X17 – Coins, Miners, Mining algorithm – BitcoinWiki

A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a chip that can be programmed to suit whatever purpose you want, as often as you want it and wherever you need it. FPGAs provide multiple advantages, including low latency, high throughput and energy efficiency.
To fully understand what FPGAs offer, imagine a performance spectrum. At one end, you have the central processing unit (CPU), which offers a generic set of instructions that can be combined to carry out an array of different tasks. This makes a CPU extremely flexible, and its behaviour can be defined through software. However, CPUs are also slow because they have to select from the available generic instructions to complete each task. In a sense, they’re a “jack of all trades, but a master of none”.
At the other end of the spectrum sit application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). These are potentially much faster because they have been built with a single task in mind, making them a “master of one trade”. This is the kind of chip people use to mine bitcoin, for example. The downside of ASICs is that they can’t be changed, and they cost time and money to develop. FPGAs offer a perfect middle ground: they can be significantly faster than a CPU and are more flexible than ASICs.
FPGAs contain thousands, sometimes even millions, of so-called core logic blocks (CLBs). These blocks can be configured and combined to process any task that can be solved by a CPU. Compared with a CPU, FPGAs aren’t burdened by surplus hardware that would otherwise slow you down. They can therefore be used to carry out specific tasks quickly and effectively, and can even process several tasks simultaneously. These characteristics make them popular across a wide range of sectors, from aerospace to medical engineering and security systems, and of course finance.
How are FPGAs used in the financial services sector?
Speed and versatility are particularly important when buying or selling stocks and other securities. In the era of electronic trading, decisions are made in the blink of an eye. As prices change and orders come and go, companies are fed new information from exchanges and other sources via high-speed networks. This information arrives at high speeds, with time measured in nanoseconds. The sheer volume and speed of data demands a high bandwidth to process it all. Specialized trading algorithms make use of the new information in order to make trades. FPGAs provide the perfect platform to develop these applications, as they allow you to bypass non-essential software as well as generic-purpose hardware.
How do market makers use FPGAs to provide liquidity?
As a market maker, IMC provides liquidity to buyers and sellers of financial instruments. This requires us to price every instrument we trade and to react to the market accordingly. Valuation is a view on what the price of an asset should be, which is handled by our traders and our automated pricing algorithms. When a counterpart wants to buy or sell an asset on a trading venue, our role is to always be there and offer, or bid, a fair price for the asset. FPGAs enable us to perform this key function in the most efficient way possible.
At IMC, we keep a close eye on emerging technologies that can potentially improve our business. We began working with FPGAs more than a decade ago and are constantly exploring ways to develop this evolving technology. We work in a competitive industry, so our engineers have to be on their toes to make sure we’re continuously improving.
What does an FPGA engineer do?
Being an FPGA engineer is all about learning and identifying new solutions to challenges as they arise. A software developer can write code in a software language and know within seconds whether it works, and so deploy it quickly. However, the code will have to go through several abstraction layers and generic hardware components. Although you can deploy the code quickly, you do not get the fastest possible outcome.
As an FPGA engineer, it may take two to three hours of compilation time before you know whether your adjustment will result in the outcome you want. However, you can increase performance at the cost of more engineering time. The day-to-day challenge you face is how to make the process as efficient as possible with the given trade-offs while pushing the boundaries of the FPGA technology.
Skills needed to be an FPGA engineer
Things change extremely rapidly in the trading world, and agility is the name of the game. Unsurprisingly, FPGA engineers tend to enjoy a challenge. To work as an FGPA engineer at a company like IMC, you have to be a great problem-solver, a quick learner and highly adaptable.
What makes IMC a great fit for an FPGA engineer?
IMC offers a great team dynamic. We are a smaller company than many larger technology or finance houses, and we operate very much like a family unit. This means that, as a graduate engineer, you’ll never be far from the action, and you’ll be able to make an impact from day one.
Another key difference is that you’ll get to see the final outcome of your work. If you come up with an idea, we’ll give you the chance to make it work. If it does, you’ll see the results put into practice in a matter of days, which is always a great feeling. If it doesn’t, you’ll get to find out why – so there’s an opportunity to learn and improve for next time.
Ultimately, working at IMC is about having skin in the game. You’ll be entrusted with making your own decisions. And you’ll be working side by side with super smart people who are open-minded and always interested in hearing your ideas. Market making is a technology-dependent process, and we’re all in this together.
Think you have what it takes to make a difference at a technology graduate at IMC? Check out our graduate opportunities page.

submitted by IMC_Trading to u/IMC_Trading [link] [comments]

THE END OF ALL ASIC MINERS? - Monero's New Superweapon: "Time Locked Proof of Non-ASIC work challenge reward" algorithms.

I propose the following algorithm to end this War of attrition with ASIC / FPGA manufacturers , hopefully once and for all and save us Precious PoW Tweaks during the upcoming forks.

"A time-locked, Proof of 'Non-ASIC work' Challenge reward algorithm"

Here's an image to help you visualise how the algorithm works (details below):
https://imgur.com/a/9S8dA
Here's why we need it:
ASIC manufacturers mine in Secret to attack our decentralized network. They'll win the war since they'll 'get their investment back' before we brick their ASICs, allowing them to launch never-ending attacks against our decentralization, for eternity.
Quick Overview
This algorithm uses the concept of "time-locked reward challenges".
The algorithm ‘time-locks’ the reward, then issues a ‘non-ASIC’ work challenge during each regular PoW Fork, which distributes mined rewards only to CPU and GPU miners who can pass the challenge and prove they are not ASICS, by maintaining their hashrate during the ASIC downtime.
These Hash-rate challenges after PoW Forks successfully ‘detect’, and ‘Severely Penalize’ anyone Mining with an ASIC/FPGA, even those in Secret.
Proof of Concept: An Actual Demonstration
I'll demonstrate this algorithm in action:
Please see this image to help you Visualise how the algorithm works:
https://imgur.com/a/9S8dA
There is a critical flaw and uniquely identifying feature that exists in absolutely 'ALL ASIC and FPGA miners', even those mining in Secret.
As most of you may know, with the upcoming V7 PoW hardfork,

An ASIC miner’s hash rate component drops to Absolute zero for a set period of time afterwards, because their ASIC function can no longer be used with a PoW tweak.
Normal GPU and CPU miners are also very easy to identify; as they have no problem maintaining a relatively similar maximum hash rate after the fork.

Instead of just destroying an ASIC with a fork, we can further exploit this to attack the ASIC Manufacturer or Miner by taking back all their mined rewards and giving them to the community
The Special timeframe is PoW Fork + 'N' Days. ('N' being however many days remaining where it would be "impossible" to build and startup a new ASIC/FPGA after the fork.)
To exploit this, the algorithm introduces a period of time called the "Mining Rewards Collection Timeframe" (MRCT), the time period in between regular PoW Hardforks. the grey shaded area in this image
This "Mining Rewards Collection Timeframe" is a time whereby all mining profit rewards are 'time-locked' or held hostage in escrow, on either the mining pool, or on the Actual Blockchain code itself, or Both, depending on where this algorithm is eventually deployed.
The algorithm stores the wallet address a mining reward belongs to, and the maximum hash rate (or maximum value adjusted share rate per day) observed during the "Mining rewards collection timeframe" for that particular wallet address.
This "Mining Rewards Collection Timeframe" can be of any duration as required by the developers; 1,2,3,4,5,6 Months or longer . The longer This Timeframe, the more dangerous it is to ASIC miners. Meaning we don't have to rush with forks.
Since it's time-locked, mined coins/rewards cannot be cashed out until the coming challenge; However, mining pools can still choose to payout smaller miners before that time if they have a 'good stable Non-Asic Hash challenge passing history', or a deposit on file, or at their own risk, so most good miners don't have to wait to cashout rewards!. Big miners on the other hand, won't care! Why? Because the delay doesn't cost them anything. (it's a TINY TINY inconvenience compared to the damage ASICs would do to GPU mining profits. I hope this makes sense)
Now for the Critical ANTI-ASIC Work Challenge.
Time passes and the mining rewards collection timeframe ends with a Hardfork that changes the PoW algorithm slightly,
All ASICS and FPGAs are INSTANTLY destroyed.
At the same time, the mining rewards from that collection timeframe are now ready to be paid out.
Since only the CPU / GPU miners are able to hash normally,
The Algorithm now issues a Hash Rate challenge to determine how much of the coins mined were actually mined by ASIC or FPGA miners.
The challenge is nothing special. Miners just have to leave their miners running normally at maximum speed for the period of the challenge, same as they do everyday!
During this challenge, their "Average Maximum Hash rate during the challenge" is compared to the "Maximum Hash Rate speed" recorded on the blockchain during the Mining Rewards Collection Timeframe.
See the green dotted line in the image
Thus at this point, since ASICs are DEAD, they cannot Hash at the same rate during this challenge period, so any significant difference in hashrate would thus clearly indicate the use of an ASIC or FPGA miner.
Now, we have all the information we need to STRIP ASIC Miners of ALL their gains, and Reward GPU miners instead.
As shown in the earlier image

Example 1: A miner using PURELY 100% CPU and GPUs to mine, will easily pass the challenge as though it never happened. They can easily maintain 90% or more of their maximum hash rate recorded, well within the agreed margin of error. So they get the Full 100% Mining Reward, Plus a fair share of any of the coins forefitted by the ASIC Miners as a Bonus., (ie, 101% , or more.. possibly)
Example 2: A miner hashing with 100% ASICs or FPGAs, will be dead during this challenge and can match “0.00%” (ie, Nothing) of their maximum hash rate observed. As such, they proportionally also get “0.00%” of the rewards they mined and forefit all their rewards to other miners.
Example 3: A miner hashing with 60% ASICs and 40% CPU/GPUs will only be able to maintain 40% of their Maximum hash rate during the challenge period. As such, they proportionally only get 40% of all the Mining rewards they earned and forefit and Lose the 60% of all coins mined by the ASIC miners.

What if a 1 GPU breaks in a 12 GPU mining farm during the challenge? (Very rare) or for some reason, you can't mine during that period? then the miner can simply rent the GPUs from nicehash for the Challenge. An ASIC miner however, cannot use this strategy (because ASICS are not GPUs, explained further below). Also we can implement a 2nd chance option; the confiscated reward may be frozen for the next Cycle; and the miner may get a 2nd chance to prove the hashrate again, with a % reward penalty.
The Beautiful thing is that If ASIC miners fail the challenge, Everyone gets a Bonus share of the Reward Forefitted by the ASIC miners, So Everyone wants the ASIC miners to fail so they get Free extra money. and thus have a financial reason to support this algorithm.
*There is no escaping it... or is there?
Is it ASIC PROOF? Can you Cheat this algorithm?
I've also tried to see if you can work around this algorithm:

Example 1: What if they switched in GPUS to mine for an ASIC during the challenge? Well, that wouldn't work. When the challenge comes, they can either save the rewards mined by the GPUs, or save the rewards mined by the ASICs, One will always be lost and result is the same anyway because you'd only get paid for the Hash rate of the GPU. The ASIC portion of the hash rate will ALWAYS be lost.
Example 2: What if they use the GPUs to mine a different coin and have them only hash for the ASIC during the challenge period?
Consider the Antminer X3. at 200KH/s, to support just "ONE ASIC", they would need over 200 RX 580 Cards or 100 VEGA cards to pass the challenge... costing well over $60,000 (SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS) and if they depreciate at ~ 10~15% a year, they'd lose $6000~$9000 a year. it's not enough to cover your losses,
Also, What other coin could you mine? If ASICS are so powerful, there won't be another coin except those running this algorithm. Then, the dev can choose to issue the challenge at the same point as the other coin using the same algorithm, so they lose all rewards from one coin as 1 rig cannot sustain two challenge algorithms at the same time.
Example 3: What if they just leave some GPUS on standby to avoid the power costs? Then ASIC's would still be unable to be mass produced anyway. Because for every ASIC Mass produced, you'd need to Mass Produce 200 times the GPUS to support them in their place, and own of all them. practically impossible.
Example 4: What if they rented hashing power from Nicehash to fill in during the Challenge period?
Yes, but so can we! The beautiful thing about this algorithm, is if we rent the limited hashing power on Nicehash first before them at break even or loss, it doesn't matter, Because, the ASIC miner cannot rent and hash rate and will fail the challenge, and Forefit the ENORMOUS amount of Rewards to the community. Imagine, Mining at such a high rate for months on end , the rewards confiscated and paid to GPU miners will easily offset any of the tiny losses renting hashrate from Nicehash, so ultimately, The ASIC miners lose Everything, and the community (you and me) gets all their money.
Also if ASICs Dominate the crypto market, there won't be any GPU to rent, all remaining coins would be mining this algorithm, meaning they would have to save their own hashrate for themselves, not rent it to ASIC miners. otherwise they lose their reward. Brand new users may rent their GPU's but its no where near enough to cover the ASIC hash shortfall in the challenge.
Example 5: What if they waited till we exhausted our supply of PoW fork tweaks? That's the beauty of this algorithm!. We don't actually have to tweak the PoW algorithm on a constant basis! We can intentionally leave it the same. So Everyone passes the Challenge, Then when we do detect an asic "trying to Mine their Money Back in secret (as they do now)", We tweak the PoW at the Next Hardfork. Destroying and bankrupting their very first attempt, and we get all their money and rewards, So there's no need to waste a PoW tweak in a pre-emptive strike, because the rewards are Time-Locked to the future. We can lie in wait with a single PoW like a Trap, and eat them alive (literally we get all their rewards after the challenge!). We can maintain this lethal threat to ASIC manufacturers without having to change the PoW at all!

