Mining Machine Talk: Introduction to Alchemy "Mining"

Mining crypto assets based on the PoW consensus mechanism is a craft of turning electricity into "gold", a kind of modern alchemy . In order to master this craft, in addition to having "magic energy" electricity, you also need a "gold -turning" rod that can turn electricity into "gold" - a mining machine .

For crypto-asset mining, mining machines are one of the basic hardware facilities necessary for mining. With the gradual popularization of crypto-asset mining, the mining industry has also been upgraded step by step. Mining farms, mining machines, and miners are all developing in a professional and refined direction, and there are more and more types of mining machines .

Figure 1 CPU mining machine

Take Bitcoin mining machines as an example . In the early days, an old server or ordinary PC could be used as a mining machine for mining. The earliest mining machines of this type were called CPU mining machines . Later, GPU mining machines appeared. Miners used GPUs with higher computing power to mine BTC, and CPU mining machines were gradually eliminated. By 2012, some technical geeks tried to use FPGA programmable chips as the core and produced a batch of FPGA mining machines as a transitional product between GPU mining machines and ASIC mining machines. Although they were not fully popularized, the emergence of FPGA mining machines foreshadowed the possibility of the emergence of highly customized ASIC chip mining machines.

Figure 2 GPU mining machine

Figure 3 FPGA mining machine

Then, in 2013, highly customized ASIC miners for BTC mining appeared on the market. These miners integrated a large number of chips customized for the dbSHA256 algorithm, making the performance of BTC ASIC miners thousands or even tens of thousands times higher than that of ordinary GPU miners. The emergence of ASIC miners led to a sharp increase in the computing power of the entire BTC network, and the difficulty of mining was greatly increased. GPU miners may not be able to mine as much as ASIC miners in one day after mining for several years, and GPU miners were eliminated .

Figure 4 ASIC mining machine

However , ASIC mining machines have raised the entry threshold for mining corresponding currencies to a certain extent due to their high power consumption and high noise. Also, due to their ultra-high computing power and convenience for batch management, a phenomenon has emerged: it is possible that a small number of people have occupied most of the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network.

Figure 5: ASIC mining farms operating on a large scale

Therefore , many people and the crypto asset community began to resist ASIC mining machines , and anti-ASIC algorithms such as Scrypt, Etash, Equihash, X17, X13, X16r, etc. appeared. The corresponding currencies include LTC, ETH, ZEC, DASH, BTG, BCD, RVN, etc. These currencies only support GPU mining for a long time, which brought good news to GPU mining machines.

In order to maintain the fairness of mining, some teams even use algorithms that only support CPU mining, such as BTV, which only supports mining with CPU mining machines.

There are also some currencies that are compatible with both CPU and GPU mining (currently more friendly to CPU mining), such as XMR, PASC, etc.

People always chase after profits . When a currency that originally only supports GPU mining just appears with FPGA mining machines or even ASIC mining machines, they can grab huge profits with a small number of superior mining machines. Therefore, anti-ASIC algorithms are always cracked , and then FPGA mining machines and even ASIC mining machines appear. The LTC, ZEC, and DASH mining fields, which used to be dominated by GPU mining machines, have now been conquered by ASIC mining machines.

It seems that the ASICization of mainstream mining machines is the final destination of all cryptocurrency mining. Some newly designed PoW currencies have even planned the ASICization route of mining machines at the beginning of their design, such as Nervos mainnet token CKB and the star new coin Grin released in early 2019.

There are also some stubborn communities or teams that resist or even deter the ASICization of mining machines in their respective fields through (continuous) hard forks, and guarantee the decentralization ideal of their respective mining. For example, XMR , which iterates its algorithm every six months, RVN , which fights against ASIC mining machines through hard forks, and Beam, the companion brother of Grin, etc.

Crypto asset mining is still in its early stages, and the exploration and experimentation with different models is far from over. Which form of machine will be the final form of the mining machine is left for future generations to judge.