Citadel Dispatch

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EPISODE: 38

BLOCK: 700568

PRICE: 2150 sats per dollar

TOPICS: improving your bitcoin mining setup, using custom firmware, immersion mining, stratum v2, hosted mining, coinbase rewards, upstreamdata black box

@bigcohoo: https://twitter.com/bigcohoo

@janbraiins: https://twitter.com/janbraiins

@coinheated: https://twitter.com/coinheated

@roninminer: https://twitter.com/roninminer

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@martybent: https://twitter.com/martybent

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[00:00:00] Unknown:

Of crypto,   I think within the firm, probably more so than than many others.   Where do you see that now? We talked about what what El Salvador did this week, but it it speaks to all the issues that you're dealing with here, which is which is what are real rates,   what's the value of money?  

[00:00:20] Unknown:

So so, you know, that's it. It's tricky subject. So first of all, I'll say the first thing I will say on crypto,   you know, people describe it as a hedge or an alternative. I'm not sure it's a really great hedge. I mean, the correlation to equities, the correlation to risk assets,   I'm not sure it's a great hedge, by the way. So when an asset moves 10 to 15% a day, really hard to hedge big organic asset pools with that as a hedge. Is it, you know, is it an alternative currency? Listen. I've said and I've said and I've said it with with you, Andrew. Listen. Part of why I own a small piece of Bitcoin is I do think there are more people that are gonna enter that fray over time. We have a very moderate   position in our portfolio.  

I like, quite frankly, are volatile that have upside convexity,   And I could see Bitcoin like it's done. I could see it go up significantly.   But listen, I think it's volatile. I don't think it's a core asset class like like bonds are or like stocks are. But I think it's you know, to have a bit as more of a speculative tool in a portfolio, yeah, I think I think there's some value to that. Before I let  

[00:01:54] Unknown:

Happy Bitcoin Tuesday, freaks. It's your boy, Matt O'Dell, here for another Citadel Dispatch,   the interactive live show about Bitcoin distributed systems, privacy, and open source software.   We got a great show lined up here. I'm very excited for it. To the freaks that are joining us after the fact through the audio,   that was, Rick Ryder,   on CNBC.   He's a managing director of BlackRock. They have $2,400,000,000,000   worth of assets under management,   and he likes to dabble in Bitcoin.   This is Citadel dispatch 38.   The focus will be on mining and improving your mining setup.  

This is a natural follow-up to Citadel dispatch 31,   which you can find citadel dispatch.com/cd31,   which was our first, mining focused   panel.   And this one is is is basically gonna be improving your setup from there.   So we won't start with the basics. We're gonna go from basically where that left off.   Before we get started,   huge shout out as always to the ride or dive freaks in the live chat, whether that's through Twitch, YouTube, or Twitter.   You guys make this show special. You guys make Bitcoin Tuesday special, so thank you again for joining us. And, also, shout out to all the freaks who support the show.   Keep it ad free and sponsor free. I appreciate you guys tremendously.  

Really thank you for the support. It means a lot.   So let's just dive into this. I mean, I we got a massive panel here.   I couldn't help myself. We just got so many great voices in Bitcoin mining that were willing to join us for this conversation, so I couldn't say no.   First and foremost,   we have Big Kahuna.   We have we have we actually have 2 guys from brains. We have Big Kahuna. How's it going, Big Kahuna?  

[00:03:45] Unknown:

Doing alright. How are you doing?  

[00:03:47] Unknown:

He works at brains,   man of many hats.   We have Jonathan,   coin heated.   Hello. Big focus on immersion mining. How's it going, Jonathan?  

[00:03:59] Unknown:

Awesome. Glad to be here.  

[00:04:01] Unknown:

We got Marty Bent, my co host at Rabbit Hole Recap. His first time on Civil Dispatch,   man behind Great American Mining. How's it going, Marty?  

[00:04:09] Unknown:

It's going great, Matt. Thank you for having me. It's, it's fun to finally be on the Citadel Dispatch side of things.  

[00:04:16] Unknown:

Yeah. It's truly a pleasure. I mean, I tried to get your dad, but we'll we'll you know, it's it's fine that we got the son instead.   We also have Jan, cofounder of Brains. How's it going, Jan?  

[00:04:29] Unknown:

Pretty good. Thanks for having me here.  

[00:04:32] Unknown:

We have Brett from Upstream Data.   How's it going, Brett?  

[00:04:37] Unknown:

Hey. How's it going, Adele?  

[00:04:39] Unknown:

We got Neil   Ronan Miner. He's a return guest. He was on CITL dispatch 31.   He's probably, like, 3 claws deep. How's it going, Neil?  

[00:04:50] Unknown:

Three claws deep, man. It's gone.   Did I nail it? Are you 3 claws deep? Nailed it. There we go. There we go.  

[00:04:57] Unknown:

So the focus of today will be on improving your Bitcoin mining setup. We have 2 main topics to discuss,   upgrading your firmware,   specifically to brains OS. That's why we got 2 brains guys here,   and also immersion mining, which is, you know, putting your miners,   liquid cooling them instead of air cooling them.   But we will also be talking about all things mining.   Feel free to put your questions,   in the live chat as always if you'd like to get them answered. If we don't answer them right away, I will be writing down any ones that are good, and we'll come back to them.   With all that said, I think Big Kuna wants to start us off with some history. So why don't we start there?  



[00:05:40] Unknown:

Yeah. I thought we were gonna be a little bit classy and not even drop the the brand's OS, firmware shell, but but I guess we're starting starting off right with that.   Anyways, Yeah. So, Matt, you you like to talk a lot about how you you buy phones and flash your own custom firmware on that. And I think that's that's very,   you know, very useful when you when you think about firmware for,   miners. Because you you you buy these phones, and you own all the rights to them. You can do whatever you want with them. You can   run them over with your truck if you want to.  

I guess the only thing you sacrifice,   when you flash custom firmware on there is that you might void the warranty. But but for all   purposes, you you own everything about that phone. And the same thing is the same thing goes for these mining hardware,   that you buy from from all these manufacturers.   You buy the hardware and it's shipped to you, and you you're kinda just forced to trust that what's on there is   is sufficient. What what they what firmware they put on there is trustworthy, and,   they're not doing anything sketchy with that.   And so,   I mean, that kinda goes with the ethos of Bitcoin where, you know, we're we're supposed to validate our own keys, our private keys,   run our own nodes so that we can make sure   no one's screwing us over,   you know, don't trust verify. And that there should be an option with that with miners as   well.  

And for the longest time when these ASICs started coming out, there really wasn't an option for that,   until   I guess there was 2 instances where   these manufacturers   kind of breached the trust of their customers.   There was something called Amplead that came out with one of the manufacturers. And   if you guys don't know what Amplead is, what this is is,   it it was   it was,   it was found out that   one of the manufacturers had a backdoor in   in their firmware, and what this allowed them to do was pretty much anything. They could they could access your   hardware remotely and shut it off,   redirect the hash. They could they could do all this nefarious stuff with that. And   that's absolutely terrifying because when ASICs first came out, there really was not many   there wasn't any competition out there. So they they really cornered the market. They they could have,   you know, they could have,   really hurt the   the integrity of the Bitcoin network,   not just from the miners,   but, you know, all the users as well. If if they were to implement anything or do anything nefarious with that backdoor, then that really would have screwed over the entire network.  

Probably would have set us back a few years.   So that that's kind of the first instance. The other one was Cover Basicboost.   The same manufacturer,   well,   essentially, what what happened was 2 researchers   found that there was a way to   restructure, do something fancy with the block header to improve the efficiency of   mining chips.   And,   it was it was suspected that the manufacturer   had implemented this in their chips,   and we found or, yeah, we found out that,   they were using this at home, but when they shipped the product out to their customers,   they would retract this. They would they would use ASIC Boost for themselves, and then they would eliminate it when they sold it to their customers so that they always had a competitive edge,   versus the the rest of the network.  

So those are just like 2 real life stories of things that have happened with these these hardwares   that, you know, really made it necessary to have an open source firmware,   or have other   competition out there. And when you look at the the   the market today, you have a couple different manufacturers that are all competing with each other, challenging each other, making each other better. And now you have,   know, custom firmware like Brains OS where   you can take this hardware, flash your own firmware on it, and   you get a lot of pros out of doing that. There are some cons, but it's mostly pros.  

And this this also adds just more and more competition to   these these hardware manufacturers to improve their setup and whatnot.   That that was kind of the history lesson I wanted to go through because I think that's a really great introduction for this conversation as we go into   some of the pros and cons of this stuff and how   how custom firmware can improve your setup.   Both both of those,  

[00:10:17] Unknown:

examples you gave   were Bitmain focused,   Ampliad and Covert ASIC Boost.   Is that part of the reason why your firmware currently only supports,   Bitmain, ASICs, and not Whatsminer?   Is that why the focus started there?  