And remember, all this effort is just for ONLY, ONE ASIC. meaning you Can't mass produce it.
So ultimately it wouldn't even make sense to even develop an ASIC, as you'd be far more profitable just mining only with the 200+ GPU's required to cheat the algorithm.
*So in summary, *

No ASIC/FPGA miner can escape the challenge. Not even those running in secret.
All ASIC miners are guaranteed to suffer a huge (possibly fatal) financial loss, with no prospect of any return on investment. Time locked rewards ensure No secret pre-mining with ASICs is possible. ASICs are destroyed with each challenge, all R&D and manufacturing costs and the electricity bill used to power them is wasted for basically "ZERO returns",
…..and lets not forget that all their rewards gets given away to other honest miners like you and Me!. ( LOL!) or potentially the developers of the fork :)
As long as the algorithm is active and used by multiple coins, no ASICs will ever exist to mine in secret,
We save precious PoW tweak changes, since there's no need for a pre-emptive PoW strike to prevent 'ASIC hit and run' pre-mine scenarios.
ASIC manufacturers see that the war is un-winnable and go invest in other things,

So, in theory, The War Ends. (at least for a very good part of the future)
As they say: " Don't build a wall and hide in fear.... Build a wall and launch missiles from behind it against the enemy so they will never dare attack us again."
I would like to point out that time locked reward challenges are already in use by the Olympic games to Strip drug cheats in the past by storing samples and testing them in the future, and it's also in the PPLNS minig pool algorithms to deter pool hopping cheats, and also in the Bitcoin's Lightning network in the form of decrementing time-locks" that 'enforce the transfer of funds' under certain conditions.
Is it beautiful? Will it work? Can it be done? Let's discuss this

submitted by MoneroChan to Monero [link] [comments]

Monero, the Most Private Cryptocurrency

Written by the CoinEx Institution, this series of jocular and easy to understand articles will show you everything you need to know about major cryptocurrencies, making you fully prepared before jumping into crypto!

https://preview.redd.it/ryvcznqspe451.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5fa91e26288d7b0a624113ed21172cc9fd5624a3
Monero, or XMR for short, is an open-source cryptocurrency that is safe, reliable, private, and untraceable. It can run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and FreeBSD, and is known as one of the most private cryptocurrencies. In 2018, Monero already ranked 10th in terms of trading volume, with its market value beyond 1 billion US dollars, an evidence for its great fame in this field.
By a special method in cryptography, Monero ensures that all transactions remain 100% irrelevant and untraceable. Perhaps after reading this article, you will understand why it is so special and popular in the increasingly transparent and traceable cryptocurrency circle (After all privacy comes first!).
In fact, many large cryptocurrencies in the world are not anonymous. All transactions on Bitcoin and Ethereum are made public and traceable, which means that anyone can eavesdrop on transactions flowing into and out of the wallet. That has given rise to a new type of cryptocurrency called “privacy currency”! These “privacy currencies” hide encrypted transactions by adopting specific types of passwords. One typical example is Monero, one of the largest privacy cryptocurrencies in the world.
Monero was created on April 18, 2014 under the name BitMonero, literally the combination of Bit (Bitcoin) and Monero (the “coin” in Esperanto). In five days, the community decided to change its name to Monero.
Interestingly, Monero’s creators valued personal privacy and tried to behave in a low-key manner with pseudonyms instead of the real names. It is said that the Monero major contributor’s nickname is “thankful for today”, yet this guy has gradually disappeared from public view as Monero developed day by day.
Unlike many cryptocurrencies derived from BTC, Monero is based on the CryptoNote protocol. It is also the first branch based on the Bytecoin of CryptoNote currency. Here is some information about Bytecoin: BCN, for short, is a decentralized cryptocurrency with a high degree of privacy; it has open-source codes that allow everyone to contribute to the development of the Bytecoin network; and the Bytecoin network provides global users with instant private transactions that are not traceable and at no additional cost.
Yet, as a branch of BCN, Monero outshines its parent in reputation by being different in two ways. First, Monero’s target block time was reduced from 120 seconds to 60 seconds; second, the issuance speed was cut by 50% (which reverted to 120-second residence later, with the issuance time maintained and the reward for each new block doubled). By the way, during the fork, the Monero developers also found a lot of low-quality codes and then refactored them. (That is exactly what geeks will do)
Monero’s modular code structure was also highly appreciated by Wladimir J. van der Laan, one of the core maintainers of Bitcoin.
Monero values privacy, decentralization and scalability, and there are significant algorithm differences in blockchain fuzzification, which sets it apart from its peers. How private is it? Here are more details.
1. Safe and reliable
For a decentralized cryptocurrency, decentralization means that its network is operated by users; transactions are confirmed by decentralized consensus and then recorded on the blockchain irrevocably. Monero needs no third party to guarantee the safety of funds;
2. Privacy protection
Monero confuses all transaction sources, amounts, and recipients through ring signatures, ring confidential transactions, and invisible addresses. Apart from all the advantages of a decentralized cryptocurrency, it is by no means inferior in safeguarding privacy;
3. Unable to track
The sender, the receiver and the transaction amount of all Monero transactions must be anonymous by default. The information on the Monero Blockchain cannot be matched with physical individuals or specific users, so there is no trace to track;
4. Scalable
Everyone knows that Bitcoin’sability to process transactions has always been limited by the scalability issue; as we have mentioned before in the introduction of Bitcoin, the block size of 1MB makes things difficult. But Monero’s developers have created a system that allows the network to process more transactions when needed; what’s more, Monero does not have any “pre-set” restrictions on block size.
Of course, this also means that some malicious miners may block the system with large blocks. To prevent this from happening, Monero has worked out countermeasures: the block reward penalty of the system.
On October 18, 2018, Monero’s latest hard fork changed the consensus mechanism algorithm to CrypotoNight V8. In this hard fork, it introduced the BulletProff bulletproof protocol, which can also effectively reduce the transaction fee of miners without disclosing transactions
It is said that Monero will issue about 18.4 million XMR in around 8 years. Moreover, it eclipses its counterparts in distribution — with no pre-mining or pre-sale, all block rewards will be left to miners by means of the POW mechanism.
Here is the reward scheme of Monero in two stages:

Acceleration: mine 18132000 XMR before May 2022;
Deceleration: Deceleration starts right after 18132000 XMR are mined, and there will be a reward of 0.6XMR for each block mined afterwards. In this way, the overall supply will be kept on a small scale and decelerated.

Monero is also excellent in its development concept that is designed to be anti-ASIC from the very beginning. Here is a brief introduction to ASIC (Special Application Integrated Circuit).
Due to the specificity of ASICs, specially designed ASICs can usually have much higher hashrate than general CPUs, GPUs, and even FPGAs — that makes hashrate excessively centralized and makes it vulnerable to the monopoly of single centralized institutions. Yet the cryptonight algorithm used by Monero allows most CPUs and even FPGAs to get involved and get mining rewards, instead of making GPU the only one that can efficiently mine.
In other words, Monero’s core development team will modify the consensus mechanism algorithm and have a hard fork after some time to ensure its strength against ASIC and the monopoly of hashrate.
However, although Monero has been designed against ASICs to avoid centralization, nearly 43% of its hashrate is still owned by 3 mining pools; in addition, it is not a BTC-based currency, making it even harder to introduce some elements. Of course, Monero is not that newbie-friendly, and thus has not been widely accepted.
Yet each cryptocurrency has its own features. As long as Monero keeps improving its privacy, it will definitely attract increasing followers. If you are interested in Monero, welcome to CoinEx for exchange or trade.

About CoinEx

As a global and professional cryptocurrency exchange service provider, CoinEx was founded in December 2017 with Bitmain-led investment and has obtained a legal license in Estonia. It is a subsidiary brand of the ViaBTC Group, which owns the fifth largest BTC mining pool, which is also the largest of BCH mining, in the world.
CoinEx supports perpetual contract, spot, margin trading and other derivatives trading, and its service reaches global users in nearly 100 countries/regions with various languages available, such as Chinese, English, Korean and Russian.
Website: https://www.coinex.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/coinexcom
Telegram: https://t.me/CoinExOfficialENG
Click here to register on CoinEx!

submitted by CoinEx_Institution to Coinex [link] [comments]

ASIC Resistance Timeline

Today, in about 30 minutes or less from now, RandomX will be activated on Monero as part of its network protocol upgrade, so this seems like a good moment to share this timeline. It’s like the raw material for writing the history of ASIC resistant proof-of-work algorithms. If you think it’s incomplete, let me know what you’d like to add. I didn’t include Monero ASICs or FPGAs that weren’t publicly released, since it would be difficult to pin down a date.
Original version written in Dutch for Monero Meetup Utrecht #2 on March 14, 2019 (next meetup is on Tuesday, December 3).
2010-10: Start of Bitcoin mining on GPUs 2011-06: First Bitcoin FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) 2011-09-26: Launch of Tenebrix (with a premine) using Scrypt algo to avoid GPUs 2011-10-13: Fair launch of Litecoin, also using Scrypt 2013-01-19: Avalon releases the first Bitcoin ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) 2014-03: Secretly premined launch of Bytecoin, using CryptoNight version 0 2014-04: First Litecoin ASICs 2014-12-13: Vertcoin switches from Scrypt-N to Lyra2RE (multi-algo, currently 5) 2014-01: X11, a chain of 11 algos, for Xcoin => Darkcoin => Dash 2014-09: Digibyte switches to Myriadcoin's multi-algo with separate difficulty adjustment 2015-07-30: Ethash for Ethereum (memory-hard, i.e. using lots of RAM) 2018-04-06: CryptoNight version 2 by Monero (flipped a bit) 2018-05: Bitmain releases the Antminer X3 for CryptoNight, which doesn’t mine Monero 2018-07: Bitmain releases Antminer E3, the first Ethash ASIC 2018-10-01: Siacoin developers use a protocol change to disable ASICs other than their own Obelisk SC1 miner 2018-10-18: CryptoNight version 3 by Monero (changed a bit more than one bit) 2018-10/12: Successful 51% attack on Vertcoin (double spends by ASIC miners) 2019-01-15: Launch of Grin using two algorithms, one ASIC friendly and one ASIC resistant 2019-03-09: Monero’s CryptoNight version 4 or CryptoNightR, a self-programming algorithm, generating hashing instructions pseudo-randomly 2019-11-30: RandomX, a randomized and memory-hard algorithm, designed from scratch to use all elements of a general-purpose CPU 2020-??: Ethereum will probably switch to ProgPOW (programmatic proof of work) before switching to proof of stake

submitted by edbwtf to CryptoCurrency [link] [comments]

Transcript of discussion between an ASIC designer and several proof-of-work designers from #monero-pow channel on Freenode this morning

