Ethereum difficulty bomb discussion - BBT soliciting for Miners to join the discussion

Good afternoon folks,

The ethereum foundation will be holding a Development SCRUM Meeting on 11th August hosted live on youtube. They will be discussing the following topics:

https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/20

Agenda

Metropolis updates/EIPs.
a. Any "subtleties" or questions we need to work out.
b. Updates to testing.
c. Details and implementations of EIPs.

1. Updates from client teams.

• geth - ethereum/go-ethereum#14337
• Parity - paritytech/parity#4833
• cpp-ethereum - ethereum/cpp-ethereum#4050
• yellowpaper - ethereum/yellowpaper#229
• pyethapp
• Other clients

1. Determining gas prices for new opcodes & pre-compiles [Martin HS/Arkadiy]
   d. Review time estimate for testing/release.
   EIP 663 ethereum/EIPs#663: Unlimited SWAP and DUP instructions [Alex B.]
   EIP 215 ethereum/EIPs#215: Bitwise shifting instructions in EVM to replace EIP 145 [Alex B.]

While all of these are engaging topics, centered around future EIP (Ethereum Improvement Plans) the one question we would like to see discussed is the ongoing and arbitrary increasing of the Ethereum Network Difficulty that is not running a parity with effective network hashrate. The burning question at hand is since we all knew this would come with POS, that's fine, however POS has been delayed at least until sometime in 2018 based on the Development meeting a month ago. Our response below is the open question we have with the developers.

"We will review EIP 669 and see where we can contribute to the discussion. From our perspective, we are not going to 'tell' you guys what to do, however ask the very basic question that has been not directly answered.

The difficult bomb is a function with a specific purpose to wean miners off POW in POS implementation. By and large I believe the community understands this and have expected it for a long time. There are a few reasons I believe why you haven't seen any major feedback from 'miners' in general, by comparison to lets say a 'Bitcoin' Miner community. For the most part, Ethereum has a significant distribution of actual individual miners (thousands, potentially tens of thousands) contributing hash power to potentially hundreds of pools (yes, we understand there are 20 or so major pools, with several that have large % of pooled hash power. Because of the distribution, the 'voice' of any one particular miner's perspective may not seem to representative of miner consensus. That being said, you have asked for miner contribution and we will put that message out on our channel that you guys are wanting clear, concise and constructive feedback.

All of that being said, the one thing that does not make sense is this:

Assuming everyone understands what was previously pointed out -Statement: Difficulty Bomb = Based on notional schedule of POS implementation.

If that statement is true, then the moment you guys decided to slip the POS date, a new notional Difficulty Bomb schedule should of been implemented immediately. I.E.

Difficulty Bomb (1 May Execution) -> (Late fall of 2017)
Now with a delay, this schedule should be reset to the same 90-100 day range that the new notional target is. I.E. let the network go back to hash power predicated difficulty. Let market demand/mechanics run the difficulty; not artificial arbitration when the feature of POS is delayed.

Bottom line, people by and large understand and respect the movement to POS, by and large most also understand and also respect the method to wean people off the network with the difficult bomb. That being said, if the POS is delayed, most people do not understand why you would leave the diff. in play as it artificially penalizes individuals mining for no direct reason that was previously discussed. Changing the terms mid course without explaining why you would leave it in play without implementing POS disenchants the community. Market forces will predicate hashpower applied to the network and the built in retarget of difficulty adjust accordingly. I.E. if people are earning a specific amount of ethereum through mining and price goes up, more people get involved which by design raise the difficulty to keep block time locked in as close to its designed rate. Additionally new technology coming out drives more distributed investment for hardware (digital arms race).

Covering a quick rationale of why there would be a slow roll on removing is the burning question. Thanks again for your guy's efforts and we will contribute on the main thread going forward."

What we would like is a rational conversation regarding in the leaving in of the difficult bomb while not implementing POS. What are you guys thoughts on this? If you are actively mining Ethereum this directly affects you.