Ether followers believe ProgPow will change the network
  • The new algorithm will be biased towards GPUs

Ethereum News Today – the Ether community has continued its debate over the ProgPoW proposal. Some Ethereum proponents are of the view that the ProgPow function will change the network in a big way. The topic has galvanized the community, with a huge portion of the community in favor of the ProgPoW proposal while there are a few dissenting voices.

Some Ethereum proponents were shocked on February 21. The reason is that, on said date, the EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) 1057 (ProgPoW specification) was issued before the network’s developers at the developer’s meeting.

The ProgPoW (Programmatic Proof-of-Work) Proposal

There have many headlines and forum threads on social media about Ethereum’s “ProgPoW offering.” The ProgPow acronym stands for the Programmatic Proof-of-Work. This is basically an extension of Ethereum’s current algorithm called Ethash. The difference is that it makes way for graphic card components to be a part of the mining process. The ProgPoW offering is a proposal brought up to change the current PoW (Proof of Work) consensus for Ethereum which can be performed by ASICs and GPUs effectively. However, ASICs offer more efficiency to this new algorithm that will be biased towards GPUs.

Lots of research has been done on the ProgPoW solution to determine whether the offering protects the incentive of the Ethereum network participants (this includes the common and commercial miners). These studies have found that ProgPow does this. The ProgPow proposal offers two algorithm features designed to ensure that mining becomes more decentralized. It does this by ensuring that graphic card mining becomes more competitive against ASICs.

The ProgPoW proponents are wholeheartedly committed to their belief that the proposal will take care of the issue of centralization in the ETH mining sector. ProgPoW will address centralization concerns by minimizing the advantage of specialized, secretly-developed ASICs.

Concerns Over ProgPow

Despite the beliefs of ProgPow core proponents, ProgPoW is not a favorable option in the eyes of others. A section of the community has called the proposal a “socialist agenda” that uses force to redistribute wealth. Last year, Ethereum proponent, Martin Köppelmann made a tweet about his displeasure with the ProgPoW protocol. In his words:

“In my opinion, there are two reasons to split the Ethereum chain including to address the existential threat or to bring the network a step closer to a sustainable long-term state. ProgPoW will work in favor of GPU miners.”

The Ethereum community has also taken issue with one audit published back in September of last year. They think the ProgPoW offering could potentially result in a chain split like the Ethereum Classic fork. They have also taken issue with the anonymous Ifdefelse Representatives.

Princess Ogono is a writer, lawyer and fitness enthusiast. She believes cryptocurrencies are the future. When she's not writing, she spends time with her adorable cat, Ginger and works out often.

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