Bitcoin's recent surge after a period of relative calm has sparked a buzz among miners. Such growthalready pushed many to the decision to go broke, finally, a couple of mining combines. Such a course of events will undoubtedly positively affect the security of the network as a whole.</strong>
During a recent meeting of leading ChineseIt has once again become apparent to manufacturers of mining devices how centralized mining still is. While such meetings take place behind closed doors, other users encounter mining mainly in the form of hacker mining programs on their computers — This is hardly the best option for the cryptocurrency industry.
Based on these considerations, we compiled an overview of the most significant mining news for the last period.
Altcoin mining cloud
Many companies have already realized the potential of the game in“digital miners” and are consciously moving towards hosting mining equipment, or so-called cloud mining. The problem is that it is difficult for a potential miner to understand the abundance of services offered. In fact, the only thing they can offer consumers is a certain amount of hashing power in exchange for a recurring payment.
How does the new service stand out from this crowd?Genesis Mining? Here's what: altcoin mining. While most services only offer mining capabilities on the most common crypto network — Bitcoin, Genesis Mining is promoting a number of alternatives based on the scrypt algorithm.
The company offers mining resources.Bitcoins, Lightcoins, Firecoins, Dogecoins, Auroracoins, Lottcoins and Megacoins. By testing the service using the free account provided to us at a speed of 1 megacheh per second, we were able to earn $ 0.13 lightcoins per day. This is not much, but mining based on Genesis Mining may well serve as a good addition or test service before buying mining devices using scrypt. In any case, you can see what you really get for your money.
Walmart sells miners
True to its slogan, Walmart, whichallows you to “save and live better”, launched mining devices for sale. Thanks to a contract with TigerDirect, customers of this largest mega-retailer can now buy their own mining machine.
Currently only available for saleButterfly Labs Jalapeno. “Earn more Bitcoins with the Butterfly Labs Bitcoin Miner,” the description text entices us. The Jalapeno model, which hit the market last summer, runs at 10 gigahash per second and sells for $299, plus $5.70 shipping. The cost of the miner from Wallmart is $50 more than what is stated on the website of the manufacturer Butterfly Labs. 10 gigahashes per second based on SHA-256 is now a thing of the past. If you buy this miner today at the stated price, you are unlikely to ever recoup your investment — unless you can proudly call yourself a real bitcoin miner and support the decentralization of the network.
Software Updates BFGminer
A popular client used by bitcoin miners, BFGminer has updated the software by releasing version 4.0. New in this version: hot plugging, proxy and scrypt support.
The latest version of the client is now compatible withthe latest developments and devices from Gridseed, Butterfly Labs and Hex Fury. BFG miner is available to users of Windows, Mac OS and Linux, which makes it more flexible and allows you to work on the operating system that is convenient for the user.
This program appeared at a time whenTo create new blocks, ordinary video cards and FPGAs were sufficient. Its main developer — the controversial luke-jr (pictured), who is also an admin of the Elegius pool and is known for posting Bible passages on the blockchain due to his religious beliefs.
The official release of the new version reports thatManufacturers plan to build into future versions features that provide additional proof-of-work (PoW) crypto-algorithms, capabilities for decentralized pools, and parallel mining processes.
Gridcoin
It is likely that in the near future mining devices can only be used subject to special electricity tariffs.
This means that as the volume increaseshash operations, providing the network with the necessary amount of energy can become a major security issue for Bitcoin. A cryptocurrency called gridcoin, created last year, is designed to solve this problem. Gridcoins are awarded to miners who participate in the BOINC (Open Infrastructure for Computer Networks of Berkeley) projects.
According to the BOINC website, theirThe projects support scientific research in the field of medicine, global warming and solving mathematical problems. Any user can download software to participate in BOINC projects.
According to the creators of this currency, the schemegridcoin-based caching can turn out to be much more relevant and effective than a SHA-256 based scheme or similar cryptographic algorithms, since they allow you to receive rewards for a wide range of socially useful work, and not just for merging energy into meaningless random number sorting.
Hydro Power Mining
The British company MegaMine providespossibilities for residential mining with a speed range from 10 gigahashes per second to 10 terrahashes per second. Today, many entrepreneurs with data centers sell mining contracts, but MegaMine has one strategic advantage over others. The company uses only the energy generated by hydro generators, so electricity bills when using this service are significantly lower.
As network power increases, for the nextgenerations of miners will need more and more electricity. Even if we assume that the nodes will become smaller and require less energy, inevitable competition will require new advantages in terms of energy cost. Electricity is expensive in Europe, especially in countries like Germany, France, and Spain. Miners in these countries may prefer MegaMine as an alternative source of cheaper energy.
Determining the hashrate will become harder
The trend towards centralization in the environmentBitcoin miners reduce transparency. The Neighborhood Pool Watch blog has posted a post on this phenomenon. Some large mining pools do not disclose the hashrate of each miner individually. In this regard, it becomes difficult to determine how many miners are borrowed by hashing.
There may be several reasons for this. For example, some of the pools do not want competitors to know which devices they use. It is possible that they use several modified installations with a large number of ASICs in each instead of a large number of individual miners.
One way or another, if in November 2013While researchers could confidently identify the source of more than 60% of the hashing power on the network, this is currently only possible for 37% of the mining power. Who owns the remaining 63% — mystery. This does not mean that all this power is concentrated in one hand, it’s just that its owners are clearly taking special measures to make it difficult to identify, which, as we know, is usually typical for industrial mining farms.
Obviously, in this industry there areconsolidation trends, this applies to both individual miners and companies. The merger of Cloud Hashing and HighBitcoin led to the emergence of Peernova, and the creation of BitFury of the 20 millionth investment fund confirmed fears of deepening one of Bitcoin's main problems: centralizing transaction confirmations.
: Coindesk Posted by: Daniel Coury
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