[00:10:35] Unknown:

I I mean, I think Han can can speak to this a little bit more, but, that was specifically why they started with the well, we started with the Dragon Mints, but that's why we we put a lot of our focus in the business. Dragon Mints.  

[00:10:48] Unknown:

Yeah. So what what's really the first firmware supported in right. So as was Dragon Mints. But by the time we were publishing the first version,   we saw that the most popular miner out there is s nine. And it was actually   at that time, it was still possible to download the CG minor sources that,   supported,   s nines without basic boost, and we could have based our firmware off of this,   providing the rest of the operating system,   from   general open source.   So that that was the beginning of the story. But I think the manufacturer, with with time, realized that they can tighten the screws a bit more. And I think with the upcoming generations,   I can't tell exactly,   which version. But I think the s nine was really the very last one where you could download bits and pieces of the of the source code. And if you had enough engineering skills, so it was not like   a simple job of just executing a single script that you would have an image that you can run on your own,   you would be able to have your own firmware for for the s nines at that time, which I found   it's okay. But at the same time, it's kind of already a violation of the GPL   11, s s 15, they they didn't even bother to publish, a single piece. But, I mean, I didn't ex I didn't,   do the research at that time because we skipped these generations because they I think they released only,   small batches of of machines. And the next major   generation, which was which was not very successful, will be was the,   or the x x seventeens,   where this was the case. Just just you would get, like, nothing about about the machine that that you   bought. And now with the X nineteens, it's it's getting even worse where, there's a new super great feature called, Secure Boot,   which pretty much   prevents,   running, an alternative firmware in a standard way because the the the whole boot chain from from the ROM folder is, secured. So it does an RSA,   key check. And you can tell that that man is currently not really willing to sign, 3rd party firmwares.  



[00:13:13] Unknown:

So So you're out of luck, or   did you figure out a way around it?  

[00:13:17] Unknown:

That that that, that is difficult to to to answer because we we   we we have a way around it, but,   the problem is, that it is a hassle. Right? You you buy a machine that you think you own it, so you think you can do anything you want with it like you do with your cell phone. But that's not the case anymore.   You have a a bunch of alternatives. You can swap out the control boards because, for example, the control boards on x nineteens are the same as on x seventeens.   So if you're lucky, you can just switch it. But but if you're a big farm with a lot of machines, this is a costly operation. You can exchange the the CPU on the control board,   because this one is unusable. It has the OTP,   one time programmable,   registers or fuses. That's what they they're called eFuse. They are burned basically,   saying this is the public key that needs to be used in order to boot the next stage bootloader,   and that pretty much   is game over for for booting something alternative on the original control board.  

So   your mileage may vary depending on, like, how much,   effort you you put out in order to to run alternative firmware.  

[00:14:29] Unknown:

So, Jan, while I have you,   when what's minor?  

[00:14:35] Unknown:

2 That's what we got off. Right?  

[00:14:38] Unknown:

2 weeks, 2 months, trademark? 2 weeks. The phase 2 weeks. I'm still waiting for my Butterfly Labs in 2 weeks. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.  

[00:14:46] Unknown:

No. It's, it's really,   so   so the current roadmap is that we have a   a private, beta testing of X19, and what comes after that are the Whatsminers.   The Whatsminers are already being tested. So it's not that that you're starting the implementation, the What's Miners are, in the test process.  

[00:15:07] Unknown:

And then I guess for both you and Big Kuna,   so there's 2 versions of brains OS.   Are are what's the difference? Are are they both open source, or is only the basic one open source?  

[00:15:20] Unknown:

There's the the brands OS is open source, and then brands OS plus is closed source because we we add an additional feature in there,   called auto tuning. And auto tuning is is kind of the way that we make a little bit of money off this.   What it does is it takes every single chip on each of the hashboards and optimizes the,   the performance that you get out of those. So you imagine you buy a miner from a manufacturer,   and they wanna sell it as a,   you know, as a specific number. You know, you get an s nine. It get at 1400 watts. It gives you 13.5 terahash.   But if you take and you tune each of the the chips on there, you can gain, like, you know, point 1, point 2 percent efficiencies out of every single one. And since there's hundreds of chips in there,   you you can geek out up to, like, 25% efficiency gains. So that that auto tuning feature   is the the only thing that isn't open source.  



[00:16:23] Unknown:

And does that have a cost attached to it, or are they both,  

[00:16:26] Unknown:

like, free as in free lunch? The way so the open source version is free. The way that the auto tuning   or the the closed source version works   is we're due a 2% fee. So your hash just gets donated to us as a dev fee.   And it's kind of a win win because you get up to a 25% efficiency gain,   which will cover that cost,   but then   but then we're also making a little bit more because that 2% is is a larger piece of pie.   And then   if you use slash pool on top of that, then we waive the pool fee. So,   in most cases, you're getting the same exact fee,   overall, but a higher performance.  

So you just answered my next question. You don't have to use slush pool? You do not have to use slush pool. But if you don't, then you will also be charged the fee of the,   the pool, which is not a lot, but it's, you know, it's incentive to to work with us. And why not use the best pool available?   Obviously.  

[00:17:29] Unknown:

So let's bring everyone else in. Does anyone here actually use Brains OS? I'm pretty sure Brett does.  

[00:17:35] Unknown:

Yep. I'm exclusively,   Brains.  

[00:17:38] Unknown:

Let's go. I don't I don't currently, but when I had when I had s nine because I really only run What's Miners right now, but   I mean, I always had brains OS   on my s nines.   And,   I mean, the efficiency gains or at least the Terahash gains, I guess, I didn't monitor the efficiency that well, but the Terahash gains were insane.   Easily 25%.  

[00:18:05] Unknown:

Yeah. I got my first s nine and just a stock firmware, figuring out what on Earth I was doing, then I I found the open source stuff. I love open source,   and then got brains loaded on there. And,   with the exception of best 19s I have, I run nothing but brain stuff.  

[00:18:22] Unknown:

Yeah.   Basically, same thing with us. Like,   I actually,   like,   constantly am shilling brains OS because I I love the firmware. Ever since   I found out about brains OS plus, I it's basically just been, like, if we can get miners that can support brains OS plus, we should be running them all the time because the efficiency gains are awesome. The overall terahash gains are awesome. And for us in the specific,   in the specific way that we're doing things as in, like, putting out, putting out basically data centers for clients,   We also need to be able to change the wattage on each and every single one of these units. So we can have units that range anywhere from, like, 90 kilowatts   up to almost a megawatt.  

And so   if if we're, say, running too   hot or we're using up too much power off the engine, we the nice thing about BrainOS is we just pick a wattage, we drop every minor down to that wattage,   and we're good to go. Like, we can we can reduce load on everything which makes it really nice.  

[00:19:23] Unknown:

Yeah. And and that range that you get is awesome. You know, going down to,   what, like, a half or a third of stock and well beyond,   that range to work with is just awesome.  

[00:19:38] Unknown:

And you can also make the argument by making things more profitable   that you're extending the the life time of the hardware, like, s nines, I think I think brains actually did some nonce,   data   scouring and found that somewhat something like 25% of network hash rate still s nines. Like, how much,   how many of those machines are still running because they're running running brains which makes them, still profitable.   That's, like, another interesting  

[00:20:07] Unknown:

variable to think about here. Marty, do you guys at Great American   exclusively run Whatsminer?  

[00:20:13] Unknown:

As of right now, yeah. We're we're not opposed to,   Bitmain. I mean, we did have a a chunk of Bitmain s nines, and   when we ran those when we tested those, I believe we ran brains on those as well.   But right now, yeah, we're just   all of our containers are are packed with what's minors as of right now.  

[00:20:33] Unknown:

Brett, are you you guys are the opposite, right, at upstream?   Are Yeah. Are you purely Bitmain?  

[00:20:39] Unknown:

We we pretty much stick to s nines,   unless, like, a client says, hey. We have our own miners or we want this specifically.   We just say, like, get us nines because, again, you're running on free power. There's no point in running, like, a brand new, s 19, and this is what I tell people. It's like, why would you buy a brand new, like, 10, $15,000   computer and then put it out in a dirty, dusty, like, hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere and get it wrecked? Like, there's just no point.  

[00:21:09] Unknown:

Oh, so the oil first.  

[00:21:14] Unknown:

Sorry?   So, if you throw in an oil tank first, then then,   but, we'll we'll get to that.  

[00:21:21] Unknown:

Yep. Immersion. Immersion. Another thing brainwaves is great for because it lets you control the fans and shut them all off. Yep. I'm saying and think. So I do have a question. Is there was there any,  

[00:21:32] Unknown:

validity to the argue   or I don't know if it was even an argument or if it was just people shouting on Twitter, but,   they were thinking that   the brains OS   was burning up their hashing boards,   or, like or or there was too much power going to them or something. People were claiming that for a little while. I don't know if it was a   they were overclocking them   or I don't I'm I actually I'm I'm authentically curious about   Git. Did you ever see that?  

