The total computing power of the Bitcoin network plummeted by 11.59%. Are there any pitfalls in mining that cannot be avoided? What can we do?

Recently, affected by the heavy rain in Sichuan, Leshan, Aba and other regions have suffered severe flooding. The mining farms deployed in these areas have experienced network outages, power outages, and even water and gas outages, causing the Bitcoin network's computing power to drop to 115.84 EH/s (data as of August 18), a 24-hour drop of 11.59%.

Figure: Affected by the heavy rain in Sichuan, the computing power of major mining pools has dropped to varying degrees

In the eyes of miners, mining machines are money printing machines. As long as they are turned on, they can continuously mine wealth every day. Mining is not only a financial behavior, but also an industrial production behavior. Even if the mining machine is well maintained, it will encounter various emergencies , resulting in the mining machine being unable to start or the computing power being less than expected.

Today, we will give you an inventory of these emergencies.

01
Power outage

Mining is very cost-conscious. The biggest daily expense for mining machines is electricity, so mining machines will be moved to where electricity costs are low. In mid-to-late May every year, Sichuan Province gradually enters the flood season. Cheap hydropower resources attract miners to move mining machines from thermal power mines in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, and then move them back after the flood season.

Although the electricity price is cheap during the flood season, compared with thermal power, hydropower is not as stable, and emergencies may occur from time to time, causing power outages in the mine. These emergencies mainly include:

1. Flood discharge and sand discharge from power stations

During the flood season, Sichuan has heavy rainfall, and continuous heavy rain easily causes flood disasters. In order to alleviate the losses caused by floods, many hydropower stations need to cooperate with the dispatch of relevant departments to discharge floods and sand in time. Once the hydropower station starts to discharge floods and sand, the power supply of the mine cannot be guaranteed. The time of flood discharge depends on the actual local situation, and sand discharge generally takes 12 hours to 2 days.

2. Power resources are dispatched

At present, most of the mines in Sichuan are still directly supplied with electricity, that is, the electricity generated by the power station is directly transmitted to the mines without passing through the national power grid.

In the article "Mine Owners Talk About All Aspects of Park Power", we explained that although direct power supply is cheap, it is inferior to park power supply in terms of compliance and stability. If there is less rainfall and power resources are scarce, the hydropower station must give priority to completing the power supply plan of the national grid and ensuring residents' electricity use. The direct power supply of the mine will be difficult to guarantee, and the mine may be required to reduce the load or be shut down for a period of time.

3. Power station maintenance

The hydropower station will regularly inspect and maintain the power facilities of the power station. If there is an inspection, the mine will basically be closed for a period of time.

4. The mine’s power facilities were damaged

The most common problem is that the voltage switch in the mine explodes, causing power outages and the mine shutting down.

The high voltage electricity supplied to the mine by the hydropower station is not transformed, also known as "bare electricity", which needs to be transformed by the mine's transformer before it can be used by the mining machine. Many newly built mines now have 1 to 3 transformers in one plant. The transformers are independent of each other. If one of them explodes, it will only affect the power supply of the mining machine on a specific shelf, and other mining machines will not be affected. This design is more scientific.

02
Disconnect

Mining has high requirements for the network. For the mining pool, if the mined block is not broadcasted in time, it is likely to become an orphan block, and the duck in the mouth will fly away; for the mining farm, if there is a network delay, the submitted proof of work is rejected by the mining pool, or there is a network disconnection and communication with the mining pool cannot be established, then the mining machine is equivalent to working in vain.

The following situations may cause the mine to be disconnected from the network:

1. Geological disasters such as landslides lead to network interruptions

Yesterday (August 18), the computing power of many Bitcoin mining pools declined to varying degrees. The main reason was that heavy rain in Sichuan caused landslides, mudslides and other geological disasters in some areas, resulting in the interruption of communication networks.

2. The switch equipment in the mine fails

If the switch in the mining farm fails, the mining machine will be offline and unable to accept tasks assigned by the mining pool, and the proof of work will not be uploaded; if the performance of the switch is insufficient and network delays occur, the proof of work submitted by the mining machine may be rejected by the mining pool, and the rejection rate will remain high.

In order to cope with the above situation, mining farms generally use dedicated networks with equal upload and download bandwidths, and also configure a dedicated network line provided by different service providers as an emergency. For example, they are equipped with a telecommunications network dedicated line and a mobile network dedicated line. When the telecommunications network dedicated line fails, it will immediately switch to the mobile network to reduce losses.

03
Mining machines shut down or computing power drops

Mining machines are money printing machines, and computing power is the ability to print money. The shutdown of mining machines or loss of computing power will cause great losses to miners . For example, the Antminer S19-95T mining machine currently has a net income of about 43 yuan per day (the electricity fee is calculated at ¥0.23). A mining farm has tens of thousands of mining machines, and if they are shut down for one day, the loss will be hundreds of thousands.

In addition to power outages at the mining farm causing the mining machine to shut down, failures of the mining machine itself, temperature, and firmware viruses may also cause the mining machine to shut down or lose computing power.

1. Failure of the mining machine itself

There are many types of mining machine failures, the most common of which are hashboard failure, fan failure, and power cord failure. The latter two are easier to understand, so I won’t go into detail here. Here I will focus on the hashboard failure.

The T17 series of miners from Antminer are the ones that frequently experience failures in hashboards. For example, Antminer's T17e has three hashboards, each with more than 100 heat sinks. To save costs, these heat sinks are fixed to the hashboards using solder paste and low-temperature brazing. When the miner is running, if the temperature is too high, a flux called "rosin" in the solder paste will melt, causing the heat sink to loosen and fall, causing the entire hashboard to short-circuit, and ultimately leading to a decrease in the miner's hashrate.

Since the heat sink is very small and connected to the chip, it increases the difficulty of repairing the mining machine. When this happens, it can only be repaired by the mining machine manufacturer, or the damaged hashboard can be directly replaced with a new one.

2. Temperature

Temperature and humidity also have a great impact on mining machines. If the temperature is too high or too low, the computing power of the mining machine will also decrease. At present, the mining farm mainly controls the temperature inside the mining farm through fans and water curtains.

3. Firmware Virus

In addition to hardware failures that can cause the mining machine to shut down or lose computing power, if there is a virus in the mining machine's firmware, it will also affect the mining machine's computing power. It is actually very simple to avoid firmware viruses. Only use the firmware version officially launched or recommended by the mining machine manufacturer.

04
Summarize

There are all kinds of potential pitfalls in every link of mining. Even if you avoid these pitfalls, you still have to face the impact of sudden abnormalities such as power outages and network outages in the mine. But even so , mining is still a good business at present.

When participating in mining, it is very important to choose a reliable partner with good service quality (such as B.TOP's joint mining). It can not only help you avoid pitfalls, but also provide more complete subsequent compensation services even if you encounter some force majeure emergencies.