The x11 ASIC race has begun.
I have been following the two manufacturers since before they had proof of product. Both of which are comprised of small teams that have now delivered their miners to market (naturally after much speculation in regards to legitimacy), and from what I have seen, reliable miners.
The first to market was a batch of 50 iBeLink DM384M DASH and x11 miners. The average performance is ~380 MH/s @ 750 W that is priced at ~$2,100.00 w/ free shipping.
The second and most recent player to market is the PinIdea ASIC x11 Miner DR-1. The average performance is ~500 MH/s @320 W that comes with a price tag of 500 DASH.
Batch 1 of the iBeLink sold out with 24 hours and showed ROI within 35 days when renting the hash rate through NiceHash.
Both manufacturers have committed to selling a limited amount per person/per order - in an attempt to influence a decentralized ownership of x11 mining. As of late, iBeLink put up for sale their batch 2 miners. After the miners were sold out, an interesting number in the range of ~ 80-90 miners popped up on NiceHash… BFL anyone?
Followed by the demands of senior members of DASH community, iBeLink moved up their shipping times by almost a month and a half and orders have now been shipped for batch 2. It will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.
What do you guys think?
Do you think the x11 ASIC race will follow in history’s footsteps just like the original sha 256 ASIC race? Will it drive negative or positive impacts to the community or coin?
It maybe small but stills packs a mean punch!
X11 Baikal Mini Miner Spec
– Speed: 150MH / s (± 10%)
– Power consumption: 40W (± 5%) @ 0.27J / MH
– Power supply: DC 12V 5A taken power supply, plug an outer diameter of 5.5mm inner diameter of 2.5mm (not in the annex, it is recommended to buy their own, by comparison, can be handsome young mining machine power plug)
– Interface: Ethernet port
– Size: 140mm (L) x 100mm (W) x 95mm (H)
– Weight: 475 g
The fact that there is a sequential chain of hashes makes it much simpler (although, non-trivial) to design the x11 ASIC. I have considered in the past a type of dynamic PoW algorithm that would change which hash function is used in a provably fair way. The problem with this is that now you have different types of attacks that can be used, withholding of blocks for instance to try to guarantee the next hash function to be used would be one that is already being calculated on an ASIC.
There might be a way to overcome this by having an independent difficulty for each hashing function, but if there exists enough incentive to withhold blocks by a percentage of miners in order to continue hashing using a more efficient PoW algorithm (in terms of power consumption), this type of scheme could fail.
A potential solution to this block withholding attack is to penalize this scenario, i.e. if the last 10 blocks were mined with sha256d, then the probability that sha256d would be used as the hash function for the next block would go down.
Woah, the game has really been 'upped since i got into Bitcoins! I remember the GPU/CPU-mining days. Feels good to be back :)
Great article @silversteem !
Do you do any x11 (Dash) mining yourself?
Thanks @cryptotrends. I have been mining x11 for a little while now, my garage is currently the worlds loudest humidor : )
Hahaha legendary! With GPU's or ASIC's?
I've been keeping my eye on Dash for quiet some time, really like there whole blockchain-based governance mode they are building.
So the chips do all 11 algos? That's pretty nifty. Although it's not in the same atmosphere, I think X11 ASICs will go similarly to how Scrypt ASICs went. A handful of batches of 'em, then price drops, then disinterest, then no more, and lucky are those who have working ones at the end.
The chips just do x11, so they wouldn't do x13 or x15 ect. I actually agree that it will go similar to Scrypt ASIC's since the big mining houses will just crush profitability so they most likely would not enter the space unless the x11 algo coins were to collectively be much more valuable than today to support the added difficulty spike
While bitcoin mining has certainly dropped in value, there's no denying that there can be a lot of money to be made in x11. One of the things I like about Genesis Mining is that they'll do BTC distribution. So you mine Dash, for example, and then get paid in BTC. Quite nice. :)
Hey man, I don't know what I did to deserve it, but thanks for the Steem! Really appreciate it, I'm just working away at another article, so hopefully you like this one as well.
CG
Wow big change, asic is amazing. Revolution runs away from mee lol
Just got a PinIdea DR-2, hashes b/w 400-500MHs at the pool, generating ~ 0.1 BTC / day @ Nicehash. The DR-2 has an onboard controller with a decent UI. So far so good.
What would be my RIO if i ll buy this rig?
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@r4ken depends on your purchase price, i'm only seeing ~.03btc per GH/s for x11 mining