Ethereum mining machine undercurrent surges, is Bitmain E9 real or fake? At least 10 companies are ready to enter the market

Wu Blockchain learned that as ETH reached a high of around $620, the Ethereum mining industry became very enthusiastic. Rumors about Bitmain's latest generation of Ethereum mining machines, E9 and FPGA Ethereum mining machines, were rampant, and at least ten companies were trying to make new Ethereum mining machines.

Bitmain released the Ethereum mining machine E3 in 2018, which rarely used ASIC chips and was sold at high prices in the market. However, due to the sharp drop in the price of coins and the immaturity of the mining machine itself, it not only failed to sell well, but also accumulated a large amount of waste inventory. The E5 is an experimental machine.

In July 2020, the monitoring data of the Ant Sentinel website showed that a mining machine named "E7" was mining. Bitmain's Ethereum mining machine E7 was thus exposed. The maximum computing power of a single unit is about 800M, and the residual power is about 500-700M, but it has not been mass-produced and sold.

Recently, rumors about Bitmain's Ethereum mining machine E9 have been circulating in the market again. Wu said blockchain learned that Zhan Ketuan once said in an internal meeting that the Ethereum chip would be taped out in September. However, after Wu Jihan took back the Beijing legal person, the tape-out plan came to an end, but it is not ruled out that it will be restarted after the change of control in the future. The information about E9 in the market is most likely released by Zhan's sales staff to obtain cash flow by selling futures. The performance of E9 is theoretically twice that of E7, which is amazing.

The core problem of ASIC Ethereum mining machines is not the technology, but the backlash from the community. A senior person in the domestic Ethereum mining machine industry lamented that it was fortunate that the Antminer E3 did not succeed, otherwise the community might have accelerated the transition from POW to POS, and other graphics card miners would also suffer. In Bitmain, there are actually no major technical problems. The main concern is that the community will change the algorithm, so they choose to produce in small batches and mine by themselves.

Currently, Ethereum is launching the first phase of 2.0, which is the transition from POW to POS. It is generally believed in the industry that it will take about 2 years to complete the transition, which means that Ethereum miners still have 2 years of mining time, but after the expiration, they can also mine other POW graphics card currencies, such as the recently popular Conflux.

In addition, the DAG of the files before and after December this year will exceed 4G, which will make the mining machines with 4G video memory unable to mine Ethereum. These graphics cards may be used for modification or flow out of the mining circle. It is estimated by the University of Mining and Technology that the computing power provided by such graphics cards accounts for about 30% of the total computing power of the Ethereum network. However, ETC can still be mined. Recently, the ETC algorithm has been changed to be compatible with old mining machines.

Despite this, when the price of Ethereum mining machines is high, they can also pay back their investment multiple times in 2 years. The payback period for graphics card mining machines is about 10 months, while that for Antminer E7 is 4-5 months. In fact, in 2020, it was very obvious that Ethereum mining was more active than Bitcoin mining. Wu said that blockchain has learned that at least 10 companies are trying to enter the Ethereum mining field.

Bitmain's ASIC model has the highest cost and the largest computing power, but it is likely to cause Vitalik and Ethereum developers to accelerate the modification of the algorithm, so many companies are secretly developing their own products and mining in their own mines or selling them to big miners they are familiar with. The Ipollo Pineapple Miner invested by Kong Jianping, the former co-chairman of Canaan, or the Ethereum mining machine it released belongs to this type.

In addition, the mainstream graphics card customized machine in the industry is the Xindong mining machine A10. According to the University of Mining and Technology, the characteristic of customized machines is that the mining machine manufacturer finds a graphics card processing manufacturer to produce graphics cards that meet their own requirements. Such graphics cards generally only retain some functions necessary for mining, and other functions not related to mining will be castrated. It is reported that Xindong may also launch the A11 series after A10. The new Wolf God mining machine is a customized version of AMD GPU, and the Panda mining machine is a regular GPU mining machine.

Finally, there are assembled graphics card machines, which generally use normal graphics cards. Even if they are not used for mining, they can be recycled and used in other industries such as games, and have a higher residual value. Generally speaking, the residual value rate of a graphics card that has been used for mining for two years is about 30% of the market price of a new graphics card. Another type is the rumored Ethereum FPGA mining machine, but there is no mature product available yet.

Compared with the S9 or the current mainstream Bitcoin mining machine S19Pro/M30S, which can have a lifespan of 3-5 years or even longer, the Ethereum mining machine, whether it is research and development or mining, is more like a short game. Because if the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is completed in the next 2-3 years, the game will end, but the emergence of a forked chain cannot be ruled out.

Reference reading: Is the launch of Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain still a good time to buy graphics cards for mining?