It is evident that there are ASICs mining Ravencoin. As I’ve stated many times, there isn’t anything wrong with specialized hardware mining on the Ravencoin network. In fact, a case can be made that specialized hardware adds stability to the hash rate because their hardware isn’t useful anywhere else. This creates a sort of lock-in to the coin.
So, why the angst about ASICs? Because the Ravencoin’s whitepaper discussed ASIC resistance and the desire to keep ASICs off the network. Why was that in the whitepaper? Because there’s also a strong argument that wide distribution of a coin (RVN) is healthy for the network. Imagine if everyone in the world had one RVN. That would be a near-perfect distribution, and at that point, each individual could decide whether to hold, spend, or trade their RVN. Allowing consumer-grade hardware (CPU or GPU) to mine is closer to the distribution ideal.
At this point, we have these two ideals in tension. We have dedicated hardware, which is good for commitment to the Ravencoin network in tension with the wide distribution ideals of profitably mining RVN on consumer-grade hardware.
There’s a reason that I’m not overly concerned about the existing CPU/GPU/ASIC mining ratio and mining difficulty. It isn’t an existential threat to the Ravencoin ecosystem. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the algo…