Placeholders (PHL) – A New X16R Crypto for Decentralized Marketplace for Distributed Computing Resources

18 Dec
2018

There is a relatively new ambitious project called Placeholders (PHL) that is aiming to create a Decentralized Marketplace for Distributed Computing Resources to serve as an alternative to Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. Placeholders’ blockchain utilizes the so called “artifacts” as placeholders, which is custom data stored in the blockchain to enable complex computing operations. These complex computing operations will be provided by Placeholders wallet users who rent their local computing resources (CPU/Hard-drive/RAM) to buyers who are willing to pay in PHL for the resources to be utilized as a virtual private server (VPS) in the cloud. Do note that as usual with new projects that do not yet have a full working platform for what they are promising to be delivered there is a risk involved!

Placeholders is a work in progress that seems to be forked from Ravencoin (RVN) using the same algorithm for mining the PHL coins that will be used by the project’s decentralized marketplace for payment for the distributed computing resources, though it seems that a different algorithm was used for a while before forking to X16R. The project has just recently been started, so the full functionality for the platform is far from ready, though it does seem promising if the team manages to implement their plans in reality. The block reward for mining is 5 PHL, decreasing emission over time to limit inflation, halving after first 90 days and then the emissions will be reduced every 90 days at decreasing rate throughout the future of the blockchain. The maximum supply for the Placeholders is 10,500,000 PHL with no pre-mine, dev-fee or something like that and the coin is already listed on an exchange for people not interested in following the project development over time, but just want to be mining and selling the coins. If you are looking or an exchange for trading PHL coins, then you can try Crex and qTrade.

– For more information about the Placeholders (PHL) project check the Bitcoitalk announcement…

New z-enemy 1.27 Nvidia GPU Miner With Improved Performance

9 Dec
2018

The latest update of the z-enemy 1.27 Nvidia GPU miner comes with some more performance optimizations in a number of the supported crypto algorithms with tweaks targeted at Nvidia GTX 10×0 GPUs. You can expect to see performance improvements of up to +3-4% for X16r and X16s as well as for HEX, up to +6-8% for Bitcoin Diamond (BCD), up to 1-3% on others like X17, Bitcore, C11, Sonoa, etc… on GTX 10×0 cards. So if using any of the supported algorithms by the z-enemy miner at the moment you should definitely upgrade your version to 1.27 to get a bit of extra performance boost.

The latest z-enemy version 1.27 is available for CUDA 9.1, 9.2 and 10.0 for 64-bit Windows versions as well as CUDA 9.0, CUDA 9.1, CUDA 9.2 and CUDA 10 binaries for Linux (HiveOS, PiMP OS, EthOS & Ubuntu). Make sure that you have the respective recent video driver version installed for the CUDA version you want to use – 388+ for 9.1, 397+ for 9.2 and 411+ for CUDA 10.0, though 415+ is advised for the best performance. We remind you that z-enemy is a closed source miner available only as a binary release and it contains a 1% developer fee built-in to support further software development.

Windows Downloads:
– Download z-enemy 1.27 Windows CUDA 9.1 64-bit
– Download z-enemy 1.27 Windows CUDA 9.2 64-bit
– Download z-enemy 1.27 Windows CUDA 10.0 64-bit

Linux Download (HiveOS, PiMP OS, EthOS & Ubuntu):
– Download z-enemy 1.27 Linux CUDA 9.1
– Download z-enemy 1.27 Linux CUDA 9.2
– Download z-enemy 1.27 Linux CUDA 10.0

New Braiins OS Cobalt Available Now for S9 and T1 ASIC Miners

6 Dec
2018

Braiins OS has just released a new update to their alternative opensource OS for Bitcoin ASIC miners available for Antminer S9 and DragonMint T1 with support for AsicBoost support enabled. The new Braiins OS Cobalt is here to replace the previous released called Wolfram bringing some improvements such as new status page, per chip frequency calibration for S9, improved bulk upgrades and full compatibility with the Awesome Miner management app.

The Cobalt update brings multiple ways of upgrading your ASIC miners from their stock firmware including a version that can now directly be flashed via the stock firmware’s update feature for a really easy deployment. Installing from a PC with Windows is now easier as with the previous release you had to use a Linux PC to deploy the Braiins OS software to your miners and that was not always an easy to do thing for many people. Here you can find more details on how to install Braiins OS Cobalt on the compatible Bitcoin ASIC miners using al supported methods.

Braiins OS uses over (version-rolling) AsicBoost in accordance with BIP310, so in order to take advantage of that feature that essentially reduces power usage while maintaining the same hashrate you should go for a mining pool that supports it. With Braiins OS you have easy per chain control of the operating frequency and voltage of the miner, though you should be extra careful when playing with these in order to be on the safe side. The ASIC Boost is enabled by default, so if you are having trouble connecting to a mining pool then it most likely does not support AsicBoost and you may have to disable it from the settings.

One thing however that is still missing in the updated Braiins OS is a user control feature for the cooling fans, the operating system uses automatic fan control maintaining low RPMs and higher operating temperatures. When increasing the voltage and frequency of the miner by overclocking it will compensate with higher RPMs for the fans, but the temperature will still be maintained pretty high for our taste. Unfortunately there is no option to force it to 100% fan for example via the web interface and in our opinion this is a must have feature that is still missing. Other than that we like what we are seeing from Braiins OS and how it is improving with new releases, so if you still have not tried it you might give it a go as an alternative for the stock firmware from Bitmain’s S9 or Halong Mining’s T1.

– For more details about the new Braiins OS Cobalt release for S9 and T1 ASIC miners…

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