[00:22:06] Unknown:

You get a lot of extra features in when you use custom firmware. Like, I guess when you use Whatsminer   or Antminer's stock firmware, you're very limited to use it how they want you to use it.   And with when you use a custom firmware like brands, you   you do get to unlock a lot of potential in the miners, and that does allow you to overclock, underclock,   mess with the the temperature settings and everything. And and I'm sure John can talk in in great depth about this, but I think that there are cases where people do hurt their own machines.   But by default, it's set up to be,   you know, very safe, and then it's kinda at your own risk to  

[00:22:46] Unknown:

to, you know, mess with the settings. Yeah. You start turn turn pushing the buttons and turning the dials. Yeah. And then I never messed with any of that, so I never actually personally   with my any of the s nines that I was running it on, I never had problems with it. But,  

[00:23:01] Unknown:

I don't know. I I saw people talking about it, and I was like, well, what are you doing that's goofy with it? But It's it's the same idea as what you mentioned earlier, Kahuna, with, like, your your own phone. Like, you can flash custom firmware on your phone, but if you brick your phone in doing that or you mess something up, like, that's kind of on you. There's so much support out there for something like Brainz OS. Like, there's there's tons of people out there willing to help with that, But I think it's just people making possibly bad decisions about how much power they should be putting into their chips because you can, like, from what I've seen,   brings west stays the most efficient around 900 to 1200   watts, which is actually lower than, like, what Bitmain would initially put in. I think they put in something like 1300.  

And so, again, Jan Capek, from brains might have to speak more on this because I think he knows more about this than I do.   But I think it's really just based on people making their own decisions with their chips, and they you have to be smart about it. Right?  

[00:24:00] Unknown:

Oh, for sure.   So I I've taken an s nine with brains in oil up to 24 100 watts,   you know, and you could never do that on on   what 1 on software and 2 on air.   You know, you have to disable the stuff. And if you do that, if you uncheck the disables, uncheck this, and and, you know, of course, you you can push it well beyond to the point of buying it.   And if you go beyond the   yeah. If if you go beyond the stock limitations,   then you're into a territory of it was wasn't designed for that specifically,   it might happen.  

[00:24:35] Unknown:

What I wanna know is how much hash rate did you get out of that, baby?  

[00:24:39] Unknown:

Yeah. It was,   I wanna say it was 20 something.   It was ridiculous.   And and I ran it for a couple days that way. It was just plugging along at 24100. It was the most I could set it to in brains at the time, I think.   Oh my god.   And I did a s 17.   So I used a stock,  

[00:24:58] Unknown:

power supply. I disabled 1 card. You you should give, you should give the listeners, like, like, a base on how how that that machine is supposed to run before you go into how much you geeked out of it.  

[00:25:10] Unknown:

Right. So on that s 17,   stock for 3 cards is around it's I think it's 3,040   watts.   And so the specific one I had was a 76   t,   and so that that would be static. So it's about a 1000 watts per card,   and about 25   terash per   per card.   So I decided, like, you know what? I wanna see what these things can really do. And so in a in a isolated   tank, I I I put 1 miner in a in an oil tank and on its own radiator   and disabled one card because, brains will   you you get a maximum power total, and then it divides it across the 3 cards. So I just kept running it up and up and up, and I ended up getting to 4850,   which I think it divided it up then into like 1600 some odd lots   per card,   and I ended up at,   it was like 30   38   tera hash per card. If it was all 4 cards, it would have been a 104 tera hash.  

So it was almost a 50% increase.   I don't have an s 17. That's insane. Yeah. I have an s 17. And I think there was still room to go, but,   with 2 cars power that gets close, you know, that was like a 33 100 watts, which is beyond the stock limit of the of that power supply. So   and I I tried it with even just a single card and I didn't get it much further past that. I think I got to,   well, end up 5,000 is where the brains is caps. And I'm sure it's just a logical barrier, not a technical barrier.   So people don't die and do an air cooled and put it to 5,000 watts   and cry when their miner catches fire. Or their house catches  

[00:27:02] Unknown:

fire. Yeah. That's Oh, yeah.  

[00:27:04] Unknown:

Just a short comment. You're you're perfectly right because   the the current limits on the next gen machines, even starting with x seventeens,   I want to say that the x seventeens, when they're immersed and   never   run, on air cooling, then they behave   quite well because they don't disorder. But they must have never been run with air cooling.   Then you can get really,   good numbers like you mentioned.   And I think it is possible to go even beyond.   We have raised the the frequency limits,   a bit, with the upcoming release again.   So the only limitation is really how are you gonna,   allocate your hash boards. And one idea that I had is basically just start taking out harvesting the 3rd card and basically building a spare miner in the container.  

So basically, every every 2 miners, you get another miner. You just need an extra power supply and a control board.   Yeah.  

[00:28:06] Unknown:

I really like that idea. That's something that we're gonna have to look into at some point because   that's something that I mean, I I  

[00:28:15] Unknown:

I kind of I personally,   we're testing a lot with immersion, and I found it, very logical if we we don't have a large, facility for mining ourselves because   writing the firmware is slightly different sport than running, like, big mining. But we have some testing facility.   And this is what we do when when we wanna test the the maximum limits. I mean, never count on 3 cards. But I mentioned it to one of our customers, and they were kind of, like, surprised saying, oh, well, that's interesting.   We never thought about this. But I think it's an economical way how to scale your operation. Because if if, the efficiency numbers work out for you,   it is expected that you will not be running at,   38   joules per tera hash. That's not gonna happen. But you'll probably land,   somewhere around 40, 44, 45.  

And that is, I think, considering the the current difficulty and   exchange rate,   most operations would be profitable. And what matters is to get as as many coins as possible. Right? Do you do you have any subways over there? You can expand your operation.  

[00:29:28] Unknown:

Like Subway restaurants.  

[00:29:33] Unknown:

Okay.  

[00:29:34] Unknown:

Sorry about taking over the empty empty spaces from COVID.  

[00:29:39] Unknown:

Yeah.   I don't think there's just one somewhere in Prague, I think.   I should check if it's still open.  

[00:29:46] Unknown:

I I guess to go down the the immersion thing a little bit more,   for for the listeners, the   you've heard a lot of bad things about these s seventeens and them just failing,   you know, them being an unreliable hardware.   And we're kinda to a point where if if the hardware has already failed, it's, you know, it's it's gone. But the the main issue was that when they designed it, they just didn't design it to cool well enough. So,   you know,   Jonathan's been able   to fix a lot of this with his immersion testing,   because that gives it, like, perfect cooling, and that that really allows you to strain the,   strain the setup. Yeah. Matt just pulled up a video of of   Jonathan's garage if you wanted to talk through it or something.  



[00:30:30] Unknown:

Yeah. Sure. So and also I found so those are all s seventeens.   Actually, with there's 1 s 19 in there. That's the one that's at an angle. I just kinda threw that in there to test some other stuff with. But, right now they're all s seventeens in oil.   But what I've found too is that   the s seventeens have actually been very reliable for me.   Now I also have this, along with them being in an oil tank, it's also connected to a 17,000   gallon,   water pool,   which is actually just a swimming pool for my kids.   And,   in a daily 24 hour cycle,   it only fluctuates by maybe 2 degrees.  

So it keeps very, very stable temperatures even if the outside temperature   changes like 40 degrees.   So these ones actually still have fans on right there.   There's fans on the backside that kinda help with the flow.   And some people are you, oh, you can't have fans, can't you gotta take them off. Like, well,   these are the the   the tanks.   This one here, there's 5 of them. There's no fans in that. That one runs about a 135 degrees Fahrenheit.   The ones with fans run at 120.   Everything else is the same. Of course, it's 5 minors instead of 4, but,   but, yeah, I actually haven't had any problems with fans, running in oil specifically.  



[00:31:55] Unknown:

One of the things we should mention,   we forgot to say this earlier, but just quickly. When he says that he had an s nine running at 20 terahashes per second, just to illustrate how ridiculous that is,   normally, bit main s nines run at about 13 and a half. So that's like a 70%   increase in hash rate from running this thing in oil.   Like, that's insane.  

[00:32:18] Unknown:

And, so I think that I I believe the stock   frequency is 550   megahertz, if I remember right. And I know for sure it was   it was like   950 something megahertz.   So, I mean, yeah, it was a lot. It was like almost a 100% increase in in clock speed.  

[00:32:40] Unknown:

Yeah. He basically bought another miner and put it in there, but   he didn't.  

[00:32:46] Unknown:

And you were saying the efficiency went down, but I mean and it was stable, though. That's that's the thing. You were saying coin heated, though, also. I think you were telling me that,  

[00:32:58] Unknown:

even with the fans running in the oil,   it slows the fans down so much that   not only are they not making a gigantic   disturbance in the in the fluid or cavitation or anything like that   that just because the machine was cool enough to slow the fans down, that it really wasn't actually even a much larger power draw than just not having fans at all?  

