A notable voice is joining the ranks of ethereum developers who are seeking to block powerful ASIC miners from earning an outsized share of the platform’s valuable ether cryptocurrency.
In an developer meeting Friday, Martin Holst Swende, security lead at the Ethereum Foundation, said he supports swift action to remove ASIC mining hardware from the ethereum platform. Joining the non-profit in 2016, Swende now works to ensure code changes do not disrupt or harm operations on the world’s second-largest blockchain.
With the remarks, Swende is aligning with other leading technologists who work on the platform’s core code and who think steps should be taken to block the chips. First introduced on ethereum back in April, dissenting developers argue the chips may reduce the number of participants able to profitably maintain the network’s ledger.
In the meeting, Swende remarked that a software change, dubbed ProgPoW, should be implemented “in parallel” with a larger, upcoming upgrade, “if the technical underpinnings are there.”