Archive for the ‘General Info’ Category

Where to Track SegWit (Segregated Witness) Adoption Progress

24, Jul 2017

SegWit (Segregated Witness) adoption for Bitcoin (BTC) is currently underway as a means to increase the capacity of the Bitcoin blockchain blocks by separating signatures from transactions thus reducing the size of transactions. The problem with too much transactions on the limited 1MB block size has gotten serious enough for users to want a solution that would make Bitcoin transactions faster and with lower fees. SegWit is currently getting traction as a solution to the problem as opposed to just increasing the block size from the current limit of 1MB. Aside from increasing the capacity of transactions in the 1MB blocks SegWit also allows for improved security (improving security was the original goal).

There are still some issues with reaching a consensus if SegWit is the best solution to the further scaling of Bitcoin, but the problem has gotten serious enough that a solution, even if temporary solving the capacity problem is needed. The Bitcoin community is apparently reaching a conclusion that SegWith, although may not be perfect, might be the solution that we need badly and support is growing. With the recent fears of a possible Bitcoin split into different crypto currencies after a fork of the network we might very soon reach to a point where SegWit will have enough support to be locked in and then activated. SegWit is set to activate if at least 95 percent of the Bitcoin network hash power signals support for it, so miners and more specifically large mining pools have a big role here.

The recent activation of BIP 91 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 91) has reassured users that a chain split for Bitcoin is not going to be very likely, but then again nothing is 100% sure yet. BIP 91 was just signaling the intention of miners to support SegWit activation and not 100% guarantee they will in fact do it. Still was met with a lot of optimism and we are moving along the path of activating SegWit and avoiding a possible split of Bitcoin.

– You can track the current level of SegWit support on Coin Dance here…

Building a Simple Mining Rig Restarter with Raspberry Pi

11, Jul 2017

Making your own solution for restarting a mining rig that has frozen is relatively simple for pretty much anyone, you just need a Raspberry Pi board and a couple of 5V relay boards and you can be up and running in no time. You can use the base RPi operating system and with the help of WiringPi you can get easy control of the GPIO pins of the Pi, even direct console one with the GPIO utility. Of course you can install a web server with some basic visual interface as well, simple buttons to drive on/off the relays connected to the GPIO pins of the Pi board.

If you have a spare Raspberry Pi 3 you have up to 28 channels available to drive on/off relays, though based on our experience only 25 of the GPIO puns are actually reliable usable. Pins 2, 3 and 14 have a bit of erratic behavior being in high (triggered state) when the Pi board boots up or temporary switching on and then off when rebooting the board, so it is wise to skip them. Another possible issue is the GPIO pin 0 (the bottom white one) as using zeroes can be tricky when programming something, so be careful with that one as well. We have been using the relays to short the on/off button on the motherboard forcing the mining rig to shut down and then start up again. This works surprisingly well and you avoid the need to work with the high 110V/220V mains power going through the relays that can cause problems for not so experienced users. Our latest setup relies on driving 18 rigs though a single RPi 3 board, so we have a couple of spare channels available for extending the functionality of the controller further if we need to.

So if you are looking for relatively cheap way to get remote control over the power of more mining rigs that are not easily rebootable otherwise you might want to start playing with Raspberry Pi and relays. It is not so cheap for just a few rigs as you need to buy a Pi 3 board, but once the number of rig rises the cost per system lowers. You can always start with a few and then add extra systems if needed, again you should have no problems driving up to 25 systems through the GPIO pins of the RPi 3. There are of course other commercial solutions also available for you to purchase that have been developer by miners for miners such as the SimpleMining SimpleRigResetter that we have talked about last year and now there is apparently a new version of the device already available, though it seems to be out of stock at the moment.

Counterfeit Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti Cards Out in The Wild

4, Jul 2017

We should start that what you see in the video above is not a joke, it is real and what we got with an order of GTX 1080 Ti video cards from a reputable European online retailer. Three seemingly brand new Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video cards ended up with surprising contents, scrap metal instead of the GPUs we expected to find inside. The video cards seemed like brand new and unopened, they were GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition from Gigabyte, all boxes packed with a nylon and with stickers on the boxes as you can see on the video. Yet when you open them up you end up with a surprising content and definitely what you would expect to find inside the box of such an expensive GPU…

Some supplier on somebody on the supply chain has apparently made quite the effort to make these as aside from packaging the boxes to make them seem like new, the contents was made to be the exact same weight as the original box with a real card inside. Obviously the retailer does not open the boxes to check if they contain the correct item, but they can easily weight the boxes and confirm if there is something wrong or not without opening the box. The actual video cards will find their place on eBay or any other place for selling them or maybe they will get used for mining.

Putting pieces of scrap metal with additional lead weight and packaging them in a way that they will not make strange noises when handing the box, some effort to make a counterfeit Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti. Then repackaging the whole thing and shipping it to the seller that in turn sends it to customers and in the end you get an angry customer that is no way happy with what he gets instead of the GPU he expected and paid for.

You may find different prices of scrap metal inside the box, but each one is well made in order to avoid possible suspicion of an issue like metal parts hitting and making strange noises or the package being too light or too heavy.

Of course buying from a reputable retailer will get your problem with the scrap metal instead of GPUs resolved with some extra headaches and time, so nothing too serious besides the bad surprise. Regardless if you are buying GPUs for mining or for gaming, just be careful that you do not buy online from places where returning the items if you end up with a problem like ours will not be an issue.


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