[00:33:25] Unknown:

Right. So, I mean, I'm I'm running 2 fans on the ones that are upright.   You know, there's   the   the main running,   quote, right way to do it is to have it vertical,   and then to have the oil flow from the bottom up, and then over a lip into overflow.   But I've been running it both ways. I've been running an overflow one. I've been running one vertical. I've been   I've run pretty much just about every possible   configuration in a single tank that you could do.   4 fans, 2 fans, 1 fan.   Even with one fan from an an s 17,   it still actually runs   keeps it cool enough   being horizontal like your standard,   that it would be it it doesn't overheat, and it's just wild.  

I'm actually working with some fan manufacturers   to see if I can get them   to send me an STL file with fan blades, and have somebody modify that,   fan blade, and actually make a fan design for in oil use.   So it would be useless in air,   but it would actually  

[00:34:35] Unknown:

work quite well in oil. Yeah. So it'd have it would have way I think me and you were talking about this. Yeah. Or it'd have way less resistance in liquid   than   the resistance that you need in air to push all that airflow.   And then you could   circumnavigate   the the,   because otherwise otherwise, if you take the fans off, you're gonna need   fan spoofers.   And Right.   Those are   unreliable   at best. I mean, you got you got some good ones for the s nineteens, but it sounds like the ones for   anything what's minor is kinda  

[00:35:12] Unknown:

garbage right now. For for, I guess, the listeners,   fan spoofers. When you when you have stock firmware on some of these hardwares, you cannot disable the fans. If you unplug them or tamper with them, they will not work.   So a a benefit of having, like, a custom firmware is that you can you can just check a box disable them,   which allows you   to, out of the box, use use immersion cooling. And people sell these things called fan spoofers. They look like   like, you know, something you just plug into the fan. Almost.  

[00:35:44] Unknown:

Yeah. I think I think I think the actual term for them is fan emulators,  

[00:35:48] Unknown:

but Yep. Yeah. They're just, yeah,  

[00:35:51] Unknown:

fancy stickers. So it's a it's a 4 pin thing that   gets the the,   PWM   sense from   the control board and sends back attack   reply back to the miner saying, yeah. I'm going the speed that you want me to go at when there's really no fan at all.   But the downside of running a fan simulator   is that,   what I found in oil is that,   you know, so far, I've actually found it beneficial to have some fan on there even at a very low RPM.   Just to have a little bit extra flow going over the heat sinks themselves rather than allowing the just the heat to rise with a a slow flow.  

[00:36:35] Unknown:

Yeah. And I was thinking I was thinking shaving the shaving the fan blades down.  

[00:36:39] Unknown:

Yeah. I tried that. I didn't do very good. It didn't   work? Well, I just plugged it into a a drill press and for the wood chisel, tried it and so   Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. I was I was thinking rather than the No. But like I said, I'm gonna see about actually getting an STL file and having a fan blade designed from ground up specifically for oil,   then it would actually put a   reasonable RPM back.   I know we had that,   graphic up a little bit ago showing the the s seventeen that I super overclocked.   But even in brain yeah. Here we go. So even so this is this is the s 17 that I over or s 17 plus, excuse me.   So this is a 76 t machine. So normally, the cards would run at 24   terahash,   or it's you 25,   like, 0.3, I suppose.  

And the power limit stock is about 3,000.   And the recommended for brains is   2.728.   So, yeah. And this is with one card. So we can see,   it's   nearly   double the output.   But we have a a fan speed of a 100%, but I'm getting   nothing reported on RPM,   because it's actually below 300 RPM, and that's the lowest I've ever seen it register,   in brains is and and still have an RPM.   And I don't know. This would be a great question for Young, is if,   that's a   hardware thing that the hardware sensor can't   detect below that, or if that's more of a brain thing that just below 300, it ignores it.  

[00:38:30] Unknown:

I will check with,   our FPGA developer. I think there is some filter on on that, but I I don't know from top of my head really what the what the lowest limit is. I would expect that 300 RPM and below should be measurable.   Okay. Yeah. So I'll check. It's an interesting question.  

[00:38:49] Unknown:

But that's not you would in in air, if you had anything lower than that, you'll be not moving in the air, and it'd be terrible. But   in   in oil, it's perfect.  

[00:39:00] Unknown:

You're running   horizontal, though. Right?  

[00:39:04] Unknown:

So in with bands, it's running just like you would run it in air   for the position.   Without fans, it turns 90 degrees and it's facing upward instead  

[00:39:15] Unknown:

of instead of laying flat. Yeah. Because see okay. Okay. That was the difference. That's what I was wondering because we're actually forcing the fluid through the machines. So I think the fans may actually inhibit   the   flow the flow of the dielectric through through the machine   because   we're pushing it through.  

[00:39:36] Unknown:

But probably not faster than the fans would move it. Yeah. That's a good point. Good point. Isn't isn't that twofold though? Because you have the fans on, and and that's an extra power draw that you could direct towards   the miners,   but then you're improving your airflow. I guess, do you have any comments on that   or the liquid flow? Sorry. Yeah.  

[00:39:56] Unknown:

Yeah. You're you're saving by unplugging the fans.   But see what what what coin heat is doing too is it's slowing the machine itself is slowing the fan down so much that he's saving   a percentage of the electric usage that he has.   By us removing our fans, it saves somewhere between 10 15%   of electric usage.  

[00:40:19] Unknown:

And so, you know, I don't know if you can pull the stereo with the he's not getting these the same gain.   Yeah. The, the the upper left tank that has 5 miners, that one is spam free.   But so my my   thinking in this,   so if you have 4 fans   per miner,   and you have a fan that's specifically   made for oil,   so it can move a good amount of oil and it will actually,   you know, do a decent job, you would not need   a pump.   So then you get back all the energy that you had   pushing a pump because I mean, I don't know. The pumps I have, they're like a couple of amps at a 110 volt,   and that's not trivial amount of power.  

And if you have if you have 5 byers in the tank, let's just say, you have 4 fans out in there per,   the probability of all of those fans completely failing at the same time is much less than one pump failing for a whole tank.  

[00:41:24] Unknown:

I'd love to hear I mean, we could go and talk about immersion   forever, but I'd love to hear,   from Brett and Marty, like, what kind of things you guys are   are seeing,   you know, in the different regions that you're mining in because you you you're getting cold temperatures. You're getting very hot temperatures, and I'm sure you're having to optimize,   different features, underclocking, overclocking,   and, you know, maybe your your air cooling versus having AC units or whatever.   I guess, what what issues are you having on, like,   a, like, a a big scale mining operation?  

And how are how are you solving those, or what limitations are you finding?  

[00:42:05] Unknown:

So   we're predominantly,   in North Dakota   and in the Bakken here in the United States. Because of the climate.   Our engineers have just decided this is more conducive to run   air cooled up in in those regions compared to somewhere like West Texas or or another hot region, maybe the Haynesville shale   down in Louisiana.   And I actually find this   discussion about the fans very fascinating because we are designing   an immersion cooling system at Great America Mining, and I think it's interesting for us. We have different parameters because we're very space constrained,   since we're building these in in shipping containers. And,   so that's, like, the number one   sort   of boundary and variable restriction, whatever you wanna call it, design   parameter,   that that really comes into play with us because   considering how much the coolant,   cost, you have to you weigh the trade offs of the initial capital outlay and the amount of hash rate that container's   gonna produce per square foot. And so the fans discussion is something that I I notice our engineers talk   about a lot. Like, do we take off the fans, get more space? Is there a benefit of having them on? So these are when it comes to immersion specifically,   these are some of the main types of things that we have to think about at Great American Mining with our container model,   or the space constraints. And it's fascinating to hear you guys talk through all this.  



[00:43:31] Unknown:

You guys use primarily WhatsMiners. Right? So you're you're really at the mercy of   of the firmware.   I I guess I I'm just curious, obviously, because I'm I'm working   for a firmware company. So I'm I'm curious how you guys work around some of the issues that you're seeing there for immersion or air cooled.  

[00:43:51] Unknown:

I mean,   we,   I mean, we use a stock firmware,   you know, because we have to. Obviously, we're talking   closely with the brains team and others working on firmware. So we're we're getting our hands on and testing.   I mean,   what I could say about What's Matters, they've been beast for us. We haven't really had a problem,   outside of not being able to to gain efficiencies and   and stretch our hash about a bit more, via firmware up or different types of firmware.   With that being said, the machines themselves are   are very durable from our experience. We've been using them since they,   launched the m twenties, and and we've had m twenties in the field for   almost 3 years now.  

I think out of one container that we first launched at a 180, I think we've only ever had one full failure in the field in these rough conditions in North Dakota.  