[08:07:01] lukminer contains precompiled cn/r math sequences for some blocks: https://lukminer.org/2019/03/09/oh-kay-v4r-here-we-come/
[08:07:11] try that with RandomX :P
[08:09:00] tevador: are you ready for some RandomX feedback? it looks like the CNv4 is slowly stabilizing, hashrate comes down...
[08:09:07] how does it even make sense to precompile it?
[08:09:14] mine 1% faster for 2 minutes?
[08:09:35] naturally we think the entire asic-resistance strategy is doomed to fail :) but that's a high-level thing, who knows. people may think it's great.
[08:09:49] about RandomX: looks like the cache size was chosen to make it GPU-hard
[08:09:56] looking forward to more docs
[08:11:38] after initial skimming, I would think it's possible to make a 10x asic for RandomX. But at least for us, we will only make an ASIC if there is not a total ASIC hostility there in the first place. That's better for the secret miners then.
[08:13:12] What I propose is this: we are working on an Ethash ASIC right now, and once we have that working, we would invite tevador or whoever wants to come to HK/Shenzhen and we walk you guys through how we would make a RandomX ASIC. You can then process this input in any way you like. Something like that.
[08:13:49] unless asics (or other accelerators) re-emerge on XMR faster than expected, it looks like there is a little bit of time before RandomX rollout
[08:14:22] 10x in what measure? $/hash or watt/hash?
[08:14:46] watt/hash
[08:15:19] so you can make 10 times more efficient double precisio FPU?
[08:16:02] like I said let's try to be productive. You are having me here, let's work together!
[08:16:15] continue with RandomX, publish more docs. that's always helpful.
[08:16:37] I'm trying to understand how it's possible at all. Why AMD/Intel are so inefficient at running FP calculations?
[08:18:05] midipoet ([email protected]/web/irccloud.com/x-vszshqqxwybvtsjm) has joined #monero-pow
[08:18:17] hardware development works the other way round. We start with 1) math then 2) optimization priority 3) hw/sw boundary 4) IP selection 5) physical implementation
[08:22:32] This still doesn't explain at which point you get 10x
[08:23:07] Weren't you the ones claiming "We can accelerate ProgPoW by a factor of 3x to 8x." ? I find it hard to believe too.
[08:30:20] sure
[08:30:26] so my idea: first we finish our current chip
[08:30:35] from simulation to silicon :)
[08:30:40] we love this stuff... we do it anyway
[08:30:59] now we have a communication channel, and we don't call each other names immediately anymore: big progress!
[08:31:06] you know, we russians have a saying "it was smooth on paper, but they forgot about ravines"
[08:31:12] So I need a bit more details
[08:31:16] ha ha. good!
[08:31:31] that's why I want to avoid to just make claims
[08:31:34] let's work
[08:31:40] RandomX comes in Sep/Oct, right?
[08:31:45] Maybe
[08:32:20] We need to audit it first
[08:32:31] ok
[08:32:59] we don't make chips to prove sw devs that their assumptions about hardware are wrong. especially not if these guys then promptly hardfork and move to the next wrong assumption :)
[08:33:10] from the outside, this only means that hw & sw are devaluing each other
[08:33:24] neither of us should do this
[08:33:47] we are making chips that can hopefully accelerate more crypto ops in the future
[08:33:52] signing, verifying, proving, etc.
[08:34:02] PoW is just a feature like others
[08:34:18] sech1: is it easy for you to come to Hong Kong? (visa-wise)
[08:34:20] or difficult?
[08:34:33] or are you there sometimes?
[08:34:41] It's kind of far away
[08:35:13] we are looking forward to more RandomX docs. that's the first step.
[08:35:31] I want to avoid that we have some meme "Linzhi says they can accelerate XYZ by factor x" .... "ha ha ha"
[08:35:37] right? we don't want that :)
[08:35:39] doc is almost finished
[08:35:40] What docs do you need? It's described pretty good
[08:35:41] so I better say nothing now
[08:35:50] we focus on our Ethash chip
[08:36:05] then based on that, we are happy to walk interested people through the design and what else it can do
[08:36:22] that's a better approach from my view than making claims that are laughed away (rightfully so, because no silicon...)
[08:36:37] ethash ASIC is basically a glorified memory controller
[08:36:39] sech1: tevador said something more is coming (he just did it again)
[08:37:03] yes, some parts of RandomX are not described well
[08:37:10] like dataset access logic
[08:37:37] RandomX looks like progpow for CPU
[08:37:54] yes
[08:38:03] it is designed to reflect CPU
[08:38:34] so any ASIC for it = CPU in essence
[08:39:04] of course there are still some things in regular CPU that can be thrown away for RandomX
[08:40:20] uncore parts are not used, but those will use very little power
[08:40:37] except for memory controller
[08:41:09] I'm just surprised sometimes, ok? let me ask: have you designed or taped out an asic before? isn't it risky to make assumptions about things that are largely unknown?
[08:41:23] I would worry
[08:41:31] that I get something wrong...
[08:41:44] but I also worry like crazy that CNv4 will blow up, where you guys seem to be relaxed
[08:42:06] I didn't want to bring up anything RandomX because CNv4 is such a nailbiter... :)
[08:42:15] how do you guys know you don't have asics in a week or two?
[08:42:38] we don't have experience with ASIC design, but RandomX is simply designed to exactly fit CPU capabilities, which is the best you can do anyways
[08:43:09] similar as ProgPoW did with GPUs
[08:43:14] some people say they want to do asic-resistance only until the vast majority of coins has been issued
[08:43:21] that's at least reasonable
[08:43:43] yeah but progpow totally will not work as advertised :)
[08:44:08] yeah, I've seen that comment about progpow a few times already
[08:44:11] which is no surprise if you know it's just a random sales story to sell a few more GPUs
[08:44:13] RandomX is not permanent, we are expecting to switch to ASIC friendly in a few years if possible
[08:44:18] yes
[08:44:21] that makes sense
[08:44:40] linzhi-sonia: how so? will it break or will it be asic-able with decent performance gains?
[08:44:41] are you happy with CNv4 so far?
[08:45:10] ah, long story. progpow is a masterpiece of deception, let's not get into it here.
[08:45:21] if you know chip marketing it makes more sense
[08:45:24] linzhi-sonia: So far? lol! a bit early to tell, don't you think?
[08:45:35] the diff is coming down
[08:45:41] first few hours looked scary
[08:45:43] I remain skeptical: I only see ASICs being reasonable if they are already as ubiquitous as smartphones
[08:45:46] yes, so far so good
[08:46:01] we kbew the diff would not come down ubtil affter block 75
[08:46:10] yes
[08:46:22] but first few hours it looks like only 5% hashrate left
[08:46:27] looked
[08:46:29] now it's better
[08:46:51] the next worry is: when will "unexplainable" hashrate come back?
[08:47:00] you hope 2-3 months? more?
[08:47:05] so give it another couple of days. will probably overshoot to the downside, and then rise a bit as miners get updated and return
[08:47:22] 3 months minimum turnaround, yes
[08:47:28] nah
[08:47:36] don't underestimate asicmakers :)
[08:47:54] you guys don't get #1 priority on chip fabs
[08:47:56] 3 months = 90 days. do you know what is happening in those 90 days exactly? I'm pretty sure you don't. same thing as before.
[08:48:13] we don't do any secret chips btw
[08:48:21] 3 months assumes they had a complete design ready to go, and added the last minute change in 1 day
[08:48:24] do you know who is behind the hashrate that is now bricked?
[08:48:27] innosilicon?
[08:48:34] hyc: no no, and no. :)
[08:48:44] hyc: have you designed or taped out a chip before?
[08:48:51] yes, many years ago
[08:49:10] then you should know that 90 days is not a fixed number
[08:49:35] sure, but like I said, other makers have greater demand
[08:49:35] especially not if you can prepare, if you just have to modify something, or you have more programmability in the chip than some people assume
[08:50:07] we are chipmakers, we would never dare to do what you guys are doing with CNv4 :) but maybe that just means you are cooler!
[08:50:07] and yes, programmability makes some aspect of turnaround easier
[08:50:10] all fine
[08:50:10] I hope it works!
[08:50:28] do you know who is behind the hashrate that is now bricked?
[08:50:29] inno?
[08:50:41] we suspect so, but have no evidence
[08:50:44] maybe we can try to find them, but we cannot spend too much time on this
[08:50:53] it's probably not so much of a secret
[08:51:01] why should it be, right?
[08:51:10] devs want this cat-and-mouse game? devs get it...
[08:51:35] there was one leak saying it's innosilicon
[08:51:36] so you think 3 months, ok
[08:51:43] inno is cool
[08:51:46] good team
[08:51:49] IP design house
[08:51:54] in Wuhan
[08:52:06] they send their people to conferences with fake biz cards :)
[08:52:19] pretending to be other companies?
[08:52:26] sure
[08:52:28] ha ha
[08:52:39] so when we see them, we look at whatever card they carry and laugh :)
[08:52:52] they are perfectly suited for secret mining games
[08:52:59] they made at most $6 million in 2 months of mining, so I wonder if it was worth it
[08:53:10] yeah. no way to know
[08:53:15] but it's good that you calculate!
[08:53:24] this is all about cost/benefit
[08:53:25] then you also understand - imagine the value of XMR goes up 5x, 10x
[08:53:34] that whole "asic resistance" thing will come down like a house of cards
[08:53:41] I would imagine they sell immediately
[08:53:53] the investor may fully understand the risk
[08:53:57] the buyer
[08:54:13] it's not healthy, but that's another discussion
[08:54:23] so mid-June
[08:54:27] let's see
[08:54:49] I would be susprised if CNv4 ASICs show up at all
[08:54:56] surprised*
[08:54:56] why?
[08:55:05] is only an economic question
[08:55:12] yeah should be interesting. FPGAs will be near their limits as well
[08:55:16] unless XMR goes up a lot
[08:55:19] no, not *only*. it's also a technology question
[08:55:44] you believe CNv4 is "asic resistant"? which feature?
[08:55:53] it's not
[08:55:59] cnv4 = Rabdomx ?
[08:56:03] no
[08:56:07] cnv4=cryptinight/r
[08:56:11] ah
[08:56:18] CNv4 is the one we have now, I think
[08:56:21] since yesterday
[08:56:30] it's plenty enough resistant for current XMR price
[08:56:45] that may be, yes!
[08:56:55] I look at daily payouts. XMR = ca. 100k USD / day
[08:57:03] it can hold until October, but it's not asic resistant
[08:57:23] well, last 24h only 22,442 USD :)
[08:57:32] I think 80 h/s per watt ASICs are possible for CNv4
[08:57:38] linzhi-sonia where do you produce your chips? TSMC?
[08:57:44] I'm cruious how you would expect to build a randomX ASIC that outperforms ARM cores for efficiency, or Intel cores for raw speed
[08:57:48] curious
[08:58:01] yes, tsmc
[08:58:21] Our team did the world's first bitcoin asic, Avalon
[08:58:25] and upcoming 2nd gen Ryzens (64-core EPYC) will be a blast at RandomX
[08:58:28] designed and manufactured
[08:58:53] still being marketed?
[08:59:03] linzhi-sonia: do you understand what xmr wants to achieve, community-wise?
[08:59:14] Avalon? as part of Canaan Creative, yes I think so.
[08:59:25] there's not much interesting oing on in SHA256
[08:59:29] Inge-: I would think so, but please speak
[08:59:32] hyc: yes
[09:00:28] linzhi-sonia: i am curious to hear your thoughts. I am fairly new to this space myself...
[09:00:51] oh
[09:00:56] we are grandpas, and grandmas
[09:01:36] yet I have no problem understanding why ASICS are currently reviled.
[09:01:48] xmr's main differentiators to, let's say btc, are anonymity and fungibility
[09:01:58] I find the client terribly slow btw
[09:02:21] and I think the asic-forking since last may is wrong, doesn't create value and doesn't help with the project objectives
[09:02:25] which "the client" ?
[09:02:52] Monero GUI client maybe
[09:03:12] MacOS, yes
[09:03:28] What exactly is slow?
[09:03:30] linzhi-sonia: I run my own node, and use the CLI and Monerujo. Have not had issues.
[09:03:49] staying in sync
[09:03:49] linzhi-sonia: decentralization is also a key principle
[09:03:56] one that Bitcoin has failed to maintain
[09:04:39] hmm
[09:05:00] looks fairly decentralized to me. decentralization is the result of 3 goals imo: resilient, trustless, permissionless
[09:05:28] don't ask a hardware maker about physical decentralization. that's too ideological. we focus on logical decentralization.
[09:06:11] physical decentralization is important. with bulk of bitnoin mining centered on Chinese hydroelectric dams
[09:06:19] have you thought about including block data in the PoW?
[09:06:41] yes, of course.
[09:07:39] is that already in an algo?
[09:08:10] hyc: about "centered on chinese hydro" - what is your source? the best paper I know is this: https://coinshares.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mining-Whitepaper-Final.pdf
[09:09:01] linzhi-sonia: do you mine on your ASICs before you sell them?
[09:09:13] besides testing of course
[09:09:45] that paper puts Chinese btc miners at 60% max
[09:10:05] tevador: I think everybody learned that that is not healthy long-term!
[09:10:16] because it gives the chipmaker a cost advantage over its own customers
[09:10:33] and cost advantage leads to centralization (physical and logical)
[09:10:51] you guys should know who finances progpow and why :)
[09:11:05] but let's not get into this, ha ha. want to keep the channel civilized. right OhGodAGirl ? :)
[09:11:34] tevador: so the answer is no! 100% and definitely no
[09:11:54] that "self-mining" disease was one of the problems we have now with asics, and their bad reputation (rightfully so)
[09:13:08] I plan to write a nice short 2-page paper or so on our chip design process. maybe it's interesting to some people here.
[09:13:15] basically the 5 steps I mentioned before, from math to physical
[09:13:32] linzhi-sonia: the paper you linked puts 48% of bitcoin mining in Sichuan. the total in China is much more than 60%
[09:13:38] need to run it by a few people to fix bugs, will post it here when published
[09:14:06] hyc: ok! I am just sharing the "best" document I know today. it definitely may be wrong and there may be a better one now.
[09:14:18] hyc: if you see some reports, please share
[09:14:51] hey I am really curious about this: where is a PoW algo that puts block data into the PoW?
[09:15:02] the previous paper I read is from here http://hackingdistributed.com/2018/01/15/decentralization-bitcoin-ethereum/
[09:15:38] hyc: you said that already exists? (block data in PoW)
[09:15:45] it would make verification harder
[09:15:49] linzhi-sonia: https://the-eye.eu/public/Books/campdivision.com/PDF/Computers%20General/Privacy/bitcoin/meh/hashimoto.pdf
[09:15:51] but for chips it would be interesting
[09:15:52] we discussed the possibility about a year ago https://www.reddit.com/Monero/comments/8bshrx/what_we_need_to_know_about_proof_of_work_pow/
[09:16:05] oh good links! thanks! need to read...
[09:16:06] I think that paper by dryja was original
[09:17:53] since we have a nice flow - second question I'm very curious about: has anyone thought about in-protocol rewards for other functions?
[09:18:55] we've discussed micropayments for wallets to use remote nodes
[09:18:55] you know there is a lot of work in other coins about STARK provers, zero-knowledge, etc. many of those things very compute intense, or need to be outsourced to a service (zether). For chipmakers, in-protocol rewards create an economic incentive to accelerate those things.
[09:19:50] whenever there is an in-protocol reward, you may get the power of ASICs doing something you actually want to happen
[09:19:52] it would be nice if there was some economic reward for running a fullnode, but no one has come up with much more than that afaik
[09:19:54] instead of fighting them off
[09:20:29] you need to use asics, not fight them. that's an obvious thing to say for an asicmaker...
[09:20:41] in-protocol rewards can be very powerful
[09:20:50] like I said before - unless the ASICs are so useful they're embedded in every smartphone, I dont see them being a positive for decentralization
[09:21:17] if they're a separate product, the average consumer is not going to buy them
[09:21:20] now I was talking about speedup of verifying, signing, proving, etc.
[09:21:23] they won't even know what they are
[09:22:07] if anybody wants to talk about or design in-protocol rewards, please come talk to us
[09:22:08] the average consumer also doesn't use general purpose hardware to secure blockchains either
[09:22:14] not just for PoW, in fact *NOT* for PoW
[09:22:32] it requires sw/hw co-design
[09:23:10] we are in long-term discussions/collaboration over this with Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash. just talk right now.
[09:23:16] this was recently published though suggesting more uptake though I guess https://btcmanager.com/college-students-are-the-second-biggest-miners-of-cryptocurrency/
[09:23:29] I find it pretty hard to believe their numbers
[09:24:03] well
[09:24:09] sorry, original article: https://www.pcmag.com/news/366952/college-kids-are-using-campus-electricity-to-mine-crypto
[09:24:11] just talk, no? rumors
[09:24:18] college students are already more educated than the average consumer
[09:24:29] we are not seeing many such customers anymore
[09:24:30] it's data from cisco monitoring network traffic
[09:24:33] and they're always looking for free money
[09:24:48] of course anyone with "free" electricity is inclined to do it
[09:24:57] but look at the rates, cannot make much money
[09:26:06] Ethereum is a bloated collection of bugs wrapped in a UI. I suppose they need all the help they can get
[09:26:29] Bitcoin Cash ... just another get rich quick scheme
[09:26:38] hmm :)
[09:26:51] I'll give it back to you, ok? ha ha. arrogance comes before the fall...
[09:27:17] maye we should have a little fun with CNv4 mining :)
[09:27:25] ;)
[09:27:38] come on. anyone who has watched their track record... $75M lost in ETH at DAO hack
[09:27:50] every smart contract that comes along is just waiting for another hack
[09:27:58] I just wanted to throw out the "in-protocol reward" thing, maybe someone sees the idea and wants to cowork. maybe not. maybe it's a stupid idea.
[09:29:18] linzhi-sonia: any thoughts on CN-GPU?
[09:29:55] CN-GPU has one positive aspect - it wastes chip area to implement all 18 hash algorithms
[09:30:19] you will always hear roughly the same feedback from me:
[09:30:52] "This algorithm very different, it heavy use floating point operations to hurt FPGAs and general purpose CPUs"
[09:30:56] the problem is, if it's profitable for people to buy ASIC miners and mine, it's always more profitable for the manufacturer to not sell and mine themselves
[09:31:02] "hurt"
[09:31:07] what is the point of this?
[09:31:15] it totally doesn't work
[09:31:24] you are hurting noone, just demonstrating lack of ability to think
[09:31:41] what is better: algo designed for chip, or chip designed for algo?
[09:31:43] fireice does it on daily basis, CN-GPU is a joke
[09:31:53] tevador: that's not really true, especially in a market with such large price fluctuations as cryptocurrency
[09:32:12] it's far less risky to sell miners than mine with them and pray that price doesn't crash for next six months
[09:32:14] I think it's great that crypto has a nice group of asicmakers now, hw & sw will cowork well
[09:32:36] jwinterm yes, that's why they premine them and sell after
[09:32:41] PoW is about being thermodynamically and cryptographically provable
[09:32:45] premining with them is taking on that risk
[09:32:49] not "fork when we think there are asics"
[09:32:51] business is about risk minimization
[09:32:54] that's just fear-driven
[09:33:05] Inge-: that's roughly the feedback
[09:33:24] I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but I think it's not so simple as saying "it always happens"
[09:34:00] jwinterm: it has certainly happened on BTC. and also on XMR.
[09:34:19] ironically, please think about it: these kinds of algos indeed prove the limits of the chips they were designed for. but they don't prove that you cannot implement the same algo differently! cannot!
[09:34:26] Risk minimization is not starting a business at all.
[09:34:34] proof-of-gpu-limit. proof-of-cpu-limit.
[09:34:37] imagine you have a money printing machine, would you sell it?
[09:34:39] proves nothing for an ASIC :)
[09:35:05] linzhi-sonia: thanks. I dont think anyone believes you can't make a more efficient cn-gpu asic than a gpu - but that it would not be orders of magnitude faster...
[09:35:24] ok
[09:35:44] like I say. these algos are, that's really ironic, designed to prove the limitatios of a particular chip in mind of the designer
[09:35:50] exactly the wrong way round :)
[09:36:16] like the cache size in RandomX :)
[09:36:18] beautiful
[09:36:29] someone looked at GPU designs
[09:37:31] linzhi-sonia can you elaborate? Cache size in RandomX was selected to fit CPU cache
[09:37:52] yes
[09:38:03] too large for GPU
[09:38:11] as I said, we are designing the algorithm to exactly fit CPU capabilities, I do not claim an ASIC cannot be more efficient
[09:38:16] ok!
[09:38:29] when will you do the audit?
[09:38:35] will the results be published in a document or so?
[09:38:37] I claim that single-chip ASIC is not viable, though
[09:39:06] you guys are brave, noone disputes that. 3 anti-asic hardforks now!
[09:39:18] 4th one coming
[09:39:31] 3 forks were done not only for this
[09:39:38] they had scheduled updates in the first place
[09:48:10] Monero is the #1 anti-asic fighter
[09:48:25] Monero is #1 for a lot of reasons ;)
[09:48:40] It's the coin with the most hycs.
[09:48:55] mooooo
[09:59:06] sneaky integer overflow, bug squished
[10:38:00] p0nziph0ne ([email protected]/vpn/privateinternetaccess/p0nziph0ne) has joined #monero-pow
[11:10:53] The convo here is wild
[11:12:29] it's like geo-politics at the intersection of software and hardware manufacturing for thermoeconomic value.
[11:13:05] ..and on a Sunday.
[11:15:43] midipoet: hw and sw should work together and stop silly games to devalue each other. to outsiders this is totally not attractive.
[11:16:07] I appreciate the positive energy here to try to listen, learn, understand.
[11:16:10] that's a start
[11:16:48] <-- p0nziph0ne ([email protected]/vpn/privateinternetaccess/p0nziph0ne) has quit (Quit: Leaving)
[11:16:54] we won't do silly mining against xmr "community" wishes, but not because we couldn'd do it, but because it's the wrong direction in the long run, for both sides
[11:18:57] linzhi-sonia: I agree to some extent. Though, in reality, there will always be divergence between social worlds. Not every body has the same vision of the future. Reaching societal consensus on reality tomorrow is not always easy
[11:20:25] absolutely. especially at a time when there is so much profit to be made from divisiveness.
[11:20:37] someone will want to make that profit, for sure
[11:24:32] Yes. Money distorts.
[11:24:47] Or wealth...one of the two
[11:26:35] Too much physical money will distort rays of light passing close to it indeed.

