No matter from the perspective of technology or mining, the second half of 2020 will be an important period of change for Ethereum. The beacon chain is about to come out, bringing Ethereum into the 2.0 era; the DAG file of Ethereum mining on the PoW chain will exceed 4G, and more than 50% of the current graphics cards in the entire network will not be able to continue ETH mining.

What do senior mining industry participants think about short-term and long-term opportunities and challenges?

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Recharge Faith: Why are you optimistic about Ethereum?

Ecology, market value, and scalability support long-term value

Wang Chun:F2Pool is one of the early participants in the Ethereum ecosystem and the first mining pool in China to support Ethereum.

First, Ethereum has a broad developer community base. Not only developers but also many scientists and researchers are supporting Ethereum. The annual research and development expenditure of the Ethereum Foundation is equivalent to 9 figures in RMB, and people can continue to conduct new research and attempts. Dapp, DeFi and other rich ecosystems built on Ethereum bring strong network effects.

Second, the market value and trading volume of ETH are second only to BTC, and it is the second largest cryptocurrency in the world, which has always been the focus of attention.

Third, the improvement of Ethereum’s scalability has solved many unsolved problems of Bitcoin, which can make DApps run more smoothly at a lower cost and enhance usability.

Mining Fairness and Profit

Zhang Songqing:From the perspective of mining fairness, PoW itself provides a relatively fair way of participation, and the ETH mining algorithm is anti-ASIC, so that professional mining machines are not so cost-effective, GPU miners can continue to participate in mining, so that more people around the world can Low cost and convenient participation; from the perspective of mining revenue, graphics card mining revenue has always been relatively stable. The update of graphics cards is not as fast as that of professional mining machines. Graphics cards such as 474 and 1060 three or four years ago can still make good profits.

High value preservation of mining hardware

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Graphics card mining: what is the market development and revenue?

From explosive growth to steady growth

Zhang Songqing:Graphics card mining machines ushered in explosive growth in 2016-2017, and many brands also appeared. When the price of ETH was at its peak, "one card was hard to find"; from 2018, ETH entered a callback cycle, and the shipments of new mining machines Gradually slowing down. During the period when ETH was above $300, the shipment of new mining machines almost stagnated; from the second half of 2018 to the present, graphics card mining machines are mostly second-hand hardware in circulation, and the payback cycle is mostly between 10-18 between months.

The update of the graphics card mining machine is basically carried out with the increase of the DAG file of ETH. DAG increased by 1G in about a year. Around the end of November this year, 4G graphics cards will also withdraw from ETH mining. Some Ethereum mining machines are also relatively mature. Generally speaking, in the past two years, buying a second-hand graphics card mining machine is still a good and stable investment. If you buy a new graphics card, it is recommended to recommend the latest generation of hardware with a relatively high value preservation rate.

Decrease the market, choose the right time to enter the market

Zhang Li:Graphics hardware is currently in a "decrement market". That is to say, basically the current hardware inventory for graphics card mining is relatively fixed. Due to the "exorbitant" price of new cards, it will take more than 2 years to pay back the cycle. Miners basically choose second-hand graphics cards to control costs. Because of this, market declines such as the "312" incident have little impact on graphics card miners.

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DAG will exceed 4G: how to solve the urgent task?

Optimizing the system can also extend the usage time of the graphics card

Zhang Songqing:ETH's DAG file reached 4GB around the end of December this year. Since the windows system itself occupies a certain amount of video memory, the time to stop mining will be advanced. However, miners with 4G cards use the minerOS system, which can extend the time by 3-4 months compared with the windows system, and get through this year's high water season.

P104 is special. In order to mine ETH stably and reduce power consumption, most cards physically have 8G video memory, and the BIOS of 4G has been flashed before leaving the factory. As early as last year, minerOS released the free upgrade service of P104-4G to 8G. 4G A cards such as 474/584 have a hardware transformation plan, replacing 8 512GB video memory chips with 1GB video memory. Due to the high price of video memory chips, the replacement cost is also high.

Most of the big mining players will start upgrading a year before the video memory reaches the limit. Since 1063 is an N card, besides ETH, it can also mine BEAM, AE and other currencies. Miners who bought 1063/P106-90 and other 3G graphics cards at a low price last year also made a fortune in small currencies.

It should be noted that in addition to hardware upgrades, power stability, and system stability, the training of operation and maintenance personnel is also a key factor for graphics card revenue.

ETC with the same algorithm is investigating the DAG problem

Xu Kang:secondary title

ETH turns to PoS: Which currencies are expected to undertake computing power?

Computing power will be allocated to each currency

Wang Chun:Ethereum does have a large proportion and influence on graphics card mining. After ETH is completely transferred to PoS, the computing power may move to other currencies relatively evenly, and share the benefits of these currencies. As for potential graphics card currencies, you can pay attention to the new developments on F2Pool. We have conducted detailed research and research on new currencies before launching them.

I appreciate Grin's team, philosophy and community. If it is said which currency is the most decentralized, except for Bitcoin, I will vote for Grin. However, potential currencies such as Grin and Handshake have not yet been supported by mainstream exchanges and need more promotion from the community.

ETC is continuously improving to undertake computing power

Xu Kang:The mining income of ETC and ETH is equal, and from the beginning of this year to the reduction of ETC production, the mining income of ETC is generally slightly higher than that of ETH. At present, whether it is in terms of switching costs or mining revenue, ETC is the most competitive in undertaking ETH computing power.

While enhancing communication with miners, ETC is also constantly optimizing technically. In the past two years, ETC has undergone three hard fork upgrades to be compatible with ETH upgrades. After the Phoenix hard fork in June, ETC and ETH will be in the same state for a while. In terms of ecology, ETC is also continuing to develop, and DeFi applications like MakerDAO will also appear on ETC. It is believed that these improvements will have many positive incentives for the market value.

No currency that can bear the computing power of ETH has been found yet

Zhang Li:At present, no currency that can undertake such a large computing power as ETH has been found. It is hoped that the existing graphics card currencies will have enough time to allow the computing power to "distribute" among the currencies and expand the ecology.

Some small currencies show potential

Zhang Songqing:secondary title

Ethereum 2.0: How should miners adjust their strategies?

Network development still takes time, you can find professional support as a node

Wang Chun:Ethereum 2.0 has undergone a long-term exploration, aiming to realize a new and more scalable network. The transformation of PoW to PoS is also the focus of attention of miners, and many teams are also conducting various explorations in sharding and second-layer expansion. The current Ethereum can solve certain problems, but it is still far away from fundamental improvement. The upcoming phase 0 can realize staking, but it may still be difficult for miners to be verification nodes.

stakefish has actively participated in many early PoS networks and has accumulated rich experience in participating in PoS networks. At present, the latest version of Ethereum is still in a highly tested state. Miners who plan to become nodes can seek professional verification nodes for technical support to avoid offline and double-signature problems that may be encountered during PoS network participation.

The transfer to PoS is carried out step by step, miners should not panic

Zhang Li:Miners don’t need to worry too much or panic when converting Ethereum to PoS. No community will convert such a high market capitalization network into a PoS consensus in a short period of time. PoW mining. For the Ethereum 2.0 of the PoS consensus, GPU miners naturally have the advantage of being a node. They can choose to hold the ETH mined on the Ethereum PoW chain and become a node on the Ethereum 2.0 to earn network rewards.