Grin Fund for Mining Idea

Mining
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This is not fully thought out so I am just throwing it out there to see what people think of this. Personally, I am happy the funds are kept in BTC, it was clearly a wiser move than converting it all to grin, but some in the community wish the fund was in grin. This made me think, since the fund has just exploded in value, why not build a decentralized mining network that would serve several purposes:

  • Perpetual money printing machine, rather than solely rely on the funds we have and future donations, we could put the fund to work to generate more funds
  • Improve network security
  • Build a dev fund/community fund in the form of grin
  • Provide a source of grin for a faucet
  • Point some miners to testnet to ensure testnet is always moving nicely (and a testnet faucet)

I think it would be a great sign if some of the war chest of funds was spent in a manner that reinvested into grin and what better way than to increase the network security and simultaneously build a grin-based fund!? It doesnt seem like it would take a ton of money to do this as well, so it wouldn’t have to seriously dent the fund either. However, I think it would be great if we used the funds to buy as many ASICs as we could (saying that because I know there are not many available). Who better to own the ASICs than the grin community!?

Personally, I think it would be fantastic if this resurrected the only open-sourced grin mining pool, and also allow random pool participants to donate some % of their rewards to the community grin fund. But last that I discussed with Blade, he seems to be done with pools. I just think it would be great if we helped foster the FOSS ideology that seems to align with the concepts of grin. It could also make it easier and more transparent for the funds. I would also like to believe that a lot of hobby miners would support the pool which could add additional security protection for the network.

Maybe we could even promise to spend x% of funds on new ASICs every year to both support the ASICs manufacturers and continue to improve the security of network and growth of grin funds.

This seems like a win-win across the board and seems like it would solve some of the community concerns that we’re sitting on so many BTC and very little grin.

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IIRC, the idea of “buying ASICs” was mentioned once on keybase (perhaps somewhere else). I think the main concerns are:

  1. from whom to buy ASICs?
  2. will they get delayed?
  3. will they soon become irrelevant when better ASICs come out?

If these are not an issue, I agree that it might make sense to invest some money to bootstrap a few community miners with ASICs to contribute to the security and get something back in the fund over time.

I was thinking if having a ‘tutorial’ on wallets for sending/receiving grin to walk the users through the process, but I was hoping that the tutorial would connect to the testnet and receive grins from a faucet there to experiment with a bit bigger values of grin.

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Right now there is only one known miner in the wild as far as I know. I would suggest we start by making them an offer they can’t refuse on all available ASICs. But eventually it would be nice if it were kind of like rolling orders, I suggested x% of funds every year reinvested into the best ASICs at the time. But it could also help foster ASIC development by ensuring orders will come. Possibly also help new development cause at the moment it seems wise to buy what exists and that might include a prototype from another vendor and increasing the vendors would be great

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Should we bootstrap community miners( i.e have miners sent out from them to self manage) or should we pay for a 3rd party to manage miners within a facility ?

^providing miners for community members sounds good in theory and good for decentralztion, however, it might be harder to manage. How would we decide who gets miners? How much incentive would they receive? How can they be trusted? Also keeping in mind the $ per kw rate is going to vary across countries/ cities. Having an agreement with an established mining facility and paying them a fee could be more practical. As an example Blocksteam offer this for Bitcoin: Blockstream Mining: Enterprise-class mining colocation but there are lots of similar co-location options that manage all the infrastructure- To decentralize we could outsource to multiple different facilities.

I wouldn’t be so concerned over investing in future ASICs. The main concern at the moment is:

  1. Network security 2) no one is willing to buy ASICs and not enough are willing to mine on their GPUs because Grin’s current price doesn’t justify it.

If price doesn’t improve then there will never be any ASICs to consider re-investing in. If we boot strapped our own mining network then hopefully it would help improve 1 & 2.

Overall I think this is a great idea.

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I do also like the idea of using this as an income generator so Grin is less dependent on donations in the future.

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Can we take orders from community members too with X% of profit for funds, so that it’s distributed globally and our community members who have been supporting this project and waiting eagerly to mine with ASICS also get it.

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if you are trusting GRİN’s future and etho… Why Not?

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Cool idea. Really, but the Asics should be divided / sold among the community. Those willing to do that might help this idea by letting us know they are thinking about buying.

That will be for me the case. If we develop ASICs in the range of $500 ~ $2000 I am happy to buy one of those.

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Yeah, eventually that’s the idea. Just right now there’s somewhere between 1-30 out there and “thinking about buying” is different than aggressively buying what we can.