submitted by jwinterm to Monero [link] [comments]

Which is the most important hardware to mine cryptocurrency?

Crypto mining equipment is specifically designed to solve blockchain hash functions at a faster rate than other hardware solutions. Traditional computers are built with a processor known as a Central Processing Unit (CPU), which is designed to compute the functions needed for a standard computer.
Alternatively, mining hardware is built with different, more advance processors. Yet, these aren’t just high-powered computers. Crypto mining equipment is more efficient than typical hardware at solving computational hashes required to successfully mine blockchains.
MINING HARDWARE DETAILS
There are several things to look out for when it comes to purchasing cryptocurrency mining hardware and equipment.[1]
First, these machines must not just be powerful, but energy efficient as well. Since the number one cost in crypto mining is electricity, a good piece of mining equipment must consume less power while still maintaining its high-powered usage. This makes a key factor in crypto mining hardware hashes per second per watt of power, which determines how much power is consumed for a given amount of hash power.
Second, because cryptocurrency mining is done 24/7/365, the equipment used to mine must be able to operate on a continuous basis. This means, equipment is designed for optimal cooling so as to not overheat from continuous use, as well as setting up equipment in a way which will allow for the most optimal cooling. If you are unsure how this can be done it may be best to outsource the installation and hosting of your mining hardware to a third-party provider with the proper tools and resources to service mining equipment.
TYPES OF MINING HARDWARE
There are three types of mining hardware: GPU, FPGA, and ASIC. The type of hardware used is dependent on the blockchain being mined. While ASIC-based hardware may be the most powerful for some blockchains (such as Bitcoin), they are rendered almost useless in other blockchains (such as ZCash) whose hashing algorithm is designed to be resistant to ASIC hardware.
Choosing the correct piece of mining hardware is one of the most important parts of cryptocurrency mining, as the wrong choice could result in a significant loss of potential profits and time.
All in all, it has become clear over the past several years that cryptocurrency mining hardware is necessary for anyone looking to make a profit in mining. Determining which piece of mining equipment is most suitable for your needs is dependent on many factors such as your budget and the blockchain being mined.

submitted by alifkhalil469 to BtcNewz [link] [comments]

GPU Mining Crash Course - START HERE!

Welcome All to the GPUMining Crash Course!
With the increase in prices in cryptocurrency, a lot of people are getting back into mining and a lot of people are brand new to the concept overall. So, I quickly wrote this crash course to help you understand what to expect and how to successfully mine your first cryptocurrency. This crash course isn't gonna have all of the fluff you'd see in a normal publication. This is just everything you need to know to get up and running on your first cryptocurrency mining rig.

What is cryptocurrency mining?

One of the main things about cryptocurrencies is that they are "decentralized". Sounds great, but WTF does that even mean? Well, the easiest way to explain it is...
You know how if you want to send your friend/family money digitally, you can do so through your bank. Your bank likely takes a transaction fee and in a few days they will transfer the money. Since cryptocurrencies are decentralized, they don't have a bank or organization to fulfill the transfer of money. Instead, they outsource the computing power of their cryptocurrency network to miners (soon to be you). These miners are verifying transactions, securing the blockchain, and powering the cryptocurrency's specific network among other things. As an incentive, the miners collect transaction fees on the transactions that they verify and collect block rewards while new currency is still being introduced into the ecosystem.

What kind of rig should I build?

You can mine cryptocurrencies using your CPU, GPU, FPGA, or ASIC, but this is a GPU Mining subreddit, so I will cater this to GPUs.
For building a great all-around GPU rig, there are two models of GPUs that I'd recommend:

Both of these GPUs have solid hashrates across most mining algorithms and for a decent price! You should be able to find both of these kinds of GPUs used for around $200-$250 each, which is a great price if you know what happened during the last mining craze! ($200 GPUs were out of stock everywhere and people were reselling them for $600+ each)
There are also plenty of great AMD GPUs for mining, but I've worked mostly with Nvidia so that's why both of my recommendations are Nvidia and not AMD.
Other parts to your rig that you'll need are listed below. Most of these can be pieces of crap and are just needed to make the rig actually run, but the one spot you DON'T want to cheap out on is the power supply unit. A decent power supply unit will keep your home from burning down while also keeping your rigs up and running smoothly. Here are my recommendations:

Motherboard - This Motherboard can hold up to 6 GPUs (considered a full rig) with the use of risers. It is decently priced and will fit nearly any mining rig upgrades that you make in the future.
CPU - You really just need the most basic CPU you can find, it's not very essential to mining unless you're CPU mining, but even then... CPU mining isn't very profitable for how expensive CPUs can be.
RAM - All you really need is about 4GB to keep this thing running. If you want more, go for it, but it's not neccessary in most cases.
Power Switch - Doesn't need to be fancy, just needs to turn the thing on and off
PowerSupply - Don't cheap out here! Pay for a quality PSU and save yourself the headache and be safe with a solid PSU. Get a GOLD quality PSU at a MINIMUM! Platinum is good too, but probably unnecessary. The linked 1300w PSU will support most 6 GPU rigs, if you're going for higher tier GPUs like a 1080ti and above or if you're having more than 6 GPUs on a single rig then you'll need something stronger.
GPU Risers - I use this kind. They work and they're not shitty. They do require 6pin for power. Use a Molex converter if needed, but going 6pin directly from your PSU is best. Your 8+6pin will probably be a little bit short, so you'll need some 6pin extenders. EVGA will sell them you for a few bucks each, but you have to call as they're not listed on the site. DON'T YOU DARE THINK OF USING A SATA CONNECTION UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR ENTIRE MINING OPERATION TO BURN DOWN AND TAKE EVERYTHING ELSE WITH IT! SATA IS NOT RATED FOR THE POWER THAT YOU NEED!!!!
Kilowatt Meter - So that you can monitor your power consumption from the wall (much more accurate than trying to calculate each piece of hardware individually). Also helps when overclocking for a higher efficiency.
120GB Solid State Drive - SSDs are pretty damn cheap now. Just get it instead of your prehistoric HDD. Also, make sure you get AT LEAST 120GB! Many of the popular cryptocurrencies like BEAM and GRIN will demand quite a bit of virtual memory, so you'll need the extra space on your SSD to compensate for that.
Something to put your rig on - This one seems to be popular, but pretty much anything will do. I literally used a shoe rack and zip ties. You just need something that will give the GPUs airflow to breathe and keep the rig organized as a whole.
Windows 10/Linux Operating System - Pretty self explanatory here. Don't go with any of the MAC OS or Apple Products. They're extremely over priced and nearly useless in the mining world.

She's built, now what?

Now you need to do a few things. I am a Windows miner, so I will be speaking to Windows here:

Update Windows - Do all of the updates. Just do it.
Update Drivers - Go to the EVGA website and download GeForce experience. It will keep your GPU drivers up to date.
Go to Windows Device Manager and make sure all of your GPUs show up under "Display Adapters". If it is there, but it isn't showing the Name/Model of the GPU as the name, right click it and select "Update Driver". This should fix it.

Assuming you've done all of this, you're ready to download a mining application.

Mining Software

There are tons to choose from! Claymore, Phoenix, EWBF, LolMiner, etc... It can be overwhelming pretty quickly since they all have different algorithm support, speeds, efficiencies, and a whole lot more. On top of that, in order to get them running you need to set up batch files to call the proper exe, point you to the correct pool, and a whole bunch of other stuff that can be confusing to a new user. Not to mention, you will probably need a separate miner, config file, batch file, etc. for each different algorithm that you're interested in mining on.
Instead, I recommend that you download a miner management software that will take care of most of this tedious work for you. There are a few in the sidebar, but the /GPUMining favorite is AIOMiner. It was developed by our very own community member, xixspiderxix with the intention of making mining as easy as possible to do and without any fees. It supports over 100 different algorithms, so you'll be able to mine nearly ANY cryptocurrency you'd like. Just download it from their website and it will take you through a quick tutorial to help you get set up! You can also connect your rig to their website for remote monitoring and control. You've probably seen a few of their posts around this subreddit.
Other Windows mining softwares include:

MOAMiner
AwesomeMiner
WinMiner
many more you can find from google searching

Note: Many mining softwares have fees built into them. Most are around 1%, but can go as high as 5% or greater! You want a mining software with little or no fees at all so that you get to keep as much cryptocurrency as possible. These fees aren't something you actively pay, the software will automatically take it by mining on the developers behalf for a given amount of time and then switching back to mining on your own behalf. So, please be diligent in the software that you evaluate and make sure it is reputable.