[00:44:45] Unknown:

Yeah.   And   I have to agree. Like, we don't run a lot of Watts Miners,   but the Watts Miners that we do run, I've had a very, very good experience with.   Again, like, same thing that Marty was saying. They can't get,   like, aftermarket firmware. We can't get any third party stuff on there.   So we're basically waiting on brains OS as well. We would love to go to Watts Miners.   The thing about Watts Miners that   I think is a a main,   a main selling point on them is with,   any Bitmain   machine,   their boards   have,   one heat sink per chip. So you have a bunch of these heat sinks dotted all over the board and there's space between them. Like, there's areas where stuff can get in there.   One of the things that I saw when taking apart Watts Miners is they have   solid heat sinks. It's 1 piece. It covers the entire board, and they just slap on both sides of this board.  

And so that helps to keep a lot of things out. Like, we we actually had an instance because we're up in Canada,   of of some snow   getting in the with these Wasp Miners. I think we only had, like, one board damaged, and   it it was crazy that these things survived the snow. Like, obviously, the power supply failed because they're not quite as secure, but the boards are amazing. The board design on Watts Minor is excellent.   That being said, we mostly run s nines,   mostly because of brains OS. Again, like, I've talked about this. This is a huge thing for us because brains OS is so useful for what we're doing.   Marty has, I think, a lot bigger scale than we do. Like, it's it's easier for them to scale. They have a lot more gas access than we do. But we're trying to scale,   sort of like to to   to more more people,   more decentralization   on a smaller scale. So we're trying to put out a lot of small things whereas they're trying to put out a few big things. And the toughest part about putting out a few small things is we have to be able to regulate how much   how much power they're actually using.  

And, I talked about this earlier.   Having brains OS and the ability to go into a unit and say, I need to drop this by 50 watts on 64 miners for a total of,   like, 3,200   watts. Like, I need to drop this 3,200 watts. It's super, super nice to be able to do that.  

[00:47:07] Unknown:

You were saying earlier that you can do a lot of that remotely.   Right? You so you have access to a lot of your remote.  

[00:47:14] Unknown:

Yep. So with with all of our,   our units, we have ways to access them   remotely. I can I can remotely access the network that is inside of each of our units?   And so if somebody says, hey. We're having gas issues today. Like, we need you to bring it down. I can just bring it down. Or if somebody says, hey. I want this directed somewhere else. We can change   that. Or, like, there's there's lots of different things we can do remotely, and there's so many configurations options using brains OS that we can do   remotely either through SSH and doing it through a terminal   or actually even through the, the web interface.  



[00:47:50] Unknown:

Dude, you're an absolute wizard.   Like, I have I have to be on I have to be on on-site if if I want to access   a machine itself.   And I I kinda did that for security reasons, but I'm gonna be honest, I did that more for   I'm incompetent   to be able to do what you just explained right   there. It was amazing.  

[00:48:15] Unknown:

Well, I have to agree with you. It's maybe not quite as secure. That's kind of one of the main issues that we have with it is it's not as secure.   But, again, like, if you set up a login and all that stuff properly, you use secure passwords, you should be fine. I'm always happy to, like, help you out if you want to. Like, feel free to give me a PM. You have my information.  

[00:48:37] Unknown:

Yeah.  

[00:48:38] Unknown:

That that's that's kinda my background. So I've been in IT for 25 years, and I set up networks   and data centers and all that sort of stuff. So   that's almost not even relevant to to minors exactly, because I mean, you could have a a data center of, you know, regular servers and getting that remote access is   is, you know, or once you get into the site, which would, you know, in in your case, just be a   a shipping container or a hash out or whatever it is, you get into that and you can get into the web interface of the other miners, and it's not it's not too bad.   Or you can just open up Telnet to the whole world.  



[00:49:16] Unknown:

Open up Telnet to the whole world. Good idea.  

[00:49:18] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, with the operations, if you wanna scale, you're gonna have to figure out how to control these stuff this stuff remotely.   If you're, you know, you're trying to do this at any scale. And it is crazy the   how simple you can make the stack if need be.   If you're especially if you're sorry. My son's in the back.   Especially if you're, like, designing your own power distribution units, you have control over that. And   with What's Miners   specifically, like, we've been able to really   granularly,   control them remotely just because of the the API that they have. And you can build on that pretty robustly.  

[00:49:59] Unknown:

This is this is another thing that I've actually really enjoyed with brains OS,   speaking of   of,   API and stuff.   With with brains OS, I found it really, really easy, like and there's a lot of documentation on this. I've actually found that it it's easier to read the brains west API documentation than CGminer.   And so for those of you who don't know what an API is, in in in this context,   an API is an application programming interface. It's something coders use to kinda access   data and stuff about different systems.   And so,   in the case of brains OS, the Bossminer API, because Bossminer is their back end,   can be used to get all sorts of data, hash rate data, fan data, heat data, pool data, you can change pool information, all sorts of stuff with that.  

And so   you can create automated systems   that will legitimately change anything about your miner based on,   different different things. And you could you could run a Raspberry Pi,   just on the network with these miners and just ping them every once in a while, find the hash rate, find the temperature, whatever. And if you have to drop hash rate, like change tuning, drop temperature, increase fan speed, something like that,   that's where you can,   that's where you can use the API to do that. And so that's something that's really useful as well.  

[00:51:23] Unknown:

Yeah. I'm I'm doing exactly that. I specifically have Raspberry Pi, so I got one.   It's in the video too, but,   it has temperatures,   temperature probes for all the tanks, but then it also pulls,   all the miners themselves and pulls that API information back.   And then that brings that back into 2 TVs in my room that I can watch within 30 seconds. I know if anything's gone wrong with it.   Let's see if I'll see if I can find the the photo of the TVs, but,   in the video, it's just a little   stupid yellow box, so that part's not very interesting.   But, yeah, the the the API results from brains is awesome. And then   further, you can you can do more where you would have that talk back and then like, oh, the tank is too hot.  

You know, the oil temperature is too hot, so let's set these miners and this tank back down more.  

[00:52:19] Unknown:

Yep. And that's what's awesome. Actually, it's funny, funny story. I'm designing a little system   for our test bench.   And so,   at Upstream, we try to test every single s nine that comes through, get brains on it, get it all set up, and prepared to go in the unit. And so we have to, like, run thousands of s nines through our shop, and they all have to be tested and installed and set up.   And so I'm actually designing a little system because we we just upgraded to kind of a new area with with more room. We used to do 4 at a time. We're moving up to something like 24 or 32 at a time.   And so I'm designing a system that uses the API to get information on 24 or so miners at a time, and then we can just say, hey. This miner works. Pull it off. Put it on the pallet. Get a new one. This miner works. Pull it off. Pallet, get a new one, and just kinda keep the keep the system going. Make it as fast and easy as possible.  



[00:53:15] Unknown:

K.   So,   maybe the brains guys can answer this. It was something we were talking about a little bit before we went live.   I'm curious about when you when you shut off a minor,   like, the fans just stop. Right?   Is the is the the heat that's already built up   in the minor going to be an issue for that? Like   and then I guess I guess the reason why I was kinda directing it at the brains guys was because   wouldn't it be advantageous   to, like, keep the fans running for a little bit   when you shut the minor off? I don't know if I'm taking us totally off track here. It was just something that I just was thinking about again.  

[00:54:02] Unknown:

I guess, yeah, on it, do you wanna talk about   the the preheat stuff and everything?  

[00:54:07] Unknown:

I will try to speak to that.   Well, the preheat part is definitely   important part of the process to get the machine,   to run at some nominal   speed or performance level.   But I think you hit the nail by explaining, like, what what happens if you cut the power. Right?   Like, shutting down the machine,   gracefully,   currently, what happens   with   with the with the current firmware,   if you if you have,   fan control enabled still.   So if you shut down the machine, so that means it's, let's say, suspended. We have the spend receive feature, whatever.   Anyhow, like, stopping those miners also.  

Well, it's, approach. Then we have a monitor that actually keeps the fans running, which some people find annoying. But at the same time, especially for the,   X17   family, this was critical because   if,   if you, like, cut off power and the and and the machine, like, stops   running all of a sudden. The problem is that,   because of the bad soldering on the PCBs,   or let's say not bad soldering, but lower quality soldering that works well in immersion but not in air cooled environments,   you have to realize that, you know, the way the heat is taken away from from the chips is   by   conducting the heat through the heat sinks. Right? And it works by the fact that you have a certain temperature gradient. So so the end of the heat sink has a different temperature than the chip.  

