Observers: only several addresses mine over 50% of ZCash

A recent upvoted post on Steemit tells about a very strange situation which has been reported by the representatives of Altpool.pro, a mining website. Considered decentralized by the public, some cryptocurrencies have actually fallen victims to mining whales.

ZCash, a privacy-focused digital currency once supported by former NSA and CIA agent Edward Snowden, is mostly mined by three unknown ASIC owners. The list has recently been joined by the fourth address:

t1MwHFWMAJMtRywJXhDWDejUyfvvcQQDDgU
t1XMMxTtZtSyQBEH8MgN6Lcc5rfKMDA4XT4
t1fjzvQoumv4cMMdWGJwgtQZnwFQ7R6p77C
t1KeWyw4XGk8PkarXPm6ZVHHmWMp3BRpaGo

The author of the blog post thinks that behind these addresses is Bitmain, a company that produces ASICs. This might as well be just a group of rich individuals. Observers note that regardless of who this is, there has to be a tremendously fast hardware to outperform the previous ZCash mining leader - Flypool, which these addresses’ owners successfully managed to do.

Note that the information is not verified, although also reported by some cryptocurrency media outlets. If true, this situation perfectly illustrates the worst nightmare of those who support blockchain means of ASIC defense - several shady miners collect the cream of the crop while others simply cannot compete with them.

Image: oregonstate.edu