I keep hearing about NiceHash. What is that?

The asshole of the mining industry. Jk, but not really.
NiceHash is a software program that allows you to sell your rig's hashing power to someone on their marketplace. They market themselves as profitable mining, but you're not really mining. You're selling your power in exchange for Bitcoin.
They did a great job telling people that with them, you're always mining the most profitable coin, but that's just not true. Since it is a mining marketplace, they make you mine whatever their most expensive contract is. If their contracts are below market prices, then you're not operating as efficiently and profitably as you could be.
NiceHash also has a sketchy history, which continues to this day. In 2017, they were hacked and lost $65M worth of Bitcoin. No one got paid out for MONTHS and many of their executives conveniently resigned. Their platform is also used to destroy cryptocurrencies. Since people are able to purchase mining power on their platform, people have used their platform to purchase enough mining power to control individual cryptocurrencies and duplicate coins, which increased the malicious user's wealth while completely destroying the integrity of the coin's blockchain. HoriZEN (formerly ZenCash), Ethereum Classic, and many other great cryptocurrencies have been the victim of NiceHash's platform.
For this and many other reasons, we highly recommend that you stay AWAY from Nicehash. We understand that it is extremely easy to use and you get paid in bitcoin, but they are destroying the industry with their greed and lack of motivation to change their platform for the protection of cryptocurrencies.

Concluding Thoughts

This is pretty much everything you need to know to get started. We covered the hardware, setting up the software, which software to use, and AIOMiner's tutorial will get you up to speed on how to actually mine the cryptocurrency that you want better than I can explain it, so I'll leave that part to them.
If you have any questions on this crash course, please leave a comment below where myself and other community members will be able to help you out.

submitted by The_Brutally_Honest to gpumining [link] [comments]

Proposal to switch to SHA-3 proof of work

https://github.com/aeonix/aeon/issues/103

I believe now is the right time for Aeon to become ASIC friendly by switching to SHA-3 PoW (the most recent Secure Hashing Algorithm standardized by NIST). Below I'll try to explain why:

There is no such thing as ASIC resistant PoW.

Whether someone creates an ASIC or not is not determined by how technologically difficult it is to do so, but how economically sensible it is to do so; i.e., when a coin gets more adopted and the price rises, ASICs will appear no matter what.
Below is a quote from Bitcoin StackExchange which makes a good point:

It's not really "someone figured out" how to mine on FPGAs or ASICs: an intelligent first year undergraduate could port SHA256 from C to Verilog. It's more that it began to make economic sense. ASICs in particular require a big enough up-front investment that you need economies of scale. – Peter Taylor Nov 9 '17 at 23:27

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/62336/why-did-satoshi-design-bitcoin-to-be-mineable-only-on-specialized-hardware-if-t#comment71658_62339
For every supposedly ASIC resistant PoW (scrypt, CryptoNight etc), ASICs have been created at some point when the coin became sufficiently large. An often seen argument is "CryptoNight was good at resisting ASICs because it survived the first 3 years without ASICs being developed", which I disagree. CryptoNight ASICs weren't created for the first 3 years simply because the market was too small; it wasn't worthwhile to develop CryptoNight ASICs.
Currently RandomX is receiving a lot of attention as being (almost) truly ASIC resistant by making PoW even more complex, but from the past experience and from logical reasoning, I have no reason to believe so.

Importance of protocol stability:

As a coin gets more widely adopted (and the price goes up), there will be more participants in the network (users, exchanges, merchants, pools, etc), which makes it more difficult to do hard forks (i.e. to force everyone to upgrade their software). Monero's 6 month fork schedule is already becoming almost unworkable due to the sheer network size, and I think they'll be forced to change this policy rather soon.
Imagine a hypothetical future where one particular crypto coin becomes a globally adopted world currency. That coin cannot do hard forks every so often; maybe once every two years is already too much. Ideally, at some point, the protocol should become absolutely stable and require no more hard forks at all.
With this in mind, I immediately see ASIC resistance being incompatible with this future, because hard forks (PoW changes) are rather frequently needed due to ASICs getting created faster and faster as the coin grows. ASIC resistance cannot be a sane strategy for a winning cryptocurrency.

Importance of switching now:

Going from ASIC resistant to ASIC friendly is such a radical change, and a strong opposition is naturally expected from many of the community members who have been supporting ASIC resistance. A compromise solution suggested by u/smooth_xmr is to adopt CryptonightR which Monero will switch to in the next upcoming hard fork. I think the reasoning is that CN-R is expected to be somewhat better at resisting ASICs and not much more computationally expensive than the previous CN variants (unlike RandomX), so we can wait and see how successful this will be before going full ASIC friendly.
Initially I felt OK with it, but I became unsatisfied after a while of thinking for these reasons:

CryptoNight variants are orders of magnitude slower than SHA-3; the earlier we switch to SHA-3, the better for new participants who want to verify the entire blockchain from the genesis (an act of critical importance for a trustless cryptocurrency).
If we switch to CN-R now, and if ASICs do appear at some point (I believe they will), are we certain that we will switch to SHA-3 at that point? Won't there be someone claiming "I have an idea for a better ASIC resistant PoW, so let's try it and see"?
Many Monero developers admit that SHA-3 would be desirable if ASICs are available to common people. But how will this happen? I believe this won't ever happen unless we first switch to SHA-3 and help the market grow.

Arguments for ASIC resistance and their counterarguments:

"ASIC production is monopoly/duopoly/oligopoly and enables one party to gain > 50% of network hash power, hence the coin can be 51% attacked at a whim."
- Counter: This dangerous state is inevitable in the early stage of the market growth. As the market matures, ASIC commoditization will definitely happen, as evidenced in Bitcoin. Also, one party having > 50% hash power doesn't necessarily mean that the party would immediately conduct the 51% attack. It may, or it may not. There certainly is a risk, and any cryptocurrency is inherently risky when it's small. Bitcoin survived this dangerous period somehow, and currently there doesn't seem to exist a real chance of 51% attack for Bitcoin. This makes for one example of success of this experiment, and I'm willing to do exactly the same experiment again, this time with SHA-3.
"ASIC friendly means common people can't participate in mining, and that's discouraging."
- Counter: This is only true for a limited period of time. Initially, there's so little demand for SHA-3 ASICs that you'll be able to easily mine it using GPUs (CPUs seem already obsoleted by GPUs though). When the first few ASICs get created, they won't appear in the market, and GPU mining becomes unprofitable, to your disappointment. But as the market matures, cheaper ASICs will appear in the market which common people can buy for home use. This is evidenced in Bitcoin.
"CPU/GPU mining is good because everyone needs CPUs/GPUs and they're useful for general tasks."
- Counter: This sounds nice, but ultimately it seems wrong to use these general purpose devices for a very specific task of mining. Specific task should be carried out efficiently using specifically designed devices. Also, as mentioned above, as the market matures, I believe eventually mining ASICs will become the default choice for heating equipment where cooling cost of ASICs is free. Heating is a universal use case, so eventually everyone will want mining ASICs.
"CPU mining enables hash-for-services (e.g. browser mining) which can open new possibilities for e-commerce."
- Counter: This is a nice byproduct of ASIC resistance, but its importance is negligible compared to the importance of the protocol's sanity.

SHA-3 is the perfect way for Aeon to differentiate itself from Monero.

This change is radical but not stupid. Many people in the Monero community would be curious how things will play out for SHA-3 Aeon. This will surely also attract a lot of attention from the wider crypto community because Aeon will be the first CryptoNote coin that deployed SHA-3. I believe this is a very good opportunity for marketing as well.

Please discuss.

submitted by stoffu to Aeon [link] [comments]

Mining for Profitability - Horizen (formerly ZenCash) Thanks Early GPU Miners

Thank you for inviting Horizen to the GPU mining AMA!
ZEN had a great run of GPU mining that lasted well over a year, and brought lots of value to the early Zclassic miners. It is mined using Equihash protocol, and there have been ASIC miners available for the algorithm since about June of 2018. GPU mining is not really profitable for Horizen at this point in time.
We’ve got a lot of miners in the Horizen community, and many GPU miners also buy ASIC miners. Happy to talk about algorithm changes, security, and any other aspect of mining in the questions below. There are also links to the Horizen website, blog post, etc. below.
So, if I’m not here to ask you to mine, hold, and love ZEN, what can I offer? Notes on some of the lessons I’ve learned about maximizing mining profitability. An update on Horizen - there is life after moving on from GPU mining. As well as answering your questions during the next 7 days.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mining for Profitability - Horizen (formerly ZenCash) Thanks Early GPU Miners

Author: Rolf Versluis - co-founder of Horizen

In GPU mining, just like in many of the activities involved with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, there is both a cycle and a progression. The Bitcoin price cycle is fairly steady, and by creating a personal handbook of actions to take during the cycle, GPU miners can maximize their profitability.
Maximizing profitability isn't the only aspect of GPU mining that is important, of course, but it is helpful to be able to invest in new hardware, and be able to have enough time to spend on building and maintaining the GPU miners. If it was a constant process that also involved losing money, then it wouldn't be as much fun.

Technology Progression

For a given mining algorithm, there is definitely a technology progression. We can look back on the technology that was used to mine Bitcoin and see how it first started off as Central Processing Unit (CPU) mining, then it moved to Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) mining, then Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), and then Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC).
Throughout this evolution we have witnessed a variety of unsavory business practices that unfortunately still happen on occasion, like ASIC Miner manufacturers taking pre-orders 6 months in advance, GPU manufacturers creating commercial cards for large farms that are difficult for retail customers to secure and ASIC Miner manufacturers mining on gear for months before making it available for sale.
When a new crypto-currency is created, in many cases a new mining algorithm is created also. This is important, because if an existing algorithm was used, the coin would be open to a 51% attack from day one, and may not even be able to build a valid blockchain.
Because there's such a focus on profitable software, developers for GPU mining applications are usually able to write a mining application fairly rapidly, then iterate it to the limit of current GPU technology. If it looks like a promising new cryptocurrency, FPGA stream developers and ASIC Hardware Developers start working on their designs at the same time.
The people who create the hashing algorithms run by the miners are usually not very familiar with the design capabilities of Hardware manufacturers. Building application-specific semiconductors is an industry that's almost 60 years old now, and FPGA’s have been around for almost 35 years. This is an industry that has very experienced engineers using advanced design and modeling tools.
Promising cryptocurrencies are usually ones that are deploying new technology, or going after a big market, and who have at least a team of talented software developers. In the best case, the project has a full-stack business team involving development, project management, systems administration, marketing, sales, and leadership. This is the type of project that attracts early investment from the market, which will drive the price of the coin up significantly in the first year.
For any cryptocurrency that's a worthwhile investment of time, money, and electricity for the hashing, there will be a ASIC miners developed for it. Instead of fighting this technology progression, GPU miners may be better off recognizing it as inevitable, and taking advantage of the cryptocurrency cycle to maximize GPU mining profitability instead.

Cryptocurrency Price Cycle

For quality crypto projects, in addition to the one-way technology progression of CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC, there is an upward price progression. More importantly, there is a cryptocurrency price cycle that oscillates around an overall upgrade price progression. Plotted against time, a cycle with an upward progressions looks like a sine wave with an ever increasing average value, which is what we see so far with the Bitcoin price.

Cryptocurrency price cycle and progression for miners
This means mining promising new cryptocurrencies with GPU miners, holding them as the price rises, and being ready to sell a significant portion in the first year. Just about every cryptocurrency is going to have a sharp price rise at some point, whether through institutional investor interest or by being the target of a pump-and-dump operation. It’s especially likely in the first year, while the supply is low and there is not much trading volume or liquidity on exchanges.
Miners need to operate in the world of government money, as well as cryptocurrency. The people who run mining businesses at some point have to start selling their mining proceeds to pay the bills, and to buy new equipment as the existing equipment becomes obsolete. Working to maximize profitability means more than just mining new cryptocurrencies, it also means learning when to sell and how to manage money.

Managing Cash for Miners

The worst thing that can happen to a business is to run out of cash. When that happens, the business usually shuts down and goes into bankruptcy. Sometimes an investor comes in and picks up the pieces, but at the point the former owners become employees.
There are two sides to managing cash - one is earning it, the other is spending it, and the cryptocurrency price cycle can tell the GPU miner when it is the best time to do certain things. A market top and bottom is easy to recognize in hindsight, and harder to see when in the middle of it. Even if a miner is able to recognize the tops and bottoms, it is difficult to act when there is so much hype and positivity at the top of the cycle, and so much gloom and doom at the bottom.
A decent rule of thumb for the last few cycles appears to be that at the top and bottom of the cycle BTC is 10x as expensive compared to USD as the last cycle. Newer crypto projects tend to have bigger price swings than Bitcoin, and during the rising of the pricing cycle there is the possibility that an altcoin will have a rise to 100x its starting price.
Taking profits from selling altcoins during the rise is important, but so is maintaining a reserve. In order to catch a 100x move, it may be worth the risk to put some of the altcoin on an exchange and set a very high limit order. For the larger cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin it is important to set trailing sell stops on the way up, and to not buy back in for at least a month if a sell stop gets triggered. Being able to read price charts, see support and resistance areas for price, and knowing how to set sell orders are an important part of mining profitability.