If the fan stop all of a sudden and you,   like,   don't generate any more power,   by the fact that the chips are not hashing anymore, you still have a short moment of time   where, this heat conduction process   slows down because the the gradient just   breaks down. There's no airflow anymore, And that could damage the PCB, but not for,   for the new gen, for the x nineteens, nor for the s nines because they have different soldering technology. And they are much more,   resilient to to things like this.   So that would be for the power cutoff, and that's nothing that firmware can do because it has no power. But in terms of graceful shutdown, it's certainly a good idea,   to have a feature like this that keeps the fence running for certain time. I kind of think about this,   sometimes when you have turbocharged   vehicles,   when you,   you know, hit the gas and,   run the engine really hard on the highway when you park at in front of your house. Some of the manufacturers   tell you you should keep your,   engine running for a little bit until the blades of the turbocharger   cool down a bit. Because if you stop it, all of a sudden, they could, like, twist or whatever by the cooling process.  

So that's that's how I try to think about the this,   physical process that could happen to the PCBs   for the for the x 17 yuan.  

[00:57:08] Unknown:

And that's actually what made me think about it is because,   unlike   so the cars you're talking about, it's actually the the bearings on the turbocharger   heat up so much.   And I think they've they've mainly we're not talk we're not here to talk about cars, but   they mainly remedied that be because they have oil cooled bearings now.   So that saves it from that. But they it was the same concept, basically. That's what I was going for.  

[00:57:34] Unknown:

Yeah. You need to keep the oil running for a little bit more before you Yeah. The whole process. Otherwise,  

[00:57:40] Unknown:

the end the the bearings have no easy way to to okay. Yeah. Yeah. And they don't cool down, and they've swelled up from the or they will swell up from the heat, and it'll just seize it up. And then   I mean, when you're talking about   running a 100 and 135,   140 degrees   Fahrenheit chips,   like, that needs some that needs some cool down time.  

[00:58:04] Unknown:

There's a question from,   Hornet about this,   what's minor firmware. I guess that's that kind of covers this,  

[00:58:11] Unknown:

this whole topic because, yes, this feature   takes care of it if you if you have fence running while you suspend hashing. I think this is the best that you can do for the PCBs.   Yeah. So the question was about,   if,   yeah, lots of minor firmware letting you suspend hashing while your fans continue. Same thing we're talking about now just with lots of minor firmware. It it does that?  

[00:58:36] Unknown:

That sounds like   it. The other question was if if if that would not help the heat dissipation, and the answer is yes. That definitely helps. It definitely would help. I don't I don't  

[00:58:48] Unknown:

But is that an actual feature of Whatsmet or not? I've never seen that.  

[00:58:52] Unknown:

It's okay. I'm not familiar with, those details in the stock firmware.  

[00:58:56] Unknown:

Yeah. Neither am I. And   this is one of the tough things about stock firmware for maybe some of us is maybe we don't have as much experience running stock firmware as we do this aftermarket stuff that's so much better.  

[00:59:08] Unknown:

He says it's in there. The ads in there.   By the way, an interesting question. If, there's support for Prometheus,   I don't know if you guys know this technology. Prometheus is a standard,   protocol   and a software package that scrapes data from,   server software, basically, taking metrics.   And maybe the question is,   if, support for Prometheus   in inside of Brace OS or any other firmware would be,   an interesting   thing. So   what are your thoughts on this?   Because we use it internally a lot, I would  

[00:59:48] Unknown:

say. Yeah. I've never touched it, but it, like, if it's something that's just scraping data, you you you said from, like, the API, it would probably scrape data from or from, like, web? Or There's a there's a there's the the way Prometheus  

[01:00:00] Unknown:

works is that there's a standard,   let's say, API or format, how the data,   is to be exported by the software that's being scraped.   And then   the Prometheus   itself then goes regular to this.   It's a web, basically, HTTP   technology. It just goes to the website of,   with the metrics. It's a simple text file. It can have a binary   form. And then, you know, it it downloads it every   I don't know. Scraping by one second, 10 seconds, depends on your data,   plan and so on, whatever whatever you wanna configure. But the whole point is that that the machine itself doesn't have to be, like, actively pushing any telemetry data anywhere. It just publishes them or whoever wants, sort of like looking at the API.   This is just   another form. But the the benefit is that you don't have to develop the whole   dashboard technology,   like time series processing. All the data,   is   included in in Prometheus, and then you use Grafana to do nice charts.  



[01:01:08] Unknown:

Okay. So the idea would be something like what me or Coin Heated designed   with using the BossMiner API, but the idea is it would be something a little bit more for,  

[01:01:19] Unknown:

some Let's say let's say yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Let's can you imagine that that that all the data or all the interesting data that you want to be plotted,   that are currently kind of, like, sprinkled   in the CGminer API. Because when we were developing this, we were kind of forced to keep it at least   partially   backwards compatible or make it compatible with what the original   pristine   CGminer,   source published because what the manufacturers,   turned it into was very far from the original   design of,   c CK, right, of Konkolybaz.   He,   I mean, he had some ideas what should be exported, and it was really designed around the GPUs.  

And then the manufacturers basically took the sources and twisted it into something. And if if they liked a certain section of the API, they just glued in some random data without any really good structure. So you can think about it if we and actually, it's not that much work if we transform   this data that is exported,   in the in the CGminer API into whatever is understood by Prometheus scraper, and then you just deploy your Prometheus scraper in your facility or at home, whatever, and then you get the charts pretty much for free.  

[01:02:37] Unknown:

Well, is there an option that you could maybe just put it on a different port? So instead of Oh, yeah. I mean for the API Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure. That that could be,  

[01:02:45] Unknown:

that that could be an alternative,   an alternative,   thing.   In fact, a feature that we're working on is that,   for   some   customers   who have issues with, let's say, connectivity,   it would be interesting   to give them a tooling that would very reliably,   scrape,   the data,   how the stratum client behaves   that would allow debugging,   like, their  

[01:03:14] Unknown:

particular setup. Is that inside the new brains OS manager that you guys are developing?  

[01:03:20] Unknown:

No. It's not in not it's not in there because when once if you have problems with the connectivity, this this thing is not going to help you. You basically have to run this like a like a probing software on on your end   with this,   connectivity,   unreliability.   And once you scrape the data locally,   you can send it to us, and then we can have a look and see how the client   client was was behaving. But theoretically, this can be, like, displayed on on on client. And,   the problem is that   it is useful for for a couple of miners. So when you're, like, really looking in detailed data for for for a couple of miners, But when you want to do, like, thousands and thousands of miners, then it becomes   kind of cluttered. So,   more thought needs to be put into how you want to present the data from from every single miner because then you have to do some aggregation and so on. So I can definitely talk to some of that. So, you know, part of my day job is, I manage literally  

[01:04:22] Unknown:

thousands of workstations and hundreds of servers,   here on the   screen now. We got the 2 TVs, obviously, the slash pool dashboard. And then over on the right is Just a casual  

[01:04:33] Unknown:

1.09   petahash.  

[01:04:36] Unknown:

I'm working on it. It's a little low right now.   But, so then on the right is,   I'm pulling   I'm pulling data directly from the API results,   and then I have a script that parses out the information that I really want. And so   in this right hand screen, what I have is there's there's 2 windows. You can see the red and blue,   window and then the the single blue window, or I guess, or   Yeah.   And so the, the red and blue is the chip,   is in red and blue is the board temperatures.   And there's actually three lines. So there's,   for each card.  

And then the   single line is the hash rate.   And so   this specifically just has 12, and then it cycles through different,   dashboards. But then over here on the right then is a   overall status circle. And we we can see one thing's in yellow, which means it's kinda getting close to   a a temperature rating threshold that I have.   Then the the ones off to the right is my overall balance, and then those   multiple lines in the kind of bottom right are all the tank temperatures.   So in a in a overview   look, I can see immediately what's going on. And you're definitely right though. I mean, if you have a 1,000 of them, you're not gonna have a 1,000 individual things on here. But you could make a total test, total status screen with a, a a a a donut like that. And you can see, oh, we've got   this many that are in red and a complete fail stage, or we have a spike in temperature on this particular tank or   or, ambient temperature if you're running air cooler or what not. And you can find that in relatively short order and get, email alerts on that and and the whole thing.  

Usually when I set this up for for   servers and such, I'll know the problem long before the customer knows about it,   because I'll get alerted about it within 30 seconds.   And being able to pull that information from brains directly   is is awesome. And then I also get full history. So I keep history for a year,   and then I can find out, I can go back like, oh, this thing's been running at, you know, let's say 90 c or something like that. If I look back over a 30 day period   and say, oh, on this day, something happened or or whatnot. But I I can go into that historical data, and I think running it directly on a minor, I don't, you know, unless there's a way to   have additional storage. I know you can use like a 16 gig card, but I don't know how much data that that would be is accessible to the miner itself,   or I should say, you know, to brains itself   and and be able to write the historical information.  



[01:07:19] Unknown:

Quick nerd question. How are you doing your charts?   Yeah. This is PRTG.  

