In the face of the coming difficulty bomb and reduction of block rewards, some in the community are pushing for ASIC-resistant consensus algorithm ProgPOW to maintain decentralization.
ETHNews recently reported[1] on the resurgence of concerns surrounding ASIC mining rigs ahead of last Friday's core devs call. In that coverage, we voiced some skepticism about the potential for the inclusion of an ASIC-resistant protocol so soon before the implementation of Constantinople. While the developers in the most recent call dismissed the possibility of ASIC-resistant measures in the October hard fork, it appears that they are taking the concern seriously. There is now discussion about the inclusion of a "programmatic proof of work" in Istanbul, the hard fork set to follow Constantinople. The algorithm, dubbed "ProgPOW," has been in development for at least the last year and is described in-depth[2] on GitHub:
"ProgPOW is a proof-of-work algorithm designed to close the efficiency gap available to specialized ASICs. It utilizes almost all parts of commodity hardware (GPUs), and comes pre-tuned for the most common hardware utilized in the Ethereum network."
In other words, whereas some algorithms give highly specialized, expensive mining rigs a steep advantage over more common ones, ProgPOW attempts to equalize the playing field by reducing the financial barriers to entry. ASIC-resistant algorithms have been considered and implemented by a number of other blockchains, including Zcash (considered, ultimately rejected) and Monero (implemented) as a way to reduce centralization of mining pools. [3]
Since Ethereum's inception, ASIC-resistance has always been at least a low-level concern, but there has never been enough concern within the developer community to push any anti-ASIC measure to implementation. However, in a bearish Ether market, with the coming difficulty bomb and decrease in block