Actions to Take During the Cycle

As the cycle starts to rise from the bottom, this is a good time to buy mining hardware - it will be inexpensive. Also to mine and buy altcoins, which are usually the first to see a price rise, and will have larger price increases than Bitcoin.
On the rise of the cycle, this is a good time to see which altcoins are doing well from a project fundamentals standpoint, and which ones look like they are undergoing accumulation from investors.
Halfway through the rise of the cycle is the time to start selling altcoins for the larger project cryptos like Bitcoin. Miners will miss some of the profit at the top of the cycle, but will not run out of cash by doing this. This is also the time to stop buying mining hardware. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to pick up that same hardware used for a fraction of the price at the next bottom.
As the price nears the top of the cycle, sell enough Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to meet the following projected costs:

Mining electricity costs for the next 12 months
Planned investment into new miners for the next cycle
Additional funds needed for things like supporting a family or buying a Lambo
Taxes on all the capital gains from the sale of cryptocurrencies

It may be worth selling 70-90% of crypto holdings, maintaining a reserve in case there is second upward move caused by government bankruptcies. But selling a large part of the crypto is helpful to maintaining profitability and having enough cash reserves to make it through the bottom part of the next cycle.
As the cycle has peaked and starts to decline, this is a good time to start investing in mining facilities and other infrastructure, brush up on trading skills, count your winnings, and take some vacation.
At the bottom of the cycle, it is time to start buying both used and new mining equipment. The bottom can be hard to recognize.
If you can continue to mine all the way through bottom part of the cryptocurrency pricing cycle, paying with the funds sold near the top, you will have a profitable and enjoyable cryptocurrency mining business. Any cryptocurrency you are able to hold onto will benefit from the price progression in the next higher cycle phase.

An Update on Horizen - formerly ZenCash

The team at Horizen recognizes the important part that GPU miners played in the early success of Zclassic and ZenCash, and there is always a welcoming attitude to any of ZEN miners, past and present. About 1 year after ZenCash launched, ASIC miners became available for the Equihash algorithm. Looking at a chart of mining difficulty over time shows when it was time for GPU miners to move to mining other cryptocurrencies.

Horizen Historical Block Difficulty Graph
Looking at the hashrate chart, it is straightforward to see that ASIC miners were deployed starting June 2018. It appears that there was a jump in mining hashrate in October of 2017. This may have been larger GPU farms switching over to mine Horizen, FPGA’s on the network, or early version of Equihash ASIC miners that were kept private.
The team understands the importance of the cryptocurrency price cycle as it affects the funds from the Horizen treasury and the investments that can be made. 20% of each block mined is sent to the Horizen non-profit foundation for use to improve the project. Just like miners have to manage money, the team has to decide whether to spend funds when the price is high or convert it to another form in preparation for the bottom part of the cycle.
During the rise and upper part of the last price cycle Horizen was working hard to maximize the value of the project through many different ways, including spending on research and development, project management, marketing, business development with exchanges and merchants, and working to create adoption in all the countries of the world.
During the lower half of the cycle Horizen has reduced the team to the essentials, and worked to build a base of users, relationships with investors, exchanges, and merchants, and continue to develop the higher priority software projects. Lower priority software development, going to trade shows, and paying for business partnerships like exchanges and applications have all been completely stopped.
Miners are still a very important part of the Horizen ecosystem, earning 60% of the block reward. 20% goes to node operators, with 20% to the foundation. In the summer of 2018 the consensus algorithm was modified slightly to make it much more difficult for any group of miners to perform a 51% attack on Horizen. This has so far proven effective.
The team is strong, we provide monthly updates on a YouTube live stream on the first Wednesday of each month where all questions asked during the stream are addressed, and our marketing team works to develop awareness of Horizen worldwide. New wallet software was released recently, and it is the foundation application for people to use and manage their ZEN going forward.
Horizen is a Proof of Work cryptocurrency, and there is no plan to change that by the current development team. If there is a security or centralization concern, there may be change to the algorithm, but that appears unlikely at this time, as the hidden chain mining penalty looks like it is effective in stopping 51% attacks.
During 2019 and 2020 the Horizen team plans to release many new software updates:

Sidechains modification to main software
Sidechain Software Development Kit
Governance and Treasury application running on a sidechain
Node tracking and payments running on a sidechain
Conversion from blockchain to a Proof of Work BlockDAG using Equihash mining algorithm

After these updates are working well, the team will work to transition Horizen over to a governance model where major decisions and the allocation of treasury funds are done through a form of democratic voting. At this point all the software developed by Horizen is expected to be open source.
When the governance is transitioned, the project should be as decentralized as possible. The goal of decentralization is to enable resilience and preventing the capture of the project by regulators, government, criminal organizations, large corporations, or a small group of individuals.
Everyone involved with Horizen can be proud of what we have accomplished together so far. Miners who were there for the early mining and growth of the project played a large part in securing the network, evangelizing to new community members, and helping to create liquidity on new exchanges. Miners are still a very important part of the project and community. Together we can look forward to achieving many new goals in the future.

Here are some links to find out more about Horizen.
Horizen Website – https://horizen.global
Horizen Blog – https://blog.horizen.global
Horizen Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/Horizen/
Horizen Discord – https://discord.gg/SuaMBTb
Horizen Github – https://github.com/ZencashOfficial
Horizen Forum – https://forum.horizen.global/
Horizen Twitter – https://twitter.com/horizenglobal
Horizen Telegram – https://t.me/horizencommunity
Horizen on Bitcointalk – https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2047435.0
Horizen YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/c/Horizen/
Buy or Sell Horizen
Horizen on CoinMarketCap – https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zencash/

About the Author:

Rolf Versluis is Co-Founder and Executive Advisor of the privacy oriented cryptocurrency Horizen. He also operates multiple private cryptocurrency mining facilities with hundreds of operational systems, and has a blog and YouTube channel on crypto mining called Block Operations.
Rolf applies his engineering background as well as management and leadership experience from running a 60 person IT company in Atlanta and as a US Navy nuclear submarine officer operating out of Hawaii to help grow and improve the businesses in which he is involved.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you again for the Ask Me Anything - please do. I'll be checking the post and answering questions actively from 28 Feb to 6 Mar 2019 - Rolf

submitted by Blockops to gpumining [link] [comments]

Vertcoin Mining AMA

What is Vertcoin?

Vertcoin was created in 2014. It is a direct hedge against long term mining consensus centralization on the Bitcoin mining network. Vertcoin achieves its mining consensus solely through Graphics Cards as they are the most abundant / widely available consensus devices that produce a reasonable amount of hashrate. This is done using a mining algorithm that deliberately geared against devices like ASICs, FPGAs and CPUs (due to botnets) making them extremely inefficient. Consensus distribution over time is the most important aspect of a blockchain and should not be taken lightly. It is critical that you understand what blockchain specifications mean/do to fully understand Vertcoin.

Mining Vertcoin

When users of our network send each other Vertcoin, their transactions are secured by a process called mining. Miners will compose a so-called block out of the pending transactions, and need to perform a large number of computations called hashes in order to produce the Proof-of-Work. With this Proof-of-Work, the block is accepted by the network and the transactions in it become confirmed.
Mining is essentially a race. Whoever finds a valid Proof-of-Work and gets the block propagated over more than half of the Vertcoin network first, wins this race and is allowed to reward themselves with the block reward. The block reward is how new Vertcoin come in circulation. This block reward started at 50 VTC when Vertcoin was launched, and halves every four years. The current block reward is 25 VTC.
Vertcoin's One Click Miner: https://github.com/vertcoin-project/One-Click-Minereleases
Learn more about mining here: https://vertcoin.org/mine/
Specification List:
· Launch date: Jan 11, 2014
· Proof-Of-Work (Consensus Mechanism)
· Total Supply: 84,000,000 Vertcoin
· Preferred Consensus Device: GPU
· Mining Algorithm: Lyra2REv3 (Made by Vertcoin)
· Blocktime: 2.5 minutes
· SegWit: Activated
· Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm: Kimoto Gravity Well (Every Block)
· Block Halving: 4 year interval
· Initial Block Reward: 50 coins
· Current Block Reward: 25 coin
More spec information can be found here: https://vertcoin.org/specs-explained/

Why Does Vertcoin Use GPUs Then?

ASIC’s (Manufactuer Monopoly)
If mining were just a spade sure, use the most powerful equipment which would be an ASIC. The problem is ASICs are not widely available, and just happen to be controlled by a monopoly in China.
So, you want the most widely available tool that produces a fair amount of hashrate, which currently manifests itself as a Graphics Card.
CPUs would be great too but unfortunately there are viruses that take over hundreds of thousands of computers called Botnets (they’re almost as bad as ASICs).

Mining In Pools

Because mining is a race, it’s difficult for an individual miner to acquire enough computational power to win this race solo. Therefore there’s a concept called pool-mining. With pool-mining, miners cooperate in finding the correct Proof-of-Work for the block, and share the block reward based on the work contributed. The amount of work contributed is measured in so-called shares. Finding the Proof-of-Work for a share is much easier than finding it for a block, and when the cooperating miners find the Proof-of-Work for the block, they distribute the reward based on the number of shares each miner found. Vertcoin always recommends using P2Pool to keep mining as decentralized as possible.
How Do I Get Started?
If you want to get started mining, check out the Mine Vertcoin page.

Vertcoin just forked to Lyra2REv3 and we are currently working on Verthash

Verthash is and was under development before we decided to hard fork to Lyra2REv3. While Verthash would’ve resulted in the same effect for ASICs (making them useless for mining Vertcoin), the timeline was incompatible with the desire to get rid of ASICs quickly. Verthash is still under development and tries to address the outsourcability problem.
Verthash is an I/O bound algorithm that uses the blockchain data as input to the hashing algorithm. It therefore requires miners to have all the blockchain data available to them, which is currently about 4 GB of data. By making this mining data mandatory, it will become harder for auto profit switching miners — like the ones that rent out their GPU to Nicehash — because they will need to keep a full node running while mining other algorithms for the moment Verthash becomes more profitable — the data needs to be available immediately since updating it can take a while.
Over the past month, we have successfully developed a first implementation of Verthash in the Vertcoin Core code base. Within the development team we have run a few nodes on Testnet to test the functionality — and everything seems to work properly. The next step is to build out the GPU miners for AMD and Nvidia. This is a NOETA at the moment, since we’re waiting on GPU developers which are in high demand. Once the miners are ready, we’ll be releasing the Vertcoin 0.15 beta that hardforks the testnet together with the miners for the community to have a testrun. Given the structural difference between Lyra2RE and Verthash, we’ll have to run the testnet for a longer period than we did with the Lyra2REv3 hard fork. We’ll have to make sure the system is reliable before hardforking our mainnet. So the timeline will be longer than with the Lyra2REv3 hard fork.
Some people in the community have voiced concerns about the fact that Verthash development is not being done “out in the open”, i.e.: the code commits are not visible on Github. The main two reasons for us to keep our cards to our chest at this stage are: (1) only when the entire system including miners has been coded up can we be sure the system works, we don’t want to release preliminary stuff that doesn’t work or isn’t secure. Also (2) we don’t want to give hardware manufacturers or mining outsourcing platforms a head start on trying to defeat the mechanisms we’ve put in place.

Links and Resources

· Twitter: https://twitter.com/Vertcoin
· Donations: vertcoin.org/donate
· Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/vertcoin
· Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/vertcoin/
· Official Website: https://vertcoin.org/
· Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vertcoin
· Vertcoin Talk: https://soundcloud.com/vertcoin-talk
· Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/vertcoin

submitted by Canen01 to gpumining [link] [comments]

Continued censorship involving Ethereum's proposed fork to progPOW.

Our friends at Ethereum are subject to continued manipulation into forking their coin to progPOW. I decided to post this in /btc because it is the last bastion of free speech in the crypto community.
Today, after drawing attention to the sketchy history of progPOW's original proponent, my post was subjected to massive vote manipulation, and eventually deleted.
I have long suspected that progPOW favors NVIDIA miners, given the deep connections that progPOW's development team has to NVIDIA. Today, the progPOW team freely admitted that AMD miners will suffer a larger hashrate decrease compared to NVIDIA miners, so I created a poll:
Ethereum developers want to fork to ETH to progPOW [1], a proof-of-work algorithm that gives AMD GPUs a stronger hashrate penalty compared to NVIDIA [2][3]. Should Ethereum use ProgPOW for Proof-of-Work? Cast your vote with Ethereum [4].
Sources:

Below is my post that was deleted, in its entirety.
If you are curious about the CSW/Coingeek connection, scroll down.
Previous Posts

Criticism and Soft Power
I have received criticism for my posts mostly due to what people call "character attacks." I have two things to say about that:

I have never engaged in any character attacks. In all cases, the character has made their modus operandi known by themselves, and I have simply shined a light on it. I don't need call people "mentally unstable gentlemen" [--source, Ohgodagirl Twitter] to get my point across.
Algorithm change discussions must include economic and political introspection as well as a discussion of the proposed change's technical details. As I have stated before, progPOW would not exist without the people responsible for creating it. We must look at these people's history, character, prior accomplishments, and industry connections. The discussion must exist outside the scope of the proposed change, not inside of it.

