In the field of blockchain, "mining" is a very common term. We often say that "Bitcoin is produced by mining", which is actually a vivid metaphor: the process of mining Bitcoin is very similar to mining oil resources, except that mining oil resources requires miners to dive into the mine to work; while mining Bitcoin requires "miners" to bury themselves in the vast code to work.

Why do we do this? This is determined by the setting of the Bitcoin system. In the setting of the Bitcoin system, participants need to use computers to do a large number of hash collisions, hundreds of millions of times, until they find the correct hash value, they can get some Bitcoin as a reward. In layman's terms, this process is similar to doing a lot of mathematical operations in a vast code. Only when the correct answer is found can a certain amount of Bitcoin be obtained as a reward, and Bitcoin is thus continuously produced.

Mining is closely related to computing power (the computing power of a computer). In the final analysis, mining is all about computing power. The higher the computing power of a computer, the faster it can calculate, and the greater the chance of finding the correct hash value and earning Bitcoin. Therefore, the history of mining can be said to be the history of the evolution of computing power.

1. CUP Mining

On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block of Bitcoin, the Genesis Block, on a small server in Helsinki, Finland, and received a reward of 50 Bitcoins. At that time, the mining tool used by Satoshi Nakamoto was the CPU. As we know, ordinary computers are equipped with CPUs, so the threshold for mining was relatively low at that time. Mining could be done using home computers, and everyone could be a miner.

At that time, mining was only popular in a very small circle of geeks. After Bitcoin trading was launched on the Bitcoin trading platform, Bitcoin had a price. In addition, the gaming industry was in a downturn at the time, so many game leveling agents turned to Bitcoin mining to earn income, and the group of Bitcoin mining became larger and larger.

2. GPU Mining

In 2010, GPU mining officially debuted. A GPU graphics card is equivalent to dozens of CPUs, and the computing power has been significantly improved. At that time, many people found that the benefits of GPU mining were much higher than CPU mining. If a GPU was lucky, it could mine dozens of bitcoins a day, so miners began to buy a large number of computers equipped with GPU graphics cards for mining.

As GPU mining gradually became popular, some people found that the core chips of the GPU could be taken out separately, and then many of these core chips could be concentrated on one device for mining, forming FPGA mining. The Chinese name of FPGA is "field programmable gate array", which means that people can achieve any function by writing any program in it, so mining is naturally a piece of cake.

ASIC Mining

In 2012, professional mining machines represented by ASIC officially entered people's field of vision. The so-called ASIC refers to an integrated circuit designed for a specific purpose; and ASIC mining machines are equivalent to integrated circuit devices customized for digital currency mining. This device is born for mining and focuses only on mining digital currency.

In 2012, Butterfly Labs, a US Bitcoin mining machine development organization, claimed that they were ready to develop an ASIC mining machine. However, the "Butterfly Miner" did not arrive as promised. After collecting the customer's deposit, Butterfly Labs did not sell it on time. Later, it was labeled "fraud" by the US federal court. Butterfly Labs' assets were frozen and the Butterfly Miner was abandoned.

Also in 2012, an account named Friedcat posted a message on the Bitcoin forum, claiming that he could make an ASIC mining machine. In early 2013, a doctoral student at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics named Pumpkin Zhang successfully developed an ASIC mining machine, Avalon. After that, Pumpkin Zhang turned to the research and development of mining machine chips and established the industry-renowned mining machine chip company Canaan Creative.

At the end of 2013, Wu Jihan, a talented student from Peking University who was once a shareholder of FC, chose to withdraw from FC and set up his own mining machine company, Bitmain. Wu Jihan's team then developed the Antminer S1, which was at the top of the performance at the time, laying the foundation for Bitmain to seek the position of "the number one in the mining circle" in the future.

Avalon and Antminer have gradually become the mainstream mining machines for ASIC mining. Since ASIC is built for a specific function, its computing power is dozens or hundreds of times higher than that of ordinary computers. Therefore, since the second half of 2013, a large number of ASIC mining machines have sprung up like mushrooms after rain.

4. Behavioral Mining

Although in theory, all digital currencies must be obtained through mining, not all digital currencies need to be mined with mining machines. Currently, the only digital currencies that we know of that must be mined with mining machines are Bitcoin and Ethereum. With the explosion of the blockchain industry, various mining concepts and mining behaviors have also emerged.

1. Transaction Mining

In May 2018, the cryptocurrency trading platform FCoin proposed the concept of "transaction mining". "Transaction mining" means that as long as the transaction on the trading platform generates a handling fee, the corresponding amount of platform coins can be mined. The transaction mining model was once very popular, and many newly emerging trading platforms tried this mining model at the same time. However, due to certain drawbacks of this model, that is, miners have no intention to lock up their positions, the mined platform coins will be directly sold on the secondary market, which will suppress the coin price, so that it will be gradually forgotten with the withdrawal of FCoin in the later period.

(II) Task Mining

Task mining is mainly to obtain token rewards by completing tasks given by the platform. This mining model is mostly distributed in blockchain content communities and blockchain games. For blockchain content communities, miners can obtain token rewards by reading, sharing, liking or commenting on information. Currently, many blockchain information platforms adopt this mining model. For blockchain games, you can get certain token rewards mainly by completing tasks set in the game. The blockchain game "NetEase Planet" launched by NetEase and the blockchain game "Du Universe" launched by Baidu all adopt this mining model.

Summarize

As for the development of mining, I will introduce it here! Looking at the history of mining, from the earliest CPU mining to GPU mining, and then to professional mining machine ASIC mining, and then evolved into various kinds of behavioral mining, this process is very similar to the history of human gold mining, from the earliest manual gold panning to large-scale mechanized mining activities... Humans always have various ways to maximize their interests. I am afraid that this situation is something that even Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, did not expect!

Author: OK Blockchain Business School