Author: Ciprian V.

Mining

Innosilicon GRIN ASIC Miner Announced!

Ciprian V.

Innosilicon, one of the lead ASIC manufacturers for most of the modern popular cryptos announced few days a go, January 25, that they are working on their first ASIC for GRIN. According to the manufacturer, the new ASIC will be launched early summer this year. Innosilicon is happy to announce that our world class engineering team is currently designing a very cool Grin Asic miner to support the Grin community. We are going to launch our best-in-class miner early summer this year. — Innosilicon Miner (@Inno_Miner) January 25, 2019 Innosilicon is a China-based giant that is known for being one of the most important Bitmain competitors. The company is one of those who take part in the chip dice reduction race in ASICs and we could speculate…

Mining

A New RX 570 16GB Is About to Hit the Market! – Sapphire Launches New GPU for GRIN Coin

Ciprian V.

RX 570 16GB Mining GPU Overview We know that only GPUs with 8GB or more can mine Grin – a new and very popular privacy coin that is being developed by the community. Such a high VRAM requirement considerably limits the array of cards that are compatible with the coin. While this means that Grin is harder to mine than most other coins, the project is getting a lot of attention lately, at the point that Sapphire Technology, a leading manufacturer and global supplier of components and commercial solutions, launched today a GPU oriented specifically to mine this coin. By “oriented” I mean that the RX 570 16GB card was designed to mine this specific coin in mind, however it can also be used to mine other cryptocurrencies too…

Mining

Should you Pre-Order an Obelisk GRN1 ASIC for GRIN? – Pros and Cons

Ciprian V.

Obelisk, a fairly new ASIC manufacturer based on the US, announced the pre-sale of their first ASIC for GRIN Coin. During the pre-sale, the company charges $3,000 USD per unit. Once the pre-sale ends, the price will rise to $6,000 USD per unit. The estimated performance of the miner is 100 GPS at 800 W, which equals to the performance of 50 Nvidia GTX 2080 Ti cards, while requiring the power of roughly 6 said GPUs. The money raised during the pre-launch will go to support the development of said miners. The development of the main mining chip is estimated to be completed may of this year. The first units should be shipped to the end user in October of this year. Is GRIN a Good Coin to…

Mining

How to Mine Beam With Nvidia and AMD GPU

Ciprian V.

How to Mine Beam An Introduction to the Scalable Confidential Cryptocurrency Note: This is NOT a sponsored post. As always, I only recommend you to mine cryptocurrencies that have the potential to become something big. Pumping and dumping is no longer a viable strategy for GPU miners in 2019. Nowadays, it’s all about investing your hashing power in a good project that has future and stick to it long enough to reap the benefits. Beam is one of those coins that might have a bright future, and hence might be good to mine. Let’s take a look at it. What is Beam? To receive the latest updates follow me on social media! facebooktwitterFollowgoogleyoutube Beam is a new crypto that aims to combine scalability and anonymity by implementing innovative…

Mining

How to Mine Grin Cuckatoo31+ on Windows 7 / 10

Ciprian V.

Two of the biggest miner software for Grin, Bminer and Gminer, received an update few days ago. In this tutorial, we will walk through how to mine with Gminer and what benchmarks (as well as bugs) to expect. (Check this article if you wanna know more about Grin and why it might be a good idea to mine it) First, let me clarify something to avoid confusion. Grin can be mined by using few different algorithms. Cuckaroo29 is the official GPU-friendly ASIC-resistant algorithm and it will become less relevant as times goes by until be completely replaced by an ASIC-friendly algorithm in about 2 years from now. Cuckatoo31+ is the ASIC-friendly algorithm that will be relevant for few more months until being replaced…

Mining

Obelisk SC1 Slim Gen-2 SIA Miner – SCAM or Hidden GEM?

Ciprian V.

Obelisk, an ASIC manufacturer founded by SIA Storage, announced a new batch of SC1 Slim miners for sale. Here’s the catch. According to the official website, virtually nobody buys these units lately. Does that mean that the units are not worth it or are we about to find a hidden gem? Let’s find that out. Is Mining SIA a Good Idea? The first reason why people might not want to buy an ASIC is because the coin it is made to mine is dead. Could this apply to SIA? As for today, SIA is a coin with a $86,572,943 USD market cap and a $793,575 USD daily volume. While these past 12 months haven’t been too forgiving for the coin (it has been a pretty rough time for…

Mining

BlackMiner F1+ Review – FPGA Miner

Ciprian V.

Note: Hashaltcoin sent me this FPGA miner for me to review. While I truly appreciate this partnership, I am making this review as unbiased as possible. The BlackMiner F1+ is a new FPGA miner developed and manufactured by Hashaltcoin. The unit comes with three boards and can mine a wide array of algorithms, most of which are traditionally considered GPU-only. The official specs state that the F1+ hashes like three or even four x6 GTX 1080Ti rigs (depends on algorithm) while having the power consumption of one. Not only that – unlike three rigs that require three sets of components (motherboards, RAM modules, etc), as well as in-depth tweaking, the F1+ comes as one plug-and-play unit. Is this too good…

Mining

What’s Up With ProgPoW? Benchmarks & Addressing the Criticisms

Ciprian V.

ProgPoW is a new algorithm that was proposed to replace Ethash and therefore make Ethereum ASIC-resistant. The idea is being debated since August 2018 and apparently, we are coming to the point when we as a community have to make the final decision – do we want ProgPoW to be implemented or not? The idea was also discussed during January 4 ETH Core devs meeting and it seems that the majority of the community and the developers team members are leaning towards the adoption of this new algorithm. In this post, I will briefly go over what ProgPoW is and then will address the criticism this idea is being receiving. Again, as a community, it’s our duty to be aware of what is going on and to actively…

Mining

My New Pool Is Up! Mine with 0.5{520ebc7d04367f10067c097a94259816cd1e6df76ec40212834858ca2e1af940} Fees on 1stMiningPool

Ciprian V.

Hello friends, I’m excited to announce the 1stMiningPool – a pool created and ran exclusively by the 1stMiningRig team. The goal was to make a pool the right way – we are all expert GPU miners, we’ve been mining since day one and we’re thrilled to be able to now support mining decentralization on a new level. The pool is running on very low fees, just enough to support the pool itself and 1stminingrig. Our personal GPU rigs are mining on that pool, and we invite you to join us there Pool Address: https://m.1stminingpool.com/ Supported Coins: Denarius Lux Ravencoin Suqa Verge xdna Vertcoin (new) Gin (new) Veil coin (new) Upcoming Coins: Nexus SIN Callisto + Contact me if you want any special coin being…

Mining

1stMiningRig is Back and Kicking! – Plans for the Future + I Need Your Input!

Ciprian V.

First of all, let me apologize to you, my most loyal followers, for vanishing without prior notice. You guys have been following me for years and your feedback and support is what made this blog become bigger than I ever thought it would. Why the Break? Sadly, life gets on the way sometimes and those past months I honestly had neither the time or the willpower to keep posting content. You’ve heard that right. I didn’t leave because of the cryptocurrency market situation, or anything like that. In fact, it’s in the times of change when people seek advice and look for information the most. Wish I were there helping the mining community but I wasn’t. During the break, I was still quietly mining and upgrading my…