The miners are waiting for this day to come.
It is impossible to deal with it in advance. "We didn't make short-term adjustments in advance, we took one step at a time." Ethereum miner Wang Zelin (pseudonym) told Odaily.
At the same time, Wang Zelin still buys electricity and builds factories in various places as in previous years, so as to revitalize the low-cost electricity after the arrival of the wet season.
This move happened on the eve of the upgrade of Ethereum, which is worth pondering.
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As in previous years, buying electricity and building farms
On January 16th, Ethereum will undergo the eighth upgrade in its history - the Constantinople upgrade.
This upgrade is expected to greatly improve the performance of Ethereum, and at the same time, the block reward will be changed from 3 Eth to 2 Eth, which means that the mining reward of miners will be reduced by 33.3%.
Although the core developers decided to adopt this upgrade plan in August last year, until now, many miners still show "indifference" to this plan.
Its mines with tens of thousands of machines have not taken special countermeasures.
At that time, the Ethereum network used for testing reached the scheduled upgrade block height, but in the end the network failed to upgrade due to too few miners running the beta client, which directly delayed the upgrade process of Ethereum Constantinople.
It can be seen that, as the last mile to reach a consensus, Ethereum miners are not too enthusiastic about Ether upgrades. What's more, this upgrade has directly affected its revenue.
Wang Zelin believes that the upgrade of Ethereum has not caused too much fluctuation in the market, so he doesn't care much. Its mines with tens of thousands of machines seem to have no special countermeasures.
Wang Zelin even continued to use electricity to build mines before the wet season, as in the past, without any sign of a major retreat.
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The reshuffle has come, and it is a realistic choice to stay
Chen Lei, secretary-general of the Peking University Blockchain Club and owner of the mine, worries that this situation will only worsen the living conditions of the miners.
"The electricity bill in the Southwest during the flood season will be lower than the current industry cost. With the support of the flood season, many people feel that it is time to make a move. In fact, as long as someone makes a move, it will increase the difficulty of mining. At that time, coupled with production reduction , the unit profit will continue to decline.” Chen Lei said.
An industry insider analyzed to Odaily: "In this industry, people with funds and resources believe that they do not belong to the part that has been washed away. But by this time, any problem in a certain link will directly affect survival."
Next, "'shuffled' things will continue to happen, will gradually educate the industry." He said.
Wang Zelin does not hide the hidden worries he sees in the industry. "If the currency price does not improve much, the upgrade will kill some miners."
"It may affect 20-30% of the Ethereum miners." Chen Lei believes, "ETH is the largest currency for graphics card mining, and most of the graphics cards are concentrated. After the production reduction, machines with high electricity costs and low operation and maintenance efficiency will withdraw. Just like last time A situation where prices plummeted."
The "last plunge" refers to the fact that in November last year, Ethereum fell below 1,000 yuan and bottomed out several times in the following month, leaving a large number of miners unable to make ends meet and forced to move.
According to Qiu Xiaodong, key account manager of Xinghuo Mining Pool, the computing power of the entire network dropped to around 160T at the time, nearly half of the highest value. Based on the computing power of the 574 mining machines commonly used in Ethereum, about 760,000 graphics card mining machines have left the Ethereum network.
Now, it’s time to digest the “excess” computing power of Ethereum.
Many people in the industry believe that at that time, a large amount of Ethereum computing power will be switched to small currencies, which will directly increase the difficulty of mining small currencies.
"Other coins can only accommodate part of the escaped computing power. In the final analysis, machines with high cost and low efficiency still have to be shut down." Chen Lei said.
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On the eve of "Tranquility", one step is one step
The only consolation is that if the price of the currency really drops sharply at that time and triggers the sell-off of graphics cards, the price cut will not be as crazy as the Asic mining machine.
"Asic mining machines can only mine, and graphics card mining machines can also be used in Internet cafes to run computers." An industry insider said.
The former consensus builder, at the beginning of the rise of the Ethereum network in 2015, sold while digging, and did not wait until the currency price reached the peak later. Now it is on the eve of "tranquility" - the fork of Constantinople, but it has to "withdraw" from the "expulsion" of the Internet.
"Now this node can only take one step, one step." The miners seem to have returned to 2015 when they just mined Ethereum.
"The era of mining with graphics card mining machines on Ethereum will definitely end with the continuous upgrade of Ethereum. As for the transition period of this reshuffle, it is hard to say how long it will take." Qiu Xiaodong said.
"The only thing that can save the miners is the market." After discussing various possibilities, Chen Lei said.
(I am the author Xuejiao, focusing on mining and blockchain reports, welcome to add WeChat hxjiapg for communication and discussion.)
