ProgPoW back on the map but perhaps in a less prominent role

ProgPoW has historically been a point of contention within the Ethereum community. The continued tension between the anti-ASICs crowd and those that found an issue with the proposal culminated in a lengthy debate a few months ago, one that ended with many believing ProgPoW was officially off the table.

But ProgPoW wasn't dead yet. The proposal known as EIP-1057 found its way back onto the core developers' agenda last week after its new champion, seasoned developer Greg Colvin, wanted to provide some updates on ProgPoW's recent progress. Leading up to the core devs call, Greg also exclaimed the major Ethereum clients had already implemented EIP-1057 and that "miners, pools, and exchanges are ready to deploy it."

The announcement did not receive a warm reception, with some starting to call into question the Ethereum governance process once again. But these concerns may have been premature. On the call last Friday, Greg mentioned that while there "isn't a well-recorded decision" on ProgPow, he appeared to lean towards Ben DiFrancesco's "Compromise Proposal." At a high level, this proposal suggests that clients should implement EIP-1057 (a new version, 0.9.4, is in the works) but not activate the code change unless the community agrees to it.

The conditions that would warrant a ProgPoW activation down the road are still relatively unclear (think of it as a failsafe against an ASICs led fork or deep reorg). However, all involved agree that there is no clear consensus on ProgPoW, and client teams, especially Gnosis, who now manages the Open Ethereum client, would like to see strong community support before even considering a mainnet deployment.

Why it matters:

• ProgPoW is the most unpopular proposal that somehow refuses to go away. The good news is client teams and developers seem to like Ben DiFrancesco's Compromise Proposal. While it doesn't rid Ethereum of ProgPoW altogether, it's preventing any immediate mainnet implementation while keeping (most) tensions at bay. Ethereum governance is messy, and the ProgPoW debates are exposing its current weaknesses. Perhaps this multi-month dilemma can result in a more effective method of communication between core developers and the community.
• While on last Friday's call, Ethereum Developers Péter Szilágyi added that he does not see a technical advantage to deploying ProgPoW on mainnet. He noted that ProgPoW could even degrade performance, albeit slightly. ProgPoW, therefore, has limited upside aside from acting as a possible deterrent to an ASICs led 51% attack, which may already be cost-prohibitive.