I wonder if SHA1 was used instead of SHA256 for Bitcoin mining, how much optimization these SHA1 discoveries would bring to the mining process (since it's more like partial brute forcing rather than finding collisions) i.e. what would be the percentage difference in the difficulty because of them - on the long run, since it takes some time to implement those things as ASICs.
>since it takes some time to implement those things as ASICs.
not really. it's just a few man-years to develop a kickass hdl and a lot of money and you're good to go. all bitcoin did was create a massive market for sha1 asics. i wonder if those asics can be used to reduce the 110 gpu-years down to a few asic-years?
