Vitalik Buterin: Ethash ASICs Not a Threat to Ethereum

Following the release of the Bitmain E3 Ethereum ASIC miner, core developers are faced with a hard choice: Hard fork Ethereum to combat ASICs or focus development on Casper proof-of-stake which would eliminate mining.

According to Ethereum Improvement Proposal 958, such a move could thwart ASIC development long enough to implement Casper.

Forking Ethereum to change the protocol is "a shot-in-the-dark" solution to the problem and may not hinder current ASICs.

According to Vitalik, the new ASICs aren't that big of a threat.

By design, building Ethash ASICs is relatively difficult.

Vitalik Says There's Nothing Ethereum Can Do. As mentioned above, the improvements that ASICs make in processing power are limited to Ethereum.

Even if a change was made to the Ethash algorithm, current ASICs might prove already optimized for IO hard proof-of-work algorithms,.

"In which case, the immediate concern is basically that, there's nothing we can do Even if we just replace Ethash entirely with Equihash or something, or whatever the hell Monero uses, ASICs would still be able to do it."

Thus, even if Ethereum moved to Zcash's Equihash or Monero's CryptoNightV7, a supposedly ASIC-resistant algorithm, that would not stop the use of ASICs on the network.

In conclusion, as of right now, the core team isn't going to do anything about Ethereum ASICs.