[01:07:25] Unknown:

So it's it would it would be similar to Prometheus or or,   Grafana.   It's just one of the ones that I use, commercially all the time anyway. And then there's a free version for up to a 100 sensors. So I'm just using that.  

[01:07:42] Unknown:

Nice. That's pretty awesome.   Actually, I can talk about so we did another thing that's similar. This is kinda part of what we offer clients.   I've set up a web server actually that does   this for, like, hundreds of units that we have out, and it basically just   keeps historical data. And we pull from the slush pool API instead because it's,   it's actually a little bit, cheaper data wise because we have a very limited amount of data coming from each of our units. Like, we wanna reduce that as much as possible.   Like, maybe   5 to 10 gigabytes a month is kind of what we'd aim for.  

But we can pull historical data, and that's really useful for a lot of people because they can go in and see, hey. My unit's at 0. Like, I need to check this out. Or if you have someone out there that you don't want accessing your slash pool account, then you can you just give them that login and they basically get view only access to it.  

[01:08:34] Unknown:

So one thing that I personally like about PRTG, it's not a show for them. I'm sure other things do it, but you can have what's known as remote probes. And so you could have a, Raspberry Pi,   in a container, let's say. And so that aggregates all the direct data to that and then just sends back a small amount back up to the main node.  

[01:08:57] Unknown:

That's interesting. We were we were thinking of implementing Raspberry Pis into the unit at one point,   into each unit, but for a different reason, and that was proxying, like, aggregating the data. They actually go to the pool.   And so that would basically be taking all the actual, like, hash rate,   sort of, as you would kinda think about it, and sending it through one central location, combining it, and then pushing it to the pool from there.   But I just have never really had a   good way to, like, implement something like that alongside it.   So that might be something to look into. It's interesting.  



[01:09:34] Unknown:

Fun stuff for sure.  

[01:09:36] Unknown:

Is this I mean, I'm seeing all that you're doing,   Jonathan.   I assume that at some point in the future, like, you know, Bitcoin keeps succeeding, that there will be room to implement   tools such as what you were showing in in   in mining stacks.   Like, right now, you kinda have to make it on your own, and it sounds like Brett's doing similar things, but there are no   accessible tools to   the the everyday person.  

[01:10:03] Unknown:

Well, what I mean,   I love open source stuff, and that's one of my my favorite things about brains and and the Raspberry Pi specifically.   You know, just the cost of the Pi alone is so small and and   relatively inconsequential.   And being able to,   a goal of mine that I would really love to do is to be able to have   basically   a raspberry pie that could manage, you know, x number of miners,   have that aggregate data coming in from all the miners,   and have the whole thing open source. And you could just release an SD card image,   and like, here you go. We throw it on the network. It finds,   it finds your, miners by IP that you allow it to find,   and then it can start collecting that data.  



[01:10:56] Unknown:

Yeah. That'd be that'd be very cool.   I,   unless there's other threads to pull on with this one, I'm sure you and Brett could go back and forth for a while.  

[01:11:06] Unknown:

Yeah. Probably.  

[01:11:07] Unknown:

Yeah. We should probably shut up. I talk too much. No. No. It's it's super interesting.  

[01:11:13] Unknown:

Just kind of maybe just something. It's like it highlights just how early we are in this whole industry. Like, building   these monitoring systems alone,   is something that you just have to do from scratch,   if you wanna do it correctly.   And I think it highlights, like, the the canvas that we have in front of us to build a really cool industry all the way down from, like, the hardware to the software stack. And just think about the efficiencies that are gonna be gained from all this practical   software thrown on top of these systems.  

[01:11:42] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, what what I love about the pie is that, you know, there's all kinds of releases for it. Like, you know, there's the, you know, RaspiBlitz, which is for the full node. Just download the whole thing. It sets everything up for you and off you go.   And being able to have something like that that would directly integrate within brains and and pull that information,   and feed stuff back such as minor control.   And then if you took it even a step further and doing, immersion, and then it would actually be able to know,   tank temperatures on top of just the miner itself and being able to have those talk to each other back and forth is   well, well, that's something I'm working on.  



[01:12:23] Unknown:

One thing I would love to I I think, John John, you and I talked about this.   With with all mining setups right now, you kinda optimize   for watt usage. Like, when when we talk about the auto tuning feature that that,   brands offers, you're optimizing for a certain wattage.   So you're maximizing your Terahash,   for that wattage. But as as this technology progresses   and,   you know, these miners start entering   homes for heating,   I think, you know,   upstream data is kinda hinted at and kinda what you're working out with working on heating your pool, it would be awesome to start optimizing for   chip temperature.  

So if you could if you had firmware to optimize   so that the the chip temperatures were,   I I don't know, say, 70 degrees   during the winter, you know, you could kinda pump that into your house and and regulate that. And then   the temperature would or the the   watt input would scale up and down to match that. Just just kinda act as a a thermostat, essentially.  

[01:13:29] Unknown:

Yeah. That's exactly it. Then and that was one of my first focuses is,   and getting those probes to to   register on the pie. So the pie knows the tank temperature. And if there if you can make that tank oil temperature steady,   and when it rises or drops,   then it can change the minor output to adjust also.   Suddenly, you have a heat source   very similar to what you would have in a home where   you never had your heater on 100%   all the time or just off 100% all the time. It, you know, when it gets a little bit colder, turns on for a while, turns off for a while.   And it would be similar to that. Obviously,   you're gonna wanna have   the mining as much as possible. You don't want them just to have them off and being idle.  

And then I'm working on systems for that where then you you would basically instead of piping the heat inside the house, you would pipe it outside kind of like how a air conditioner works   where you have that external unit. And then in in colder climates, you would just have keep it all internal, and it would go through whatever heating system you have.  

[01:14:36] Unknown:

And I I definitely think that that's gonna be worked on in the future, but I don't think that that's where   that's where the money is. Like, it all   everything is incentivized   for,   you know, these companies get as many miners online as possible. And Yep. You know, if you bring on a few miners here and there,   to heat at home, that's not really gonna   that's not gonna pay the bills. That's not gonna pay all your developers.   So you're having to be creative with these these raspberry pies and, you know, kinda optimizing that on your own.   But I I do think in the next, you know, the next epoch, the next 4 years, we might start seeing some stuff like that.  

And I don't know. I I just think that that that's probably one of the things that I'm the most fascinated   about is,   that coming into the everyday house.  

[01:15:25] Unknown:

Well, and if you think about it, I mean, especially with ASICs, you know, so when we step back before ASICs, it was computers, and then people were hashing at home. Right? Because it was just your computer and then a bunch of graphics cards and it got a little more, but it was still your computer.   You got to ASICs and then high speed fans, and and nobody wanted them in their home because they're basically as loud as a shop vac. And so if we bring that back around again and put them into an enclosure   that can dissipate that volume of heat   with low fan noise,   you can kinda bring it back into that market again.  



[01:16:01] Unknown:

What was there? 2, 2, 3 of us had to shut our minors off just so that we could do   this just so that we could do this live recording and not have Yeah. I don't have that problem over here. I don't know what you're talking about. No. I know you don't.  

[01:16:14] Unknown:

I know you're right. Actually, I have 5 on air cool right now, so I'm just giving them crap.  

[01:16:19] Unknown:

Matt O'Dell said he'd cover the, the blocks we lose,   by turning them off. So that was really nice of him. Haven't hidden blocks yet, so we're gonna have to keep pushing this one. You might not know that. The freaks know when they haven't heard me for 45 minutes is a good dispatch. Slashpool mind the block  

[01:16:36] Unknown:

a little over an hour ago. I think we might have caught a block. Oh, I do I do wanna I do wanna ask you guys though, because I this is an honest question. I don't know.   Does mining over tor   actually   impede any of your any of your hash rate or anything like that?   Because I just I just rock a VPN. Seems to work fine for me. I would like to be a little more,   I don't know, clandestine   about it. I don't know if it's possible because my my utility company already knows that I'm sucking down a tremendous about amount of power, but   I don't know how I don't know how mining over Tor works. Is it is it even feasible?  



[01:17:24] Unknown:

I I'm not the best person to talk about this, but I think as long as you have a good Internet connection, it's it's not a huge deal.  

[01:17:32] Unknown:

Alright. Because I was afraid I was afraid that since  

[01:17:35] Unknown:

Tor is kinda You don't wanna mine over Tor.   Alright. That's You have you have to use a VPN. And a hardcore miner will tell you that a VPN has too much latency, but I think the privacy gains are worth it.  

[01:17:49] Unknown:

Yeah. I would I think I would definitely   agree with that.  

