After long debates within Sia community, the project has decided to perform a hard-fork, which excludes a possibility of Siacoin mining using ASIC miners. Only miners who use Obelisk hardware will be able to mine this cryptocurrency.
On October 1, 2018, David Vorick, Sia cofounder, wrote in Medium that the project is to make hardfork to rebuke ASIC monopoly for the damage caused to the Sia community. The mentioned damage means cooperation between Bitmain and Innosilicon, which badly influenced investments in Siacoin, as reported by the project’s representatives.
In future, only Obelisk miners which are produced by the project’s parent company Nebulous may be used for mining this coin. According to Vorick, “Obelisk was focused on adding value to Sia”.
From the one side, this is a good sign. Bitmain possess, in particular, a large part of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash mining facilities. Hence, some experts have been claimed that BTC and other cryptocurrencies become centralized. So Sia’s refusal may be considered as a sign of improving decentralization in the world of blockchain and cryptos, at least in part of fighting against Bitmain monopoly on the market. But from the other side, the above mentioned actions look like protectionist measures, because the Obelisk hardware is not competing efficiently at the moment.
Image source: Pixabay.
