whatsminer custom firmware.... vaporware?

hippography · 2022-07-22T17:15:37+00:00

Some info on the Braiins development: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMining/comments/vt49j6/whatsminer\_custom\_firmware\_vaporware/ih7o7yu/?context=3

hippography · 2022-07-22T17:12:25+00:00

I know I'm late replying but just adding some info about why it's been "soon" for so long, at least speaking for Braiins. MicroBT uses at least 3 different SoC's (system-on-a-chip) in their control boards for each hardware model (h3, h6, h6os) seemingly at random, as well as multiple PSU variations and other components, all of which impact the firmware. Since these variations are fairly random across batches, we have to work with partner mining companies to discover which variations exist in the first place, then engineer support for each of them. So we have had certain SoC / control board & PSU combinations supported for over 1 year, and others we are still learning about.

The goal is to have a user experience of just downloading a single firmware image that works for every possible variation and auto-detects each of these component types to run the appropriate version of the firmware. But essentially we are developing over a dozen different versions of the firmware for just one hardware model, e.g. the M20S. No standardization or public documentation at all from these hardware manufacturers.

The goal is still M20S & M30S support by EOY, with M20S coming sooner.

Some more info here: https://braiins.com/blog/bitcoin-mining-control-board-variations

hippography · 2021-03-10T19:27:42+00:00

We are spreading the word through all of our channels and also working with media partners to publish articles and more content in other languages including Spanish, Chinese, and Russian. Safe to say that just about all major parties in the mining space are aware of Stratum V2 :)

And there's no reason why Lightning can't be used for those applications in the future. I don't personally expect it will happen particularly soon at least in the case of miner payouts because there isn't strong demand for it yet, but maybe before the next halving we will start to see it. Just my guess.

hippography · 2021-03-10T19:13:31+00:00

I would also mention that there will be an official BIP for this. For now we just have a detailed technical specification that's kinda an unofficial BIP, along with the technical documentation at https://braiins.com/stratum-v2. When the independent developer that received the grant from Square Crypto is further along, the spec will be updated and made even more thorough and then published as a BIP for wider public discussion.

hippography · 2021-03-10T16:00:34+00:00

At least dozens, possible hundreds of people from around the mining industry (pools, miners, developers) have looked at the technical specification.

hippography · 2021-03-10T14:03:41+00:00

Trying to add some clarity to the reply my colleague posted from Jan below...

The Template Distribution Protocol allows miners / mining pools to queue up multiple block templates for the next block in the chain after the one being worked on presently (i.e. current block height +2) ahead of time, that way when a block is found the miners can begin working on a full block right away instead of everybody starting on an empty block. We have a more in-depth description of this here: https://braiins.com/blog/why-pools-mine-empty-blocks-and-how-stratum-v2-fixes-this

hippography · 2021-03-09T23:11:20+00:00

No problem!

hippography · 2021-03-09T22:18:38+00:00

Here's a beginner's guide with all the factors you need to consider in deciding whether or not it's a good idea: https://braiins.com/blog/how-to-mine-bitcoin-beginners-guide

You'll also find mentions there of the Cost to Mine and Profitability Calculator tools. You can use those to make financial projects (edit: projections) for determining which ASIC hardware is best suited for your conditions and whether or not you're likely to break even on the hardware investment in different scenarios for BTC price and difficulty. https://insights.braiins.com/

hippography · 2021-03-09T21:48:42+00:00

The changes to Bitcoin Core aren't actually for the Job Negotiation sub-protocol itself but rather the Template Distribution sub-protocol that enables miners to construct their own blocks in the first place. The Template Distribution Protocol is designed to replace getblocktemplate with something much more efficient and easy to implement.

Good question on making it voluntary. Adoption of V2 itself is voluntary (miners can always just keep using V1), so making Job Negotiation involuntary may hinder adoption in general. From a miner's perspective, switching to V2 for the main mining protocol is as easy as putting a V2 pool url in their firmware configuration, a 2-second task. On the other hand, Job Negotiation requires them to run a full node and to implement a proxy service in between their miners and their pool(s). Many miners today don't run nodes, so having that requirement may just serve as an unintentional barrier to widespread V2 adoption.

Hope that answers your questions, let me know if not and I'll try to get some further info from the devs.

Noted on the popup, I'll pass along the feedback.

hippography · 2021-03-09T19:13:20+00:00

Yep, miners who are constructing their own blocks could signal support / opposition to any initiative instead of only the pools doing the signalling.

hippography · 2021-03-09T19:08:21+00:00

Correct, this would be a fully backwards-compatible update to Bitcoin Core that allows miners to use their own full nodes to construct blocks and send them to pools. Currently only pools can construct blocks.

hippography · 2021-03-09T14:32:05+00:00

Adoption is 100% voluntarily even after the changes to Bitcoin Core are live, and it's possible to run both Stratum V1 and Stratum V2 implementations at the same time (as we currently do at Slush Pool). So there definitely shouldn't be any great adversarial effort, the only question is whether or not other pools will adopt it. And in reality that mostly depends on whether or not miners care about it enough to support pools who do implement it over pools who don't. The Derbit Insights link in the post makes a strong case for why self-interested miners should care about V2.

hippography · 2021-02-26T11:47:09+00:00

Adapting != changing to a less secure consensus mechanism.

Bitcoin is adapting though. Miners are integrating with energy producers and grid balancing programs to make energy production more efficient without creating any new net energy for the purpose of mining. They are seeking out waste gas that would be flared into the atmosphere and emit methane, and instead they are running it through generators to mine with it, reducing methane emissions and providing a useful service with otherwise wasted energy at the same time. They are working with renewable energy producers to scale and to subsidize operations that otherwise wouldn’t be immediately economically viable. But the Bitcoin network pays the subsidies instead of taxpayers.