Example: When people criticize my posts for "not looking at the technical details", they are making a mistake. If someone asked "which should we kill more often: baby seals or baby kittens?", we don't all immediately start discussing the optimal relation of kittens-per-second to seals-per-second that can be killed. No, our first reaction is "what the fuck, why should we kill anything?"
Onward
Customer complaints from people who bought cloud contracts from Kristy's previous company:

Coingeek Connection
Previously, I had promised to provide information regarding the CSW/Coingeek and Core Scientific connection.
When I was president of ImageShack.com (2003-2011), someone wanted to buy our company. When this happens, the buyer and seller usually write a purchase agreement similar to the business in which they are involved. This is done to ensure that the purchase is executed. In ImageShack's case, the buyer bought $500,000 worth of advertising from us. The logic was that ImageShack would be acquired, so they actually would pay themselves. If they didn't buy ImageShack, they would owe us $500,000.
Given the partnership between Core Scientific (Kristy's employer) and "Squire Mining" (effectively, Coingeek), I would not be surprised if Coingeek and Core Scientific made such an agreement, as well. In their case, it would likely be a hosting agreement. Since Coingeek has many ASICs, and Core Scientific is a large mining facility, I would not be surprised if those Coingeek ASICs are hosted by Core Scientific.
Individuals close to these parties can verify those claims, but I cannot share the proof at this time without revealing the identity of my sources.
Chatlog Dumps
Today, I also provide public comments from chatlog dumps showcasing Kristy Leigh Anne Minehan's deep connection to NVIDIA:

01/28/2018 - 22:34<@OhGodAGirl> Yo. ystarnaud/sling00: **I'll be meeting NV next week**. I think it's next week. The 4th! Anyway; if you have NVIDIA fixes you need for EthOS or something you want special attention on, PM me. 02/05/2018 - 06:47<@OhGodAGirl> Also I got a USB shaped like a NVIDIA GTX. It's the best thing ever. 02/05/2018 - 06:50<@OhGodAGirl> https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/ffwT8M2j/IMG_2726.JPG 02/05/2018 - 06:50<@OhGodAGirl> Look at this adorable little shit.

"Ah, but there's a catch. These USB drives are extremely rare—Nvidia only cranked out a couple thousand of these drives and will be giving them away to press and "influencers" at E3, along with 1,080 registered GeForce Experience members who are opted in to receive communications from Nvidia."

04/22/2018 - 20:17<@sling00> OhGodAGirl: what does ohgodanethlargement do 04/22/2018 - 20:17< cYnIxX3> https://youtu.be/2mj1nCfFvlI?t=2m16s 04/22/2018 - 20:19< cYnIxX3> sling00, about 10-25mh improvement to 1080 gpus. 04/22/2018 - 20:19< __virus__> about 40-50% improvement afaik 04/22/2018 - 20:21< OhGodAGirl> But...it's not under because NVIDIA asked me not to. 04/21/2018 - 16:51< OhGodAGirl> I have a ton of private tools for Mineority 04/21/2018 - 16:51< OhGodAGirl> Right now our Equihash kernel has a 25% advantage over Claymore. 04/21/2018 - 16:52< PL3> 25% on amds? 04/21/2018 - 16:52< OhGodAGirl> NVIDIA ;) 04/21/2018 - 16:52< PL3> you have claymore nvidia equi miner? 04/21/2018 - 16:52< OhGodAGirl> We're a NV only company. For now. 04/29/2018 - 00:53< OhGodAGirl> So uh, NVIDIA showed ETHlargement at an executive meeting 04/29/2018 - 00:53< OhGodAGirl> They thought it was hillarious 04/29/2018 - 00:53< acv_> that is awesome. 04/29/2018 - 01:22< OhGodAGirl> So many dicks on Youtube though 04/29/2018 - 01:22< OhGodAGirl> "RA RA IT'S A SCAM" 04/29/2018 - 01:22< OhGodAGirl> "RA RA IT WILL STEAL ALL YOUR PRIVKEYS" 04/29/2018 - 01:22< OhGodAGirl> "RA RA NO ONE IS EVER NICE IN THIS WORLD' 04/29/2018 - 01:22< OhGodAGirl> Well dammit I'm a nice person. =(

submitted by ugtarmas to btc [link] [comments]

Andreas Antonopoulos gets "Satoshi's Vision" completely wrong and shows his misunderstanding of the system. He thinks 1 cpu 1 vote means 1 user 1 vote, a common mistake from people on the Core side.

In this video at the 6m20s mark Andreas Antonopoulos speaks about Satoshi's vision. He speaks about "1 cpu 1 vote" saying that Satoshi designed the system to be decentralized as possible, but Andreas completely misunderstands the meaning of 1 cpu 1 vote. He is falling into the common trap of conflating 1cpu 1 vote with 1 user 1 vote.
Andreas, haven't you even read nChains paper about POW and Theory of the Firm? A cpu is an economic resource:

One of the little-known aspects of bitcoin is the nature of the proof of work system. There are many people, especially those who support a UASF or PoW change that believe a distributed system should be completed as a mesh. In this, they confuse centralised systems with centrality. The truth of the matter, no matter which proof of work system is implemented, they all follow a maximal growth curve that reflects the nature of the firm as detailed in 1937 by Ronald Coase (1937).
The bitcoin White Paper was very specific. users of the system "vote with their CPU power" [1]. What this means, is that the system was never generated to give one vote per person. It is designed purely around economic incentives individuals with more hash power will have provided more investment into the system. These individuals who invest more in the system gain more say in the system. At the same time, no one or even two individuals can gain complete control of the system. We'll explore the nature of cartels in a separately, but these always fail without government intervention. The reason for cartels failing comes down to the simple incentivisation of the most efficient member. The strongest cartel member always ends up propping up the weakest. This leads to a strategy of defection.
No proof of work-based solution ever allows for a scenario where you have one vote to one person. The anti-sybiling functions of bitcoin and all other related systems based on proof of work or similar derivatives are derived from an investment based strategy. Solutions to the implementation of ASIC based systems are constantly proposed as a methodology of limiting the centralisation of proof of work systems as it is termed. The truth of the matter is that the mining function within any proof of work system naturally aligns to business interests. This leads to corporations running machines within data centres. On the way that democracies and republics have migrated away from small groups of people individually voting for an outcome towards a vote for a party, the transactional costs associated with individual choice naturally leads to corporate solutions. In this, the corporation mirrors a political party.
In this paper, we address the issues of using alternate approval work systems with regards to either incorporating alternate functions in an extension of simply securing the network against the use of proof of work systems to create a one person one vote scenario in place of economic incentivisation. We will demonstrate conclusively that all systems migrate to a state of economic efficiency. The consequence of this is that systems form into groups designed to maximise returns. The effect is that bitcoin is not only incentive compatible but is optimal. No system can efficiently collapse into an order of one vote one individual and remain secure. In the firm-based nature of bitcoin, we demonstrate that the inherent nature of the firm is reflected within mining pools. Multiple aggregation strategies exist. The strategies range from the creation of collective firms where members can easily join or leave (mining pools) through to more standard corporate structures
Proof of Work as it relates to the theory of the firm. that are successful within any proof of work system. The system was determined to be based on one- vote per CPU (Satoshi, 2008) and not one vote per person or one vote per IP address. The reasons for this is simple, there is no methodology available that can solve byzantine consensus on an individual basis. The solution developed within bitcoin solves this economically using investment. The parties signal their intent to remain bound to the protocol through a significant investment. Those parties that follow the protocol are rewarded. The alternative strategy takes us back to the former and failed systems such as e-cash that could not adequately solve Sybil attacks and decentralise the network. Bitcoin manages to maintain the decentralise nature of the network through a requirement that no individual party can ever achieve more than 50% of the network hash rate.
In all proof of work systems, there are requirements to inject a costly signal into the network that is designed as the security control. To many people, they believe that the cryptographic element, namely the hashing process is the security feature of bitcoin. This is a fallacy, it is the economic cost that is relevant to the overall system and not the individual element.
The benefits of a hash function are that they are difficult to solve in the nature of the proof of work algorithm but are easy to verify. This economic asymmetry is one of the key features of bitcoin. Once a user has found a solution, they know it can be quickly broadcast and verified by others. Additionally, the hash algorithm provides a fair distribution system based on the amount of invested hash rate. The distinction from proof of stake solution as has been proposed comes in the requirement to constantly reinvest. A proof of stake system requires a single investment. Once this investment is created, the system is incentivised towards the protection of the earlier investment. This leads to a scenario known as a strategic oligopoly game.
The solution using a proof of work algorithm is the introduction of an ongoing investment. This is different to an oligopoly game in that sunk cost cannot make up for continued investment. In a proof of stake system, prior investment is crystallised allowing continued control with little further investment. Proof of work differs in that it requires continuous investment. More than this, it requires innovation. As with all capitalist systems, they are subject to Schumpeterian dynamical change (Shumpeter, 1994). The system of creative destruction allows for cycles of innovation. Each innovation leads to waves of creation over the destruction of the old order.
This process creates continued growth. Proof of work-based systems continue to grow and continue to update and change. Any incumbent corporation or other entity needs to continue to invest knowing that their continued dominance is not assured. In bitcoin, we have seen innovative leaps as people moved from CPU-based mining into GPU-based systems. This initial innovation altered the software structure associated with the mining process in bitcoin. That change significantly altered the playing field leading to novel techniques associated with FPGAs and later ASICs dedicated to a specific part of the mining process.
The error held by many people is that this move from a CPU-based solution into more costly implementations could have been averted. A consequence of this has been the introduction of alternative proof of work systems into many of the alt-coins
These systems have been implemented without the understanding that it is not the use of ASICs that is an issue. It is that the belief that individual users can individually mine in a mesh system will be able to be implemented as a successful proof of work. In the unlikely event that a specialised algorithm was implemented that could only run once on any one machine CPU, it would still lead to the eventual creation of corporate data centres for mining. In the section above, we showed using Arrow’s theorem how only a single use proof of work system can be effective. If we extend this and look at the Theory of the Firm (Coase, 1937) we note that in a system in Litecoin and Dogecoin for example. A00137:
Proof of Work as it relates to the theory of the firm. of prices, reduction could be carried out without any organisation. One issue against this arises from the cost of information. Interestingly, as we move into a world of increasingly more information, it becomes scarce information that is important. As the amount of information becomes more voluminous, the ability to uncover accurate and timely information becomes scarcer. The ability to specialise in the coordination of the various factors of production and the distribution of information leads towards vertical integration within firms. We see this first voiced in Adam Smith’s (Smith, 1776) postulation on the firm:
Everyone can choose to either seek further information or act on the information that they already have. This information can be in the form of market knowledge, product knowledge, or expertise, but at some point, the individual needs to decide to act. There is a cost to obtaining information. The returns on obtaining more information hit a maximum level and start to decrease at a certain point. The entrepreneur acts as a guiding influence managing the risk associated with incomplete information compared to the risk of not acting but rather waiting to obtain more information.
In the instance of bitcoin mining, the firm can increase in size through the integration of multiple specialist roles. Even given the assumption that any one process can run on but a single CPU, we come to the scenario of high-end datacentre servers. The Intel Xeon Phi 7290f implements 72 Atom CPU Cores. Each core runs two threads. Even taking the control system into account, this leaves 142 processes able to run per system. With four cards per RU this allows for datacentre implementations of 5,964 mining processes to run on a pure CPU-based proof of work implementation. One person can manage a small number of mining server implementations within a home or small business environment. In large data centre-based organisations such as Facebook, a single administrator can run 20,000 servers
The effect of this would be one individual managing 2,840,000 individual CPU-based mining processes. This alone is outside the scaling capabilities of any individual. This can be further enhanced as cost savings through the creation of large data centres, management savings and integrating multiple network and systems administrators is considered. As we start to add additional layers we come to a maximum where it is no longer profitable to grow the firm in size. Right up until that point, the firm will grow.

submitted by cryptorebel to btc [link] [comments]

