Guo Weicheng, founder of Panda Miner: Deeply cultivating the industry and making mining easier - Exclusive interview with Mining.com

Five years is enough time for a person to do a lot of things.

"It has joints before it is unearthed, and it has no intention to soar into the sky." This line from Xu Tingyun's "Ode to Bamboo" expresses the attitude of being low-key and humble even when reaching a very high height. There is also such a person in the mining circle, he is the founder of Niubit & Panda Miner - Guo Weicheng. In November, Wabi.com had the honor of conducting an exclusive interview with Mr. Guo. The following is the full content of this interview.

Kiki from CoinWise: Mr. Guo, we all know that Niubit has been operating for 5 years. It is an early cloud computing platform in the industry. What was your original intention when you started the cloud computing platform? And what made you create the Panda Miner two years later? Can you share your story with us?

Guo Weicheng : Actually, I was a small miner at the beginning. In the process of mining, I stepped on too many pitfalls and gained a lot of experience and lessons. On the road of fighting monsters and upgrading, I became a big miner. I began to think, have other people had the same experience as me? How to make it easy for ordinary users to participate in mining, and the idea of ​​creating a cloud computing platform emerged in my mind.

From 2014 to now, Niubit has become the oldest platform that continues to operate. I used so many adjectives in the previous part because there are many platforms that were created earlier than us, but they have withdrawn from the market due to market conditions or operational reasons. There are also platforms that have been shut down in the bear market and restarted in the bull market, but we are the only one that has been operating during the bull and bear market. In the process of mining Ethereum in 2016, using graphics cards for mining was troublesome to load and unload, and it was troublesome to repair. The machine was also easily damaged during transportation, so the idea of ​​making machines by ourselves emerged again. The idea was determined at the beginning of the year. In September 2016, about 20 integrated graphics prototypes were produced, and the world's first Ethereum mining machine with 8 graphics cards was launched. I remember that I also sent a mining machine to the mining website for evaluation. The first generation of Panda Miner was PandaMiner B1, and then we launched three updated and iterated versions. The graphics card integrated mining machine has achieved the first market share. We have gradually opened the hosting business of the machine, providing convenience for more users who want to participate in mining. Panda Mining Pool was established in 2018 and currently only supports ETH. It ranks fifth in the world in terms of computing power.

In 2019, we produced the first generation of Bitcoin mining machines belonging to Panda Miner. We are involved in almost every business in the entire mining industry chain, just like our purpose, to provide reliable mining services for each user and make mining easier.

Kiki: In 2017, the world's first Panda GPU mining machine was launched. As the only model with eight built-in RX480 graphics cards, did you encounter any difficulties during the development and launch of the mining machine? How did you overcome them?

Guo Weicheng : To be precise, the first Panda Miner was born in 2016. Our first graphics card was built with an AMD RX470 graphics card. When mining ETH, the A card is more cost-effective. During the research and development process, we encountered many problems. The first one was the internal stability of the mining machine. After producing the first batch of prototypes, we sent the prototypes to customers. During the transportation to the mine, the mining machine was bumpy, and the screws and internal graphics cards fell off. We took the prototype to the office to redo the internal structure plan and turned the office building into a warehouse.

Another issue that left a deep impression on me was the stability issue. When the mining machine was sent to the Inner Mongolia mine, there was a lot of wind and sand. Our first generation of mining machines used the mxm interface, and the sand affected the stability of the interface. Later, we improved it and adjusted the interface to pcie, which greatly improved the stability. Although there were still many problems, we overcame them one by one, and we are also very grateful to the users who supported us at the time and helped us grow together.

Kiki from MiningCoin.com: As more and more people are aware of and understand digital currency mining, do you have any advice for newcomers?

Guo Weicheng : Newcomers can ask themselves a few questions before entering the mining market: 1. Do I have cheap electricity resources? 2. Do I have the time and energy to manage the mining machine? 3. Do I understand the risks of mining? The price of coins fluctuates, the difficulty of computing power changes, the industry changes, etc. If your answer is yes, then I think you can buy a mining machine to mine by yourself, but for novices, since there are many links involved in the actual operation of buying a mining machine for mining, I personally do not recommend buying a machine to mine directly at the beginning. You can start mining through cloud computing power as an entry point.

Cloud computing is the business direction we are currently vigorously developing. The threshold for buying mining machines is too high, including the threshold for cognition, purchase, and use. Cloud computing further makes the mining market C-end, lowers the threshold, and allows users to participate in mining more conveniently to obtain mining income. However, cloud computing is easy to play Ponzi, and you need to choose a reliable platform to form a real mining investment. Our Niubit platform is the oldest cloud computing platform still surviving in the market, and has been operating stably for 5 years, so you can pay more attention to us. The model is more durable and healthy, the operation method is transparent, and the user income is stable.

Kiki from Mining.com: On October 30, Panda Miner released the first Bitcoin mining machine. From graphics cards to ASIC, what is the reason for developing this Bitcoin mining machine?

Guo Weicheng : In 2017, we focused on Ethereum mining machines and entered the mining machine market through differentiated competition. Later, we have been focusing on developing our own Bitcoin mining machines and established a dedicated Bitcoin mining machine hardware development team. In fact, in 2018, we had already produced 12nm Bitcoin chips. Due to market conditions and other reasons, we did not carry out large-scale mass production.

In 2019, we released the first Bitcoin mining machine, PandaMiner P3, with a 10nm chip, a computing power of 44TH/S, and an energy efficiency of 58J/TH. This machine embodies a lot of our expectations and is also a new beginning. We will continue to deepen our roots in this industry and better serve our users. Every step in the future will be a progress.

Kiki from MiningCoin.com: The landscape of mining machine manufacturers has changed significantly in the past two years, from the original seller's market where machines were hard to come by to the current buyer's market with numerous brands. What do you think of the current landscape? Will this be the beginning of a red ocean in the industry?

Guo Weicheng : I think the changes in the current industrial structure are good for both peers and users. For users, from the previous hard-to-find mining machines to the current buyer's market, the same price can get more cost-effective mining machines. For users, the reduction in mining machine costs can effectively shorten the investment return cycle. For peers, the competition between each other is more intense. On the one hand, it promotes the technological development of chip research and development. The wafer foundry industry represented by TSMC is driving the prosperity of the semiconductor industry under the continuous pursuit of more advanced process technology.

On the other hand, Panda Miner is also based on the principle of openness. If any team has a good hardware solution, we can embrace cooperation. With the improvement of chip R&D technology, on the basis of equal technical competitiveness of each company, market brand/operation promotion/traffic acquisition will be the core competitiveness, and cloud computing power will become the main form of participation of miners in mining in the future. We are also vigorously developing cloud computing power, targeting the main brand OXBTC in the overseas market, and the brand Niubit Mini Miner that conforms to domestic usage habits, so that more users can participate in mining.

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* Original article from Wabi.com. Please do not reprint without permission.