Bitmainland officially launched Ethereum mining machine

1. GPU mining

Hardware

algorithm is difficult to solve in memory. In order to make DAG suitable for memory, each GPU needs 1-2gb of memory. If you get an error prompt: error GPU mining. GPU memory fragmentation? It means you don't have enough memory. GPU mining software is based on OpenCL, amd GPU will be faster than NVIDIA GPU of the same level. ASIC and FPGA are relatively inefficient, so they are blocked. To get OpenCL for chip integration platform, try:
amd SDK OpenCL
NVIDIA CUDA OpenCL
Ubuntu Linux settings

for this quick guide, you will need Ubuntu 14.04 or 15.04 and fglrx image driver. You can also use NVIDIA drives and other platforms, but you have to find your own way to get an effective OpenCL installation, such as genoil's ethminer fork
if you are using 15.04, go to & quot; Software and updates 〉 extra drives & quot; Set to & quot; Use the video driver & quot; from fglrx for AMD graphics accelerator
if you are using 14.04, go to & quot; Software and updates 〉 extra drives & quot; Set to & quot; Use the video driver & quot; from fglrx for AMD graphics accelerator;. Unfortunately, for some people, this method may not work, because there is a known program error in Ubuntu 14.04.02 that will prevent you from switching to the exclusive graphics drive necessary for GPU mining
therefore, if you encounter this program error, go to & quot; "Software and update" update & quot; Select & quot; Pre release reliable update proposal & quot;. Then, back to & quot; Software and updates 〉 extra drives & quot; Set to & quot; Use the video driver & quot; from fglrx for AMD graphics accelerator;. After restarting, it's worth checking that the drive is now properly installed (for example, by going to & quot; Additional drives & quot;)
no matter what you do, if you are using 14.04.02, once installed, do not change the drive or drive configuration. For example, the use of aticonfig – initial (especially the - F, - force option) will & quot; Destruction & quot; Your settings. If you accidentally change the configuration, you will need to uninstall the drive, restart, install the drive again and restart.

2.

bitcoin uses SHA-256 encryption algorithm. When mining, it competes with computing power. In order to improve computing power, bitcoin has gone through four stages: CPU mining, GPU mining, FPGA mining and now ASIC mining machine mining, and the degree of specialization is getting higher and higher

Ethereum uses the ethash encryption algorithm. In the process of mining, it needs to read the memory and store the DAG file. Because the bandwidth of each read memory is limited, and the existing computer technology is difficult to have a qualitative breakthrough in this problem, so no matter how to improve the computing efficiency of the computer, the memory read efficiency will not be greatly improved. Therefore, in a sense, Ethereum's ethash encryption algorithm is ASIC resistant.

different encryption algorithms lead to great differences in mining equipment and computing power between bitcoin and Ethereum

at present, bitcoin mining equipment is mainly ASIC mining machine with a very high degree of specialization. The maximum computing power of a single mining machine is 110t / s, and the scale of computing power of the whole network is more than 120eh / s

the main mining equipment of Ethereum is video card miner, and there are very few specialized ASIC miner. On the one hand, the "ASIC resistance" of Ethereum mining algorithm improves the threshold of developing ASIC miner. On the other hand, after Ethereum is upgraded to 2.0, the consensus mechanism will be transformed into POS, and the miner can not continue mining

compared with the ASIC miner, the graphics card miner has two orders of magnitude difference in computing power. At present, the computing power of mainstream graphics card miner (8 cards) is about 420mh / s, and that of Ethereum is about 230th / s.

from the time dimension of the past two years, bitcoin's computing power of the whole network is growing rapidly, while Ethereum's computing power of the whole network is growing relatively slowly

The ASIC mining machine of

bitcoin is monopolized by several major mining machine manufacturers, and miners can only buy it from the market; Although the graphics card miner of Ethereum is also manufactured by a special miner, the miner can buy accessories from the market and assemble them according to his own demand

3.

At the end of March this year, bitmainland launched an ant miner X3 based on ASIC, which is mainly aimed at Monroe coin (XmR) and cryptonight algorithm dependent cryptocurrency. Monroe coin immediately issued a counter statement that it will change the core algorithm to fight against the invasion of ASIC computing power

what would be the result if it appeared in the world of digital cryptocurrency? That is, the wrong calculation results may be brought into the whole network without being discovered