[01:17:54] Unknown:

I have a I have a question while I have all these mining wizards on, and we were talking about,   we were talking about coin heated and Brett's, like, using a rasp pi for remote diagnostic.   You know, a lot of us,   you know, nonprofessional   miners talk about Stratum v 2 being a great addition,   to the ecosystem in terms of incentives,   but it has a   an additional cost, basically, to miners that they have to run their own nodes and construct their own blocks. I mean, that's the advantage,   of Stratum v 2. One of the main advantages of Stratum v 2 is that they're in control of the blocks and they're using their own node. Is that something you that, you know, the people on the panel right now are excited about, or is that something you're not even you you wouldn't even wanna do that? You don't you wouldn't even want that extra overhead.  

[01:18:47] Unknown:

Did you just say Stratum v 2 has downsides?   You you wouldn't you don't even have to do that. You don't have to do block swaps. Man.   But is that something you guys want? Like, do you want that?   Block selection transaction selection?  

[01:19:03] Unknown:

Yes.  

[01:19:04] Unknown:

Oh, yeah. It it is an extra burden on the miner because you do have to run your own node in some way, and I don't know if that would appear on the, you know, in the mining hardware that you buy or if you'd have to pair it with,   with something.   I assume once it comes out, there'll be, like, proxy services. You can you can tell slash pool or f two pool services. You can you can tell   slash pool or f two pool to   to pick blocks for you, but   I don't know. I I I see what you're saying, Matt. That definitely was an extra burden on on the miner that hasn't been really talked about.   But I think 99% of the the world is excited for v 2.  



[01:19:40] Unknown:

I'm excited for v 2. I think it's gonna be really useful with, reducing, like, the empty block,   mining, I guess.   I I like, block selection is exciting.   I don't know how   like, maybe Marty can speak more to this. I don't know how it's gonna work for some of the bigger miners. Like, I don't know if this is something that's really exciting for you, Marty, being able to kinda choose what blocks you wanna mine.   But I I'm just excited for some of the other features like,   data usage reduction with stratumv2,   that kind of stuff. Like, there's lots of cool stuff that goes into it. Yeah. I mean, for I think we're certainly excited for it.  

[01:20:21] Unknown:

And I think all the efficiency gains and then the being able to create your   own block and having to run a full node, you're saying that you're already running 100 of computers and setting up the these networks and connecting with the pool, like,   for us, I mean, we have a bunch of Bitcoiners in our engineering team, Austin. I don't think he'd have a problem spinning up a a full pairing it with our operations   even if we had multiple full nodes per container   or, like, full node per container,   or we could just create our own subnet with with its own signal full net. Yeah. I don't I wanna see that being problem, and   it it's always a good option to have in the very least the the ability to create your own block. I guess the the interesting question is after that, once you   feed it to the pool,   to slush pool, like,   like, is that   a point at which can be rejected and they can pick pick another block? I guess that's the,   one of, like, the, like, steel man   questions  

[01:21:21] Unknown:

that we would ask. Like, if you had a troll if you had a troll miner that was just constructing horrible blocks.  

[01:21:28] Unknown:

Yeah. If the block gets rejected,   then does does the pool lose it and it goes back?  

[01:21:35] Unknown:

Can I shortly speak to this?   Please. I'm I'm one of the authors of, the draft of the v two with Pavel.   Currently, we're working with, Square Crypto who   greatly took over the v two   efforts, and they are actually focusing on adding functionality   into Bitcoin Core that would allow the job negotiation   to happen, because there's,   there's part that's just needed also on the Bitcoin Bitcoin core end.   Secondly,   you need essentially, the job negotiation protocol   is is, a sub protocol of v 2. So, it's not the mining part. It's the negotiation part. So,   initially, the the miner,   has to negotiate that the work that he has selected with the pool is valid, but at the same time, he can I mean, that's the proposal?  

He can already start submitting the results based on his templates, and they can be rejected, like, later on. So that means, like, they it the pool cannot let you know that the the stuff that you submitted is is garbage because it tells you it's okay, but it's gonna show. The idea is that it would show up in the accounting, essentially, that this was   garbage. And the reason is that you want to be as efficient process as possible. Because if you, as a miner, are able to construct your own template as fast as possible, there's just no good reason for the pool to slow down the process of you submitting the results. Right?   The validation can come after, but it cannot be, real time because there's some negotiation   being done in parallel to this. So it's pretty complex,   concept, and it has some additional   requirements   on the pool software. So a pool and also has to be feature rich in order to support something like this.  

So once once those guys   are are are done with their stuff, we can start thinking about this.   That being said, I   I feel that there are there's a lot of,   like, rumors around this feature that people find it as a super important thing. I think it's a super important thing,   as a security   or sorry, as a safety,   protocol feature   in case censorship would start happening. Well, it started happening last year, right, with certain certain new pools, but   you still have the option to switch over to another pool. But the great strength that I am seeing with, with v 2 is simply switching over to a straightforward   binary.  

V 2 isn't what Satoshi   envisioned. Well, Satoshi, right,   started with,   get blocked template.   So   I think I forgot the the flow now.  

[01:24:37] Unknown:

So do you do you think is it possible that,   with v 2 with individuals constructed in their own blocks,   can the individual construct empty blocks?  

[01:24:49] Unknown:

Oh, yeah. Sure. Why not?   It's it's an accounting,   problem because   let's say you're   it's it's a corner case, but let's say you're the evil miner who for some   reason, likes empty blocks. Right? So you're gonna be proposing empty blocks. They're completely fine. They're illegal. You're not proposing,   invalid transactions, so they're gonna be approved by the pool unless there is some special policy on this.   But let's say the pool allows it. But what needs to be reflected is that you're essentially,   reducing the reward of of other miners. Right? Because,   the the   the the hash rate,   the the portion of the hash rate,  

[01:25:30] Unknown:

that   The portion portion of the transaction   rewards that you normally would have got not gonna be. That's what I was trying to say. Yeah. Yeah.  

[01:25:39] Unknown:

So so that would have to be compensated somehow,   that the rewards that you would be getting from the other blocks mined by other miners,   so your your cut would have to be   reduced, and it would have to reflect,   the fact that you are in favor of of empty blocks. So that's  

[01:26:00] Unknown:

that's why the the mold the market mold part. People are gonna migrate away from   migrate away from you be for the same reason that why   people will migrate away from, let's say, censored transactions   or something like that.   Like,   there are transactions   out there that are willing to pay someone, and there's always someone willing to   willing to mine those transactions.   So   you would actually be in a worse position   than somebody   Yeah. I okay. I get it. I get it. I'm seeing it now.  

[01:26:41] Unknown:

But, originally, what I wanted to say, I see the strength,   of the v 2, and just a pure   engineering   improvement of the security and the the efficiency of the transfers of data because,   I don't know if you looked in detail what v one contains,   but,   every single   submission   contains the string,   right,   mining sub byte or whatever that message is called. It's a it's like a useless string that could be expressed by a single byte, But we have transferred through all the years, like, terabytes and terabytes of this useless data.   Speaking of which, for locations that have some   bandwidth constraints,   that could actually,   be interesting. So that's one part.  

The the data efficiency of the protocol itself, then the overall efficiency,   where certain messages   don't need to be sent,   when you broadcast new jobs and so on.   And   last but not least is the security part.   So now,   the protocol itself from user perspective   acts as what we're used to when using,   the web. Right? You have HTTPS   and your browser contains the root certificates that are that have been used to sign,   the the actual server certificate of your favorite website. And the the the same concept, but in a much   reduced,   way is implemented in v 2. It uses   a noise protocol framework, and it has chosen one of the handshakes that   allows authenticating the server. There's no need to authenticate the client for for for this purpose.  

And all all the  

[01:28:35] Unknown:

Did we lose him?  

[01:28:37] Unknown:

Yeah. We might have lost him.   He was talking about the noise protocol. I can I can kinda go on about the noise protocol? I don't know a whole lot about noise protocol,   but the idea is it's, it's   it's used before actually initializing the connection. What the noise protocol does is it,   it basically connects   to the server from the client, and they do what's called a handshake.   And they basically just check some keys, that kind of stuff, some some general, like,   security stuff   just to make sure that the This is between the miner and the pool. Right? Pool. Yes. Okay. And and so that that noise handshake just basically ensures that the pool is actually who they say they are using some encrypted keys, that type of stuff.   And then after that, they open an encrypted tunnel   between the pool and the miner, and it it's like you you're literally putting, like, a tube around your connection. Like, nobody can get into that. They can see kinda where it's coming from and but they can't really tell where it's going. They can't really tell the data, and it's it's kinda messy for people. And on top of that, one of the nice things about Stratum v 2 using this noise protocol handshake   and also this encrypted connection   is that it prevents,   what's called a man in the middle attack, which is where people basically go. They pretend they're the pool,   whether that be your ISP could do something like that or   peeps   somebody somebody malicious malicious some malicious actor.  

They would get between you and the pool. They'd say, hey. We're   x pool that you're using.   So give us some portion of your hash rate, and then they'd kinda proxy you onwards.   And if if they do this right, it's barely even noticeable. It would be such a small portion, but they're still siphoning off your hash rate. And