But now, it seems that an increasingly small and exclusive elite has taken charge of coin/block generation. It’s dominated by specialists who have access to wholesale means of production and secret, proprietary GPU code.
The average user no longer has a fighting chance and has given up generating blocks altogether.
It’s always been the plan for block generation to not be profitable for most people. It’s supposed to be done mainly by dedicated “backbone” entities. What’s stronger: a thousand people producing 1 Gh/s with hardly any individual economic interest in preserving the network’s integrity, or five businesses producing the same Gh/s that will fail if they or someone else destabilizes the network?
I’m not saying that GPU code shouldn’t be made, but it’s not fair to say that GPU generators are “taking without giving back”. People dedicated to generating deserve a head-start on new technologies.