Looking at the current hash rate (I know technically it’s graph rate), it seems on average to be 10Kgps. That’s equivalent to around 7,875 G1 minis. I was firstly wondering, who is mining? I assume that iPollo and Nhash mine with the boxes that they sell. If so, what percentage of the hash rate do they own? I’m curious to their business strategy if there is one. I assume that there was a large setup cost in making the chips. Has that been recovered? Could this be holding grin down? Also, if grin’s price ever did take off significantly, could they simply print more chips?
Another consideration is about what happens as boxes start to fail. The rate looks to be steady so no sign of that yet but I’m thinking a few years ahead. I guess so much is centered around iPollo and their ability to build new miners.
One last thought is regarding PoS. I know the topic has been discussed and I remember reading Ignotus’ view but I’m wondering if the view still holds. I have no idea about what’s involved technically in swapping the consensus mechanism but being that there appears to be some successful PoS implementations out there currently, perhaps grin could consider not following bitcoin in it’s inflexible approach?
We can only speculate as to what Ipollo paid for this chip design, what their profit has been, & if they are mining with current gen or next gen hardware.
9.56 KGps net hash is the equivalent of 245x G1 ASICs. Keep in mind that this net hash is a mix of G1s, G1-minis, and GPUs. So accounting for all of the Grin ASICs sold over the past 3.3 years, if iPollo is mining Grin with their hardware, their hash would be mighty inconsequential.
As far as failures, we have 57x G1-mini & 1x G1 and began deploying since product launch. Zero of our ASICs have failed, and only 1x G1-mini was DOA (smoked upon power up, was promptly replaced under warranty). Now the G1-mini PSUs and an occasional fan will fail, but so far, none of the chips or boards have had issues.
The market will balance itself out. If the the existing ASICs fail without option for restock, net hash falls and GPUs will pick-up the slack. If Grin gains sustained profitability then we’ll be at higher risk of someone releasing a next gen Grin ASIC.
I doubt Grin will move from PoW to PoS or change it’s tokenomics (1 Grin/second). Ethereum’s premature move PoS from PoW (was expected when ETH 2.0 launches) crushed fair distribution to appease the gov’s push for net zero carbon go green BS. I get the impression that Grin is about fair distribution and longevity.
I feel that a currency or store of value cant be created out of thin air, for example FIAT and PoS.
With the rise of AI and its thirst for power, electricity will be the most valuable commodity in the coming years. Electricity will be monetised by PoW coins such as Bitcoin, Doge and Grin. Does anyone know if Grin mining power could be used to power some sort of AI?
PoS still has great value, as software or securities, for example like stocks for blockchain companies. Also they might be valuable as L2 for PoW.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a sister Grin chain that may be a privacy PoS. Or a privacy store of value ie with a limited number of coins say 21 million. A Grin ecosystem of PoS, currency and store of value would be amazing.
Ipollo declares sales, since it is a listed public company. Here below sales of G1 and mini yearly.
Considering reports equivalent to 20k mini sold afair.
Pos chains cant be decentralized, cant secure privacy and censorship by nature. There is no limited number in digital world also. All capped supply coins are fallacy.
Ipollo doesn’t have any plans to release new generation Grin miners at the moment, already asked them. But on the brighter news, their G1 page is live again on their website… it used to return 404 error. Maybe it’s a good sign
