IPFS Mining Machine Purchase Guide

The time for the star main chain IPFS to go online is approaching, and it is not only investors who are looking forward to it, but also miners. Recently, a "group" of so-called IPFS mining machine vendors have emerged. In the spirit of getting to the bottom of things, we will take a look at the essence of IPFS mining.

IPFS working mechanism

FileCoin is the incentive layer of IPFS, and IPFS is the protocol layer. What we usually call IPFS mining machines are actually mining Filecoin. In essence, we share our storage hard drives with the IPFS protocol and then get Filecoin rewards.

Filecoin's main consensus mechanism [from the Filecoin white paper]:

Proof-of-Replication ensures that the data that IPFS needs to store has been stored on the miner's disk.

Proof-of-Spacetime ensures that the data of the industry and mining industry is still in the secondary disk during a certain period of time, rather than being deleted, otherwise there will be a penalty.

Filecoin's mechanism includes two aspects: one is how to reward users, and the other is to prevent users from cheating and being irresponsible.

In addition, network bandwidth is also considered a part of IPFS. After all, data must go through the network. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, which transmit hash values, the data we transmit is valuable, such as videos, audio, photos and other files. From this perspective, the value of Filecoin/IPFS blockchain is more obvious, and shared storage also has a deeper meaning. Of course, the significance of IPFS is not just limited to storage. There is a more ambitious goal, which is to make up for or even replace the http protocol. We will not discuss these for the time being.

What should an IPFS mining machine look like?

From the essence of Filecoin/IPFS, it is actually the sharing of hard disks. The size of the hardware determines the income of miners. Let's talk about which mining machine is most suitable for mining from several aspects:

1. Operating System

Why is the operating system so important? If you have mined Ethereum, you will know that it is basically "pirated Windows" + scripts. So what does the software look like?

The command line software Claymore above is very simple to use. Just fill in the wallet address and mining pool, and then run it. As shown in the figure above, when there is a problem with the software, turn on the computer and restart the script. If the computer crashes that day and we encounter the classic blue screen Windows, then someone needs to go over and manually restart the computer. Some large mining farms are equipped with several network administrators who specialize in this.

2. Mining system

First of all, IPFS requires a professional storage server system. Have you ever seen a professional storage server using Windows? Or a "pirated" one? More than 90% of the server market is Linux, including big companies like Google, Alibaba, and Tencent. There are almost no Internet companies that use Windows. If there are any, please tell me and we will laugh at them.

If you buy an IPFS mining machine and they say it is running Windows , please ask them: Did Microsoft authorize you? How can you be so awesome if you use pirated software?

The reason why Linux is so widely used is not because it is open source and free, but because it is famous for its stability. It can work 24/7 without a reboot. It is also safer and more reliable. The Linux file system is more efficient and safer than the Windows file system. In case of an attack, it has a good firewall. What about Windows? Do you install antivirus software? That picture is too beautiful for me to look at. There are many other advantages of Linux, which I won't list one by one.

In addition, IPFS service requires a good follow-up software service. If the IPFS program crashes, you must restart the program immediately, otherwise the IPFS protocol will think you are not online and punish your staked tokens. IPFS mining software upgrades, system patch security upgrades, and monitoring of system and hard disk status at any time are all essential for a storage server.

3. Mining hardware

It is time to compare Ethereum mining machines. Today’s Ethereum mining machines are made by “computer malls”. The surge in Ethereum in 2017 revived the sluggish “computer assemblers”. The motherboard manufacturers that were half-dead before also took the opportunity to become popular, designing some motherboards that support 6 to 8 graphics cards. Computer assemblers buy motherboards and graphics cards (because graphics cards are so popular, I can’t buy graphics cards to play PUBG), assemble them, make a big case, add a powerful fan, and the business is done.

Because the main computing power of Ethereum requires graphics cards, the requirements for other things are not high. There are many good and bad ones. Anyway, it is just a crash and restart, which is not a big problem. Let me show you what a graphics card mining machine looks like. After it is turned on, it is basically like an airport. It consumes a lot of electricity. Putting one at home can be used as a heater.

Finally, let’s talk about IPFS mining machines. There are several important points:

1. It supports hard disk expansion. The STTA interface should be able to install more graphics cards. Otherwise, it will be a big problem to upgrade it in the future. It is a waste to throw away the built-in hard disk, and there is no way to increase the hard disk space if you don’t throw it away. Basically, the mining machine companies that force you to use hard disks before you buy them are all scoundrels, and they force you to eat a batch of leftover hard disks.

2. There needs to be a monitoring indicator for the hard disk. When you deploy mining machines on a large scale, it is a physical task to find out which hard disk is broken.

3. Heat dissipation requires a hard disk temperature control system. Hard disks are very sensitive to temperature and will be damaged quickly or even directly at temperatures above 50 degrees.

4. Gigabit network port is the minimum configuration, and the p2p protocol requires a long time of network data exchange.

5. Dustproof. Hard disks have very high requirements for the environment. Large amounts of dust will directly lead to bad sectors on the hard disk, so most of them are hosted in IDC computer rooms.

6. Shockproof design: Multiple hard disks working together may cause resonance, and hard disk vibration directly causes bad sectors and data loss.

7. CPU: This is not a big deal, because the mechanism of IPFS can be handled by the current CPU processing power. I can't think of any other use for a 4-core or 8-core CPU other than wasting electricity. Is it a marketing gimmick? Maybe.

8. Memory. If it is Windows, you need to start with 4G memory, because Windows system takes up a lot of resources, of course Windows is not suitable. For Linux, you need to start with 2G memory, so companies that use Windows memory and Linux memory are amateur companies.

To sum up, an IPFS mining machine should look like this: Linux system (preferably customized according to IPFS characteristics), customized software services, multiple hard disk interfaces (not USB external interfaces), customized hard disk temperature monitoring and display of hard disk status, gigabit network port, dustproof and shockproof.

Do you understand the above? Most mining machine vendors now have unsold Ethereum products, so they start selling them by listing them on IPFS. Dear readers, you must be careful when buying. The above picture is a summary of the "well-known" mining machine brands on the market. You can decide which one to buy based on your preferences!