Replies (9)

It's always possible to accelerate math with function specific silicon, the market just doesn't bother for monero because the leadership tends to rotate the hash algo quite frequently. A state actor or central bank wouldn't be producing monero asics to generate revenue though they'd be doing it to covertly perform a massive reorg or mine empty blocks.
Yes, it is possible to create a RandomX ASIC, but by the time you have optimised for every possible RandomX function, you have built an entire CPU. Probably an inferior one, at vast expense. But it will run DOOM, so not a total loss. That one "RandomX ASIC" commercially available turned out to be a bunch of RISC-V CPUs taped together in parallel lol
They are RISC-Vs, I believe. CPUs built to run in parallel
Don't think that counts as possible lol. Thats the entire point of RandomX so that you have to do this to parrelellize it.
I know theoretically you would need to create much of the CPU, but in reality "life finds a way" every single time. Perhaps this time its different, but even then it just means the enemy needs to buy or rent general purpose compute which is readily available.
The enemy occupies the administrative "high ground", and always has. The enemy can vet who can buy SHA256 ASIC mining rigs, quite easily, and likely does. The enemy can control who gets approval for a utility-scale electricity interconnect to power said mining rigs. (And takes fricking years doing it sometimes.) The enemy can see who is running any big mining pool, and "liase" with them. To prevent misunderstandings. And prevent processing ML/TF/CSAM/protesters/splitting bills. You want to stay legal, don't you? The enemy finds it very challenging to control who can buy general-purpose compute, as Iraq, Iran, DPRK and most recently Russia could tell you.
And its multiple zeroes easier to permanently capture Bitcoin than Monero. Both these problems are real. One of these problems is solvable.
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