While I am obviously a big fan of Steem and thus have great respect for Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), I started in Crypto almost 2 years ago as a GPU Proof of Work (PoW) miner of Ethereum and ZCash. However, over time ASICs have eaten away at the profitability and decentralisation of even the most ASIC resistant coins like Ethereum. Indeed my first Steem post was on this topic.
There have been various attempts by coins like Monero to change the PoW algorithm regularly to keep ASICs at bay but it was not a permanent solution.
About 6 months ago I came across a fellow ex-pat Aussie, Kristy-Leigh Minehan aka "OhGodAGirl" (not on Steem) or "Miss If", who was working out a way to create a much more ASIC resistant PoW algorithm than Ethereum's current Ethash.
ASICs gain their efficiency benefits from stripping away those part of a GPU that are not used by PoW algorithms and designing specialised circuits to speed up parts of the algorithm that GPUs do inefficiently.
The idea of Kirsty's Programable Proof of Work "ProgPoW" was to design an algorithm that used all or almost all parts of common GPUs and did so using math that ran most efficiently on the GPUs architecture. More details are on their Github here
Thus making common GPUs actually the most efficient ASICs for the ProgPoW algorithm.
She and a team of devs have been pushing for this within the Ethereum commmunity for many months now and on Friday, the Ethereum Core Dev call agreed to go forward with a change to ProgPoW within 2-4 months. You can find the discussion re ProgPoW from around 46min to 1:25 min video below.
This is a huge development as it puts GPUs back in the game again and reverses the creeping centralisation created by ASICs.
It also shows Ethereum being responsive in a well thought out way to the threat posed to its roadmap by ASICs.
It is likely that many other coins will follow Ethereum's lead.
I'm looking forward to a GPU mining revival.
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