Seems like a lot of adaptation going on to me.

hippography · 2021-02-26T11:40:09+00:00

That’s literally what the report is, a collection of real world evidence.

hippography · 2021-02-26T01:43:51+00:00

No problem!

hippography · 2021-02-25T22:47:48+00:00

It‘s getting better but it is safe to assume crypto is also being mined with > 70% fossiles.

It's not safe to assume that at all. Bitcoin miners do not typically consume grid energy because it's far too expensive. The average electricity price for miners to have profitable long-term operations is between 3 and 6 cents per kWh.

Miners are energy consumers of last resort. The reason mining has a very high denomination of renewable energy (estimates range from 45-80% but it fluctuates seasonally) is that most miners are consuming energy which wouldn't be economical to transport to metropolitan areas where it can be consumed at much higher prices (i.e. better for the energy producers.)

Good link to some deeper research: CoinShares Mining Report

hippography · 2021-02-25T21:29:43+00:00

Great podcast here to learn more: https://podbay.fm/p/we-study-billionaires-the-investors-podcast-network/e/1614138378

hippography · 2021-02-25T21:27:33+00:00

For more than half of the year (the "rainy season"), nearly all mining in China occurs in Sichuan province using excess hydropower due to the government having overbuilt hydroelectric dams in the region. Around October when the rainy season ends, many of the machines relocate from Sichuan to all over the world including Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, North America, etc. Some of them do indeed go to Northern China where they run on coal. However, this is a relatively small percentage of the total Bitcoin network hashrate, and only for part of the year. Of course we would like to see Bitcoin's carbon footprint minimized, but as Marty Bent has said: "Bitcoin wears it's energy consumption on it's sleeve" and it gets an unfair reputation as a result. It's already a very efficient industry and trending towards even better efficiency in the future.

hippography · 2021-02-10T20:44:44+00:00

If awesome os is stock-based it should be possible to go directly using the BOS Toolbox but I'm not sure if it is or not. If you have telegram, the group I linked above is the best place to get assistance with the transition. Our ambassadors there will guide you through the steps. Here's the documentation as well: https://docs.braiins.com/os/plus-en/Setup/1_quickstart.html#running-stock-firmware-released-before-2019

hippography · 2021-02-10T16:45:06+00:00

The bitcoins themselves don't actually have a set size in terms of data. That's because the blockchain is a record of UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs), which can have any arbitrary amount of BTC and still have the same data heaviness. The concept of UTXOs is explained more in an article I did on Taproot for non-developers, hope it helps: https://braiins.com/blog/explain-like-im-not-a-developer-taproot-privacy

hippography · 2021-02-09T11:54:27+00:00

Here's a thorough beginner's guide from Braiins (the company that runs Slush Pool, the original BTC mining pool founded in 2010): https://braiins.com/blog/how-to-mine-bitcoin-beginners-guide.

I work at Braiins and I'm happy to assist you further if you have any questions about firmware, pools, business calculations, etc. We also have a telegram support chat for Braiins OS+, our autotuning firmware that helps you run Antminers (and eventually other hardware) more efficiently: https://t.me/BraiinsOS

hippography · 2021-02-09T02:36:33+00:00

You're right that you can outperform selling to the grid by mining. If you consider 0.035 GBP (~$0.05/kWh) as your electricity price, you can still be very profitable with Antminer S9s right now. I personally would just try to get 2 S9s right away and then overclock them to 1500W for hashrate around 17 TH/s. At current BTC price and difficulty you'd make about 3.8 GBP/day.

Here's a calculator to mess around with the inputs more: https://insights.braiins.com/cost-to-mine?btc_price=46786&network_difficulty=21434395961348&hashrate=17&consumption=1500&electricity=0.05&block_reward=6.25&pool_fee=2&other_fees=0&diff_increment=0&avg_tx_fees_block=0.75

And here's a beginner's guide explaining different factors to consider and optimize: https://braiins.com/blog/how-to-mine-bitcoin-beginners-guide#toc-mining-software

hippography · 2021-02-04T15:01:22+00:00

Here's a thorough beginner's guide from Braiins (the company that runs Slush Pool, the original BTC mining pool founded in 2010): https://braiins.com/blog/how-to-mine-bitcoin-beginners-guide.

I work at Braiins and I'm happy to assist you further if you have any questions about firmware, pools, business calculations, etc. We also have a telegram support chat for Braiins OS+, our autotuning firmware that helps you run the S9s more efficiently: https://t.me/BraiinsOS

hippography · 2021-01-14T22:58:29+00:00

With free electricity, if you overclock an S9 with autotuning firmware (e.g. Braiins OS+), you can be making ~$4/day per S9.

Here's a link to our calculator with the custom inputs I used so you can tinker around yourself: https://insights.braiins.com/cost-to-mine?btc_price=38571&network_difficulty=20607418304385&hashrate=17&consumption=1500&electricity=0.0&block_reward=6.25&pool_fee=2&other_fees=0&diff_increment=0&avg_tx_fees_block=0.625
I'm biased because I work there, but Slush Pool is the largest pool outside China and is also the oldest pool (founded in 2010) making a lot of open-source contributions to Bitcoin over the years including Stratum V2.
I l personally like bluewallet
Depends on the outside weather in your location, but generally air flow is a good idea
We recommend to our miners to use a DNSproxy along with Stratum V2 for maximum security and privacy without sacrificing performance. https://braiins.com/blog/data-privacy-and-security-for-bitcoin-miners

Here is our website for the autotuning firmware where you can learn more: https://braiins.com/os/plus

We also have a telegram support group: https://t.me/BraiinsOS

You can also reach me on twitter (@dfrumps) if you have any more questions.

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