Electroneum Fork 324500

Source: https://www.facebook.com/electroneum/posts/2030562537205714
Hi Everyone!
ALL ELECTRONEUM NODE OWNERS MUST UPDATE THEIR SOFTWARE BY BLOCK 324500 (approx. 36 hours from now – this is an URGENT UPDATE – PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION)
We have an urgent software update below for anyone who runs a full Electroneum Node. If you don’t know what a node is , don’t worry! You won’t need to do anything.
We also have a VERY exciting update about an upcoming listing on a top 10 exchange.
How will I mine Electroneum after this update?
Instant Payment vendor API is open for BETA applicants.How can ETN change the world?
Please note that nothing in this message refers to MOBILE MINING – we are referring to the underlying blockchain miners.
Urgent Electroneum Node / RPC / Command Line Wallet Update
ALL ELECTRONEUM NODE OWNERS MUST UPDATE THEIR SOFTWARE BY BLOCK 324500 (approx. 36 hours from now – this is an URGENT UPDATE – PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION)
https://github.com/electron…/electroneum/releases/…/v2.1.0.0
It’s only been a few short days since I made a video and said “our fork went well! We’re ready for 20m Users!”.
The fork was a great success, from a technical standpoint. Unfortunately, we never got back the number of GPU miners that are needed to ensure our network runs smoothly and has stable block emission. A new phenomenon has emerged where a number of users are mining Electroneum in waves. They come on and then leave after a few hours in a coordinated manner to mine ETN in a completely selfish way. We can’t blame people for maximizing their profit, but we have not built up the amount of “hashing power” that is required to make this impossible and create the stability we need in the network.
This has left us at risk. As such, we have to take urgent action to stabilise our network and protect the Electroneum community.
Coinbene Listing Electroneum & our network stability
We have formally agreed and signed contracts to be listed in July on the AWESOME, top 10, cryptocurrency exchange https://Coinbene.com & https://Coinbene.com.br
Coinbene have 1.5m active users and are a GREAT fit for Electroneum. Their primary markets are Latin America and Asia – which fits perfectly with Electroneum’s customer base. They have seen enormous growth over the last few months and have been very positive about the Electroneum Project.
Whilst this is great news, we will need much more hashing power to ensure we have network stability for our listing on this exchange, so we’ve taken the decision that we can’t wait any longer for GPU miners to return to us and we must run an urgent software update to re-introduce ASIC mining to Electroneum.
This is a very positive move for Electroneum. A great deal of Bitcoin’s trust and appeal is from the enormous hashing power and distribution of miners on the network. Bitcoin & LiteCoin have embraced ASICs and we feel that it is the right thing for Electroneum to do the same.
ASICS are becoming more prevalent, they cost considerably less to run than a GPU rig and use a fraction of the electricity. We are going to encourage more ASIC ownership and take our hashing rate up to (and beyond) the enormous levels of hashing power that we had before the May fork.
There is a further development. The first generation of hardware called an FPGA miner is arriving during 2018 and they make ANTI-ASIC capabilities a thing of the past, as they circumvent the slow delivery time of new ASICs by being re-programmable. If we are ready to embrace these rather than fight them, our network hashing power is increased further and our network stability and security is further enhanced.
Because ASICS run cooler, quieter and use a fraction of GPU rig power, they are suitable for MORE people to run in their homes. If you are interested, a search of “Cryptonight ASIC miner” in Google or Ebay will find the equipment needed to mine Electroneum. You will need to be reasonably technical to achieve this!
Having a stable network is absolutely key to both delivering mass adoption and to ensure we have a great relationship with the great exchanges that we’re already listed with, and to encourage more of the larger exchanges to see Electroneum as a coin that they want on board.
How will I mine Electroneum after this update?
If you are a mobile miner – nothing changes. If you are a GPU or ASIC miner then you’ll need to connect to an Electroneum pool but it is important to note that you will need to change your ALGORITHM. You MUST use the algorithm “Cryptonight” and NOT “Electroneum” or “CryptonightV7”. This will ensure your device works after the update. We will communicate this to all pools, but if you are a member of a mining pool – PLEASE LET THE ADMINS KNOW ABOUT THIS CRITICAL UPDATE. They must update their pool node by block 324500, which is only around 36 hours away.
Instant Payment vendor API is open for BETA applicants
Instant Cryptocurrency Payments via smart phone has always been a critical part of what Electroneum required to achieve mass market adoption. It’s never been done, but 9 short months after our ICO we are excited to announce that we have opened to the doors to vendors who would like to accept payment via Electroneum. The application is to be part of the BETA rollout of instant payment, but will operate on the live blockchain with real ETN!
If you run a business or know someone who does – why not recommend they apply to accept ETN. The Press and Marketing opportunities for the first, in any sector, to accept cryptocurrency are huge! Be part of the instant payment API BETA program by completing this form:
https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSfKTwWT7W4ltmApZO…/viewform
How can ETN change the world?
Instant payment does far more than allow people to pay for their coffee with crypto instead of their VISA card.
If you’d like to know more about Electroneum’s future I suggest you read a fantastic article that describes its coming role in the world, by fellow director Chris Gorman OBE (Officer of the British Empire – awarded by the Queen of England!): https://www.linkedin.com/…/how-cryptocurrency-enable-financ…
Electroneum has one of the largest of all cryptocurrency communities and it is made up of passionate and amazing people. With your support and world changing things we have coming out over the next few weeks, we can use this update to make our blockchain foundation secure and lead the world in mobile cryptocurrency.
I'm sure you agree that we've been through some challenging times which our team have always dealt with and learned from. The strength and support from our community and many of our goals becoming a reality combined with this blockchain update will give us the perfect foundation to deliver the Electroneum vision that we all share.
Thanks for taking the time to read this long message.
Have a great day everyone,
Richard Ells
Founder, Electroneum.com

submitted by MulatuTesh to Electroneum [link] [comments]

Debunking myths about mining and GPUs

E: Going to bed, will contribute more tomorrow. Thanks for the discussion!
Myth: Mining is more stressful than gaming. Fact: It depends. During the old days, this was plausible, because older GPUs (Pre-polaris) are/were bottlenecked by core clock when mining the most profitable coins. Thus, miners overclocked and overvolted these cards quite frequently, especially with cheap electricity. This meant that those cards were often run hot, pushing the limits and stressing VRM and fans quite a lot. Nowadays, ethash (Ethereum) is the most profitable algorithm for AMD cards 99% of the time, and newer GPUs (Polaris) are limited by memory bandwidth and latency. Miners can underclock core to the low 1100MHz range before seeing performance drop. To save power, miners who know what they are doing also undervolt, since it is no longer necessary to sustain a high core clock. Thus, it is quite feasible to run polaris cards below 70C at a reasonable fan speed. However, dual mining (mining more than one coin at once) does increase power consumption by up to 20%, and there are also idiots who run their polaris cards OCd while mining. With the exception of a few idiots, miners treat their Polaris GPUs pretty much the same; that is, running underclocked and undervolted 24/7 with a memory strap mod and mem OC. On the other hand, former gaming cards are highly variable in use cases. Some gamers leave their cards at stock settings, some undervolt, and some OC and/or overvolt. Most of the time, these cards are thermal cycled far more often than mining cards, which is known to weaken solder. Another thing to consider is that manufacturers have learned (somewhat) from their mistakes of putting shit tier fans in GPUs, and many fans on modern GPUs are ball bearing and/or swappable. Even some budget cards, such as MSI Armor, use decent ball bearing fans. Bottom line: the risk of buying mined Polaris cards is not as high as the risk of buying older mined cards. I would not be against buying mined polaris cards, but it's not necessarily better than buying a gamer's card instead. At the end of the day, it depends more on how the owner treated it than what they used it for.
Myth: GPUs are obsolete because of FPGAs and ASICs Fact: Mostly false. Older algorithms such as scrypt and SHA256 (lite/doge/feathebitcoin etc) are no longer feasible to mine with GPUs, but there have been multiple algorithms since then that are built to deter ASICs; most of the time it is done by making it memory-hard because designing an ASIC with high memory throughput is considerably more expensive to design and manufacture. Many devs prefer their blockchain to be ASIC resistant to avoid the concentration of power problem that Bitcoin is having nowadays, where a giant, near-monopolistic ASIC manufacturer (Bitmain) is causing a lot of (subjective) controversy. Blockchains based on ethash (Ethereum and its forks), equihash (Zcash and its forks) and cryptonight (Monero and forks) are some examples, but there are scores of other shitcoins and a few other algos that are GPU dominant. It is almost impossible that there will be another ASIC takeover, which is what was responsible for the stop in GPU demand in the bitcoin and litecoin days. Bottom line: ASICs no longer threaten GPU miners, or the demand for GPUs
Myth: Ethereum switching to Proof of Stake will kill mining soon Fact: Doomsayers have been preaching about proof of stake since late 2015. It has always been "coming soon." The fact is, the Ethereum roadmap goes from proof of work (mining) -> Casper (mining + PoS) -> Metropolis (PoS). Currently, the release date of Casper is not even announced yet, nor is it being tested in a (public) testnet. Proof of Stake might one day take over, but mining is here to stay for a while yet. Another thing to consider is that there are tons of other GPU mineable blockchains, and although Ethereum is biggest, it is certainly feasible that mining stays profitable even after Ethereum goes PoS (if it ever does). However, it is possible that profits will be low enough to discourage new miners. Bottom line: It's very unlikely. E: I screwed up the roadmap; here is a better source than me with some interesting information: https://www.ethnews.com/ethereums-vitalik-buterin-gives-keynote-on-metropolis
Myth: The current Ethereum demand spike is a bubble Opinion: Honestly, I don't know. I would not be surprised if stricter regulations on ICOs come sooner or later, which would fuck with Ether prices. There is also the inherent volatility of cryptocurrencies. However, it is also possible that blockchain technology continues to gain traction; that is, the price could just as easily go up as go down. Although it's fun to read about other people's opinions, only time-travelling wizards can tell you when it will become economical again to upgrade your poor HD5770. Bottom line: No one knows.
Myth: Miners will "steal" all the RX Vegas Fact: Only a reckless miner would buy Vegas on release, since mining performance is not known. In fact, it is possible that it can't mine at all (or at some stupidly low speed) until devs add support to existing miners. It would be even more reckless than gamers who buy without seeing benchmarks, since at least gamers can expect the games to actually run. It's also not necessarily the case that Vega will be good once miners do add support. Maybe there will be enough reckless miners to affect supply, maybe not. Of course, it is possible that miners will deplete the supply after it is demonstrated that Vega is good for mining. Bottom line: Most miners won't preorder, but it's possible that a significant number will. E: Important to remember that even if mining demand isn't high, doesn't mean that supply will be plentiful.
Myth: Nvidia cards SUCK at mining Fact: Mostly false. They USED to suck in the old pre-Maxwell days, but now they are actually more efficient at mining Ethereum and Zcash compared to AMD cards, even after both cards are undervolted. The flipside is that they (used to) cost more for the equivalent hashrate. For reference, my old 5xRX470 rig drew just under 800W when mining ETH only and hashed at 150MH/s. My current 6xGTX1060 rig draws just over half of that (<450W) and hashes at about 135MH/s. Certainly not as good in raw performance, but they are viable nonetheless, especially given the AMD GPU shortage. In fact, Nvidia cards (1060 and especially 1070) are becoming scarce as well. Bottom line: Nvidia is still the underdog when it comes to mining, but far from irrelevant nowadays.
Myth: 4GB cards will be obsolete for mining soon Fact: FALSE. The Ethereum DAG is not even 3GB yet, and won't be for a few months. The recent reports of 4GB Polaris cards slowing down soon due to DAG size is caused by limited TLB capacity, not VRAM restrictions. Polaris cards will still be able to mine ETH forks such as Expanse and UBIQ without diminished speed, and even if they are used to mine ETH, it is not that much of a performance hit at first. It would certainly not make polaris useless or undesirable for mining anytime soon. Tahiti GPUs already suffer from this issue and Hawaii is the most resistant to this issue. Have not benched Nvidia at a later epoch.
Myth: Creating miner-bashing posts on Reddit will help alleviate the GPU supply problem Fact: False, you are simply giving cryptocurrencies and mining more exposure to the general public, increasing demand.
Myth: Mining-specific GPUs will solve the shortage problems Opinion: There's not enough info to tell yet, but I am a skeptic for the following reasons. First, no display limits the resale value of the card for obvious reasons. IMO, the whole point of crypto mining from a profitability standpoint is to have a hedge against coin volatility (hardware is still worth something if the coin crashes). Otherwise it is much less effort to just buy and hold the coin. If the hardware is useless without demand from other (significant) sources, then it doesn't make much sense to buy it unless the price is extremely low. I'm sure that cost-downing the PCB and warranty will make for a cheap card, but it has to be extremely cheap and plentiful in supply, or else miners will buy whatever they can get. I could envision "failed" chips (not meeting spec of consumer editions) being stuck in miner cards, but I doubt there are enough to meet demand without ramping up production as a whole, which carries its own risks. I guess that it would help a little, but probably not solve the problems. Alternatively, since modern GPUs are bottlenecked by RAM when mining, it might be enticing to miners to have the fastest (GDDR5) RAM on the market (probably the 9gbps chips from the 1060 6G 9gbps edition, although I don't have one to test). However, my previous points still apply; buying such a card without display outputs carries a big risk. Bottom line: It's not a great idea, unless they are super cheap or use really good RAM.
Hope this helped; if you have any further questions I will try to answer them. I'm both a gamer and miner who uses both AMD and Nvidia roughly equally and don't favor one group over another. I've mined and gamed on all high end AMD GPUs since Tahiti (except Tonga) and all Pascal cards except 1050ti.

submitted by key_smash to Amd [link] [comments]

Setup & Mining of the ATOM MINER AM01 FPGA! Bitcoin Mining in 4 Minutes - Computerphile - YouTube How To Start Mining Bitcoin In 5 Minutes In 2020 ... Will FPGA For Mining Take Over? Mining Difficulty - Simply Explained - YouTube

FPGA mining efficiency (hashing speed/power consumption) is very efficient, compared to GPU mining and drastically outperforms CPU mining. However, ASIC is still faster and more efficient than FPGA. The bitcoin network requires each block in the chain to include proof of work to ensure its validity. Proof of work is a piece of data that is difficult to produce due to being costly or time-consuming. Hashcash is the proof of work function used by the bitcoin network and uses two iterations of the secure-hash-algorithm-256 (SHA-256). How Does FPGA Mining Work? Before we talk about how FPGA mining works, we need to explain the basics of crypto mining. Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies are made up of blocks of data. These blocks are linked to one another – in a chain – by unique strings of numbers and letters known as hashes. FPGA Bitcoin Mining. At the foundation of block creation and mining is the calculation of this digital signature. Different cryptocurrencies use different approaches to generate the signature. For the most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, the signature is calculated using a cryptographic hashing function. Mining on FPGA - a profitable novelty device of 2019. FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) is a programmable logic integrated circuit. Its main difference is the incredible machine logic adaptability and flexibility for any mining algorithm. The firmware (bitstream) is uploaded into the device and starts performing complex computational operations.

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Setup & Mining of the ATOM MINER AM01 FPGA!

When a Bitcoin Miner Mines, what is happening? Dr Mike Pound exposes the process.. note: at 3:39 Mike mentions a Bitcoin is mined every ten minutes when it i... Bitcoin Mining with FPGAs (EC551 Final Project) - Duration: 6:11. Advanced Digital Design with Verilog and FPGAs - Boston University 5,295 views FPGA Miner for Cryptocurrency Mining: Why Use FPGA for Mining? FPGA vs GPU vs ASIC Explained - Duration: 7:56. ... Bitcoin Mining with FPGAs (EC551 Final Project) - Duration: 6:11. If you guys have more questions regarding this FPGA please let me know down below! I will make more videos including new algorithm's, solar power setup with a Pi? Tear down to the chip with ... Mining Bitcoin or Ethereum is a hard task for your computer. But why? And what does the difficulty have to do with the security of blockchains? Learn all abo...

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