MASQ the Web3 Decentralized Private Browser Powered by Polygon

11 Nov
2022

Here is a very interesting privacy-oriented crypto project that is currently in the works called MASQ, and it is not only a new browser that you might soon find yourself using, but a whole privacy-oriented network with a lot of potential. The MASQ web3 privacy browser operates on top of the core MASQ Node software, to allow users to experience the benefits of the mesh network privacy, while delivering the normal comforts of a typical browser – but without the bloatware, trackers, useless extensions and user analytics and most of all making everything work easy and effortless for the user.

The users are integral to supporting the network – by choosing to share their bandwidth (it is optional) they support the privacy routing for other users and earn $MASQ utility tokens respectively from peer requests across the MASQ Network. MASQ is built on Ethereum (ETH), and used with Polygon for cheap and fast transactions, the MASQ token (ERC20 token) is earned when you serve megabytes of data to other users of the platform, and spent whenever you consume data. MASQ is chain-agnostic, meaning it can in theory be expanded to use any blockchain for transactions.

Whenever a request for data is sent MASQ sends the request to someone in your immediate vicinity called Neighbourhood, your request takes a random route across the network, encrypted as a CORES package and gets routed across 3+ hops, then an exit node fetches the required content – relay nodes are paid for routing, and exit nodes are paid even more for fetching the content. So, the MASQ Network essentially allows users across the globe to interact securely across their internet connections – creating a dMeshVPN (decentralized Mesh VPN).

Do note that currently MASQ has a working desktop app that is in Beta testnet, about to open Public Beta launch groups in Q3 2022. Beta users are apparently able to access all the core features of the software, and share feedback for further improvements, and feature requests. We have applied for beta testing the MASQ browser, but are yet to actually give it a try, so unfortunately at this time we cannot share personal experience with the software, but it does look really promising for sure.

The total supply of the MASQ token is 37.5 Million with circulating supply according to CoinMarketCap at around 25.5 Million currently and the price of a single MSAQ is around $0.18 USD at the moment with the project still largely not talked about a lot… due to still being in beta and the browser not yet available to users. The total market capitalization of the project at the moment is about $4.7 Million USD according to the available data, so there is significant room for growth, especially when the browser comes out of beta. The only CEX exchange that currently has MASQ listed for trading is ProBit Global, but you can also use multiple DEXes to trade the token as well – SushiSwap, QuickSwap, OpenOcean if you are interested in obtaining some MASQ tokens now.

– For more information about the MASQ Network and their Privacy Browser project…

Additional Improvement for a Silent Modified Jasminer X4 1U ASIC Miner

10 Nov
2022

It seems that we kind of missed something important in the silent modification of the Jasminer X4 1U miners described here and that is to take into account the one other thing that generates heat inside the miner. That is the controller chip on the miner’s control board that normally does not come with a cooling heatsink on top of it. The Xilinx Zynq-7000 SoC (XA7Z020) used is not a traditional FPGA like we kind of assumed without properly checking the specs of the chip. It is in fact a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 Application Processor Unit (APU), and as you know having a processor, even a lower power ARM one can get things hot when operating and under load 24/7…

So, what apparently happened during the night, with no one present around the miner is the control board of the Jasminer X4 1U that we were using for testing just dying on us for no apparent reason. The only thing that comes to mind is the chip overheating for some reason and dying on us, although the normal operating temperature does not seem to suggest any overheating issues. Normally, when the miner is in its original package inside the 1U box with all the high-rpm server fans the inside ambient temperature is probably lower and thus no additional cooling has been provided for the controller board’s processor, but when you open it up and modify it to use silent fans things might become different. Thankfully we’ve had a spare controller board already ordered just in case something like that happened, so we replaced it immediately and the miner continued to function like before.

We’ve measure the operating temperature of the Zynq APU on the new controller board and it is nowhere near dangerous levels for such chips, at around 52 degrees Celsius (125.6 F) it should be pretty much safe even without extra cooling, right. Well, it might be now, but if what for some reason this temp rises for a while, probably that is what happened for some reason with the APU getting higher load for a longer period of time resulting in overheating (thouhg it could also be some totally unreleated reason as well, can’t be sure). Just to be on the safe side, it is a good idea to add a small memory chip cooler on top of the Zynq APU in order to keep the operating temperature lower at all times. Especially if you plan on using a silent modified miner and the the standard configuration where the issue could be less prone to appear.

Also, a good advice might be to order a spare controller board just in case, especially if you are running more than just a single Jasminer X4 1U ASIC miner. This is to avoid possible downtime in case something happens with the controller board on your miner. Do note that you can connect multiple hashing boards with Jasminer X4 ASICs to a single control board (our both had 3 connectors for hash board), though we’ve seen board with more connectors as well. We’ve tried and the control board detects and functions with a hashing board connected to all of the three available ports. So, as a temporary solution you might use a single control board to drive multiple hashboards of multiple miners in case you have more than juts one and you get a dead controller board.

What Are You Currently Mining, Have You Tried Kaspa (KAS)

5 Nov
2022

Kaspa (KAS) is a very interesting crypto project that has been mostly flying well under the radar, but it is starting to get the interest it deservers lately. KAS is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency which implements the GHOSTDAG protocol – a protocol that does not orphan blocks created in parallel, but rather allows them to coexist and orders them in consensus. This generalization of Nakamoto consensus allows for secure operation while maintaining very high block rates (currently one block per second, aiming for 32/sec, with visions of 100/sec) and minuscule confirmation times dominated by internet latency.

Kaspa (KAS) being a PoW coin can be mined and mining is based on kHeavyHash, a modified form of the “optical-miner” ready HeavyHash algorithm. kHeavyhash utilizes matrix multiplication that is framed into 2 keccacs. kHeavyHash is energy efficient, core dominant (requires higher GPU clock and not affected as much by memory) and can be successfully mined by GPU with FPGAs and future specialized mining equipment also possible in the future. The blockDAG architecture of Kaspa with rapid block rates allow more mining decentralization and enables effective solo-mining even at lower hashrates. KAS was launched in November of 2021 with no pre-mine, zero pre-sales, and no coin allocations. The total supply of Kaspa is 28.7 Billion coins with an emission schedule that halves once per year via smooth monthly reductions by a factor of (1/2)^(1/12). The current block reward is 329.63 KAS and the circulating supply is almost half of the total supply with a total market cap of around 50 million USD.

Kaspa (KAS) can be mined on a number of mining pools with the largest one being WoolyPooly, though you might want to check out some of the smaller ones in order to distribute hashrate such as ACC Pool and HashPool. It can be mined on both AMD and Nvidia GPUs with a number of popular miners supporting the kHeavyHash algorithm that the coin uses such as LolMiner, GMiner, BZminer, SRBminer, Team Red Miner and KaspaMiner.

Our preferred GPU miners for Nvidia GPUs are LolMiner and GMiner, and you might want to make sure you are with more up do date video drivers for maximum performance. Also, you might want to lower the memory clock and increase the GPU clock as this is a GPU intensive algorithm and higher clocks for the GPU and increased power limits will get you much more performance boost than overclocking the memory. This also means that the power usage of GPU mining rigs optimized for Kaspa mining will be higher than what you used for Ethash/ETChash mining, though you can remain at the same lower power levels with a bit reduced hashrate of course.

A few crypto exchanges are already supporting KAS trading, these include TxBit, ExBitron, MexC and TradeOgre. There has been a spike of interest and a bit of a price hike in the last few days, so mining profitability is also up with Kaspa getting in the list of the most profitable coins to be mined at the moment.

– For more details you can visit the official Kaspa (KAS) project website…

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