In the year of “halving”, ETH also “halved”!

Looking at the overall ETH network computing power, the peak of computing power was in August 2018, reaching about 296T. In May 2019, the ETH network computing power was about 150T, and the computing power dropped by 50%. This May was also the date when the ETH-dag file reached 3G. Of course, there are other factors for the decline in computing power: graphics card wear and tear, miners leaving the market due to price drops, and the shipment volume of 3G graphics cards at that time did not reach the scale of 4G graphics cards now.

Currently, the total computing power of the ETH network is about 180T, which is equivalent to 750,000 units if calculated based on 8 cards with 570-240M. Excluding some depreciation losses and inflow into consumer channels, 4G graphics cards such as 470/480/570/580/P104 still account for about 50% of the total computing power of the ETH network. If the dag-4G deadline comes, the total computing power of the ETH network may drop by 50%.

For miners, if we do not consider the extreme price changes, the output of a single machine in terms of currency may increase. However, due to the self-regulation of the market, there may not be drastic fluctuations in income.

In addition, for GPU mining machines, a large number of 4G graphics cards will be sold off, and graphics cards with large video memory will become more popular.

The deadline for mining ETH with 4G graphics cards is December 2020, but due to the system architecture and video memory management mechanism, the graphical interface win10 system will be unable to mine due to driver and system preloading, and win7 may be extended by 1 month.

MinerOS is a non-graphical system based on the Linux kernel, which can be infinitely close to December 2020. And minerOS has been extremely optimized in the 3G-dag era, so it can be said that there is basically no additional video memory occupied (except for 5M video memory when overclocking is turned on)

P104-4G can be upgraded to 8G for free

In addition, for miners with P104-4G graphics cards, minerOS can be upgraded to 8G with one click, allowing them to smoothly pass the deadline.

PS: Most batches of P104 are available, and whether it can be upgraded depends on the hardware conditions

After the ETH deadline is approaching, ETC will also not be able to mine with 4G graphics cards. Miners can divert to other GPU currencies. In the currency list of minerOS, we can see that there are many currencies that can be mined with graphics cards, such as AE, BEAM, GRIN, SERO, CKB, HNS, etc., many of which are new ways to mine after ETH 4G graphics cards cannot be used.

MinerOS supports one-click batch switching of currencies, which is very convenient.

However, it remains to be seen whether the existing GPU mining coins can be digested with such a large computing power diversion. However, the market is not static, and perhaps new opportunities will come after 4G graphics cards withdraw from ETH mining.

Graphics card modification: Through hardware modification, the video memory of 4G cards can be expanded to 8G, but the modification has costs, and there is no large-scale data on the performance and quality after the modification.

Kernel driver optimization: We hope that the mining software kernel can optimize the 4G video memory from the driver level.

Video memory sharing solution: By connecting a large video memory graphics card + multiple 4G graphics cards in parallel, the shared video memory solution allows 4G graphics cards to continue mining ETH. Technically feasible, but the mining efficiency and cost cannot be estimated.

That’s all for today. We will continue to pay attention to the developments of ETH and continue to share with you.

See you next week!