And if for whatever reason we could not get any of those, this idea could still start by building some GPU rigs

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The only known ASIC in the wild is the G1, which is limited in production and apparently capable of 40GPS @ 2800-3100w

  • This unit is a beast and with that size power supply I bet the fans are going to howl near full speed. It’s hardly something you want to be running at your house.

  • At 40GPS it’s going to come with a hefty price tag. I’d guess something like $25k-$40k. Certainly no where close to your 500-2k price range. I doubt many community members would be willing to actually buy one.

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I like this idea. It might give an incentive to ASIC developers since it creates an assured demand for ASIC’s and I think it will benefit the Grin fund on the long run since I expect we are at the bottom price of Grin more or less.
I am also interested in buying an ASIC myself in the range of 0-2000 euro. Preferably a mini for 200-500 with an acceptable noise level. I also have some connections in NL who are interested in more serious Grin mining with larger ASIC’s who have access to cheaper electricity and proper storage facilities.

  • The biggest issue is the availability of ASICs, someone needs to produce on a big enough scale and make them available to all.
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Yes, it would be a perspective step. Also, fund for devs based on Grin looks timely

i like this idea

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i like the idea and beside that we can build a community exchange and stop begging others to upgrade or support slatepacks as an example. this exchange will exclusively sell grin with no KYC. an exchange powered by asic miners .

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Yes. The other day i reached out to Biforex and asked about future Slatepack-Support from January on when Grin v.5 launches. The conversation went basically like this:

Me: “Will there be Slatepack Support in the Future for Grin?”
Bitforex: “We’ve forwarded this message to our related department.”
Bitforex: “How would you rate the support you received?”

God knows what these Exchanges will implement if at all.

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I’m pretty sure you rated the service 10/10 :rofl:

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I will also take part in it

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In fact, in the glory days of bitcointalk there were several mining joint-ventures that were organized through the forum and then carried out successfully.

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Even I saw a few concerns on the feasibility of this idea, it’s still great and deserves your :+1: on @johndavies24 to initiate this :sunny:

But there’s no absolutely perfect solution, right? :slight_smile:
I suggest to push this idea to a success ~ at least but not limited with the followings:

  1. ASIC miners public sales into the Grin community.
  2. Grin Fund for at least 1 G1 (big box) + 1 G1-Mini. (should be possible to ask for a discount from the vendor, and perhaps limit the budget within 10k$?). Mini for Testnet mining? and G1 for a community mining pool (to be voted)?
  3. Community volunteers/ventures to join this “GRIN Network Security Improving” event to order some of this ASIC miners, together with that small Grin Fund order.
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UPDATE

First I would like to thank everyone who has provided feedback. Special thanks to @gary for both feedback and getting me into a group with the Ipollo people and getting us a good price.

Ipollo Quote

Here is the price and for G1 / G1-mini:

(product specifications & parameters attached)

G1: 15000usdt

G1-mini:520usdt

（This price only represents the price of machine, freight and logistics costs are not included）

Besides, Grin token payment will get 5% extra off ;

we are happy to offer you 3 G1 and 10 minis as your proposal; The total amount purchased in Grin Fund community , we will donate 20% as reward.

If there is any questions, pls let me know.we really like that cooperation can be reached and are willing to give more support and to help the community.

Best Regards，

IPOLLO TEAM

Another shout out to Gary

Ipollo has extended this price agreement (with the discount if purchased in grin and donation to grin fund) to the entire grin community, beyond the scope of this idea to use the grin fund to buy some ASICS because of Gary!

Next Steps?

Ultimately, we need to see where (or to who) are the ASICs going to be sent and how to handle the mining rewards.

Originally, I was thinking that the miners would be distributed among the willing community and council members. Recipients either donate the electricity costs or take that amount from the mining rewards, while the rest would go to the grin-based dev fund.

Blade had a great idea about renting space to operate the big G1 miners. The costs associated with that could be paid for by the mining rewards.

@Neo has a bunch of good ideas as well.

I wonder what are everyone’s opinions about preferred ways to move forward? Who all would be willing to participate?

* for full transparency, the emailed quote had the prices accidentally reversed but I corrected that after written clarification.

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I am ready to participate in this with G1-mini if a electricity costs amount take from the mining rewards. Mining rewards will be automatically sent to the fund’s wallet, which can be set in the pool settings, then the electricity cost is deducted and a certain amount of coins is sent to my wallet. Also, I would like to hear from you which pool to use. And if i have any questions about the functioning, i will need advice.