More importantly, if a "calculator manufacturer" monopolizes the calculator market, it can also deliberately proce this kind of calculator with errors to change the mathematical rules

after all, the "calculation" in the field of crypto digital currency is not as simple as 1 + 2 + 3. You can't compare paper currency with special currency by hand

the practical significance of computing power monopoly in mainland China

we have learned about attacks based on 51% computing power in various articles

but the reality is that although the global power of 78% was in Chinese mainland, fortunately, they were scattered in different pools and controlled by different people. p>

although all POW based cryptocurrencies have the risk of being attacked by 51%, few people can really launch attacks e to the dispersion of computing power

but what if the miners themselves don't want to attack, but the mining machinery manufacturers attack

still using the analogy just now, although each miner subjectively wants to do the problem checking independently, their calculator is manipulated remotely and gives consistent wrong answers. This may pose a great threat to digital cryptocurrency

however, the manufacturer with the absolute voice of mining machinery had such a problem in mainland China

in April 2017, the back door of antbled came out. Although this is described as a "vulnerability" in Chinese, antbled is more like a function that has been implemented and designed

anonymous people found that after an ant miner made by bitmainland was connected to the network, it would communicate with a domain name held by bitmainland on a regular basis and return the miner's serial number, MAC address and IP address to bitmainland's server. If the server of bitcontinent gives a negative signal, the miner will stop running

although bitcontinental responded that they could not shut down any mining machines that did not belong to them. However, the bitcoin core team has proved in experiments that this function has no verification. Anyone can shut down mining machines by forging DNS - but it also means that bitcoin mainland has the ability to shut down any sold mining machines

After

, bitcontinent fixed this "loophole", but it caused heated discussion in the community. This has also set the tone that almost all pow blockchain communities are biased against mainland China

a few months later, under the leadership of bitcontinent, viabtc g out the first block and made a hard bifurcation with the blockchain of bitcoin. From then on, bitcoin BCH (bitcoin cash) appeared in the world

will the monopoly of mining machinery destroy the distributed system

facing this problem, we should have a clear answer now. That is, the monopoly of mining machinery will certainly affect the safe operation of pow digital cryptocurrency

the problem is not whether bitcontinental and its founder Wu Jihan are trustworthy, but that one of the values of any blockchain system is to operate safely without trust in any single company or indivial

even if the ASIC miner is not monopolized by bitmainland, the ASIC miner itself will increase the concentration of computing power

the ASIC used for mining has great requirements for ventilation, power and site, and has no use except for mining. At the same time, the calculation difficulty of the whole network is increased e to the powerful computing power

as a result, it is very difficult for external players to start mining in the next software on the computer as they did five years ago. And the recent centralized exchange is caused by frequent black incidents, which also proves that concentration in this unregulated market will definitely lead to insecurity

assuming that the bitcoin network runs on top of one million miners, no one can shut it down. And if the bitcoin network runs on 20 large mines, it's much easier to shut it down

and by the end of 2017, 78% of the effort was concentrated in mainland China, which led to a real possibility of Chinese mainland regulators' launching a deadly attack against the special currency. p>

moreover, most of the scenarios of using digital cryptocurrency are related to "decentralization". Once centralized, it means that these scenarios no longer exist. It turns a project that might have value into a pure waste of computing power

Then, what measures should we take in the face of this situation

first of all, as the project side, it may be time to give up the pure POW mechanism. In fact, in many projects of issuing cryptocurrency, especially in asset securitization projects. Similar to the concept of stock in the real world, POS itself is more reasonable than pow

in the media that don't know about blockchain, we often hear such words as "bitcoin wastes a lot of computing power and has no value", which is reasonable to some extent. It is difficult for a POW based blockchain to bind the value of the project itself to the issued digital cryptocurrency - because the real value behind the price of the currency does not come from the project, but from the cost of maintaining computing power

and the hybrid mode of pow + POS is more like the future. In the hybrid mode, both coin holders and miners can participate in the major decisions of this community. If a decision is widely accepted, the blockchain will be soft forked to the latest state without excessive intervention of developers, and there will be almost no private resistance of miners or mining machines

secondly, as a retail miner, if you are still digging a pure POW mechanism currency, you should unconditionally support the bifurcation activities initiated by the community to resist the ASIC mining machine, even if it will lead to the failure of your mining machine

this may sound contradictory, but in the long run, it is better to promote the reform of the community and get more benefits in a currency controlled by the monopoly of computing power. Because in many conflicts between computing power and community in the past, the ultimate result is that the computing power owner will forcibly keep the old algorithm to hard fork the blockchain

just like Eth and etc, the classic Ethereum (etc), which belongs to the computing power master, has lost the support of developers and become an air coin with no vitality and impossible to develop applications

as a retail leek, you should be careful to trade the non mainstream digital currencies (except bitcoin) supported by bitmainland mining machinery, so as to avoid falling into a blockchain in which bitmainland controls the computing power completely

finally, if you are bitcontinent, what should you do

bitcontinent's goal is to become Intel, AMD and NVIDIA, make greater contributions to the whole computer instry, and become a great company, not just entangled in the immediate interests of mining

Wall Street financiers have long seen through the violence brought about by NVIDIA's video card mining. The rise and fall of the company's stock price has been consistent with the price of bitcoin, and even affected by the digital currency market. Citron, a well-known short seller, has recently been bearish on NVIDIA, arguing that the company has focused too much on providing services for digital currency miners rather than on serious businesses such as artificial intelligence, games and driverless driving

the mission of chip manufacturers is to provide more powerful chips to drive more intelligent services, and finally contribute to the real world, rather than become monopoly tycoons in the virtual world. When we no longer enter the gate of the virtual world, the only thing left is a deserted land

in an interview with US media last year, Wu Jihan disclosed that he would make an IPO with a market value of billions of dollars. As a company about to go public, bitmainland should not only be responsible to investors, but also accept investors' questions about the sustainability of its business. "If your mining machinery goes public, it will encounter a fork, what should you do?"

and this question, which needs to be asked after the listing, has already appeared: the current price of the split coin xmo after the Monroe team split is $7.50, while the current price of the real Monroe coin XmR is $194, and the split coin is completely abandoned by the Monroe community

before bitcontinent becomes the name of all blockchain communities, we can rely on the huge amount of capital accumulated in recent years to transform into an artificial intelligence chip company along the previous plan, rather than continue to develop a variety of digital currency mining machines to extract the last drop of oil before the ecological collapse

content source: phoenix.com

4. At present, most of the mainstream Ethereum mining machines in the market come from bitmainland and Jianan Yun. However, with the decline of Ethereum's price, the profits brought by mining have been very meager. Investors can choose to invest in Ethereum on the digital currency exchange. At present, the mainstream digital currency transactions in the market are all coin security, fire coin network, bitnet, etc.

5. The core component is the graphics card, which accounts for about 80% of the cost, followed by the motherboard and power supply, with high configuration. If you're digging deep in the mountains with a large mining machine. If personal computers are not enough for electricity, you can also choose crowdfunding mining machine... And now mining is generally in the place where electricity is cheaper, and the money is usually directly linked to the platform (currency exchange trading platform). Personal suggestions should be considered. After all, electricity is not enough.

6.

Although the price of bitcoin has suffered a sharp drop before the Spring Festival, there are still some people who are obsessed with "mining". Therefore, mining equipment has become a hot spot, and some people have made a fortune

analysts from Bernstein, a well-known US investment bank, estimate that in 2017, the operating profit of a Chinese start-up company named bitmain in China may reach US $3 billion (about RMB 19 billion) to US $4 billion (about RMB 25.3 billion), which is equivalent to that of chip giant NVIDIA

However, it took bitmainland only four years to achieve such a high profit in one year, while NVIDIA spent 24 years

bitmainland's operating profit may exceed US $3 billion

according to the conservative expectations of 75% gross profit margin and 65% operating profit margin, bitmainland's operating profit in 2017 is US $3 billion to US $4 billion, while NVIDIA's operating profit in the same period is US $3 billion. In a report released on Wednesday, Bernstein analysts said it took bitmainland only four years to achieve this goal, while NVIDIA took 24 years

According to Bernstein's report, each of the antminer bitcoin mining devices currently sold by bitmainland is worth hundreds to thousands of dollars. In addition, the company operates "mining pools" that allow participants to collaborate on bitcoin mining to rece costs. Bernstein estimates that bitmainland has 70% to 80% market share in bitcoin miners and ASICs

according to the daily economic news, the ethash algorithm currently used by Ethernet is based on the demand of graphics chip, which is suitable for PC mining, and the mining machine is not good at it. The market expects that bitmainland will soon launch a new mining machine with low energy consumption and high efficiency. A professional mining machine can be equivalent to several 8-graphics card mining machines. After the official launch, it is bound to impact the original PC mining market with graphics chips. At that time, because of "mining" and soaring chip prices are also expected to return to rationality

Mitch Steves, an analyst at RBC Capital, believes that the price of Ethernet currency has skyrocketed from $10 in early 2017 to $1000 now, and the possibility of exclusive mining chips is much higher than a year ago. Steves also pointed out that if bitmainland really sells chips dedicated to Ethernet coins, the mining efficiency will be far better than that of graphics chips, and at that time, it will take away the business of NVIDIA and AMD

according to the daily economic news, NVIDIA's financial report for the fourth quarter of 2017 released in early February found that the company's data center, including the sales of graphics processing units (GPU and graphics card), had an operating revenue of US $606 million in the fourth quarter, making it the second largest revenue source of NVIDIA. The chief financial officer of NVIDIA also mentioned that in terms of the overall demand for NVIDIA procts, the contribution of digital money market is difficult to quantify, but I believe the percentage contribution in the fourth quarter is higher than that in the previous quarter

7. How hot is it? I've heard about mining! Not through computer equipment, are basically liars! It's all about blockchains. So as to cheat some small white user's money! Of course, some people make money! Most people don't make money, you know! Like you!

8. Generally speaking, it doesn't work (this only refers to most platforms, but a small part has no threshold)
it's better to wait and save enough for cash withdrawal

9. There are three types: application type, payment type and security type. Most of them are applied tokens. Singapore has other regulatory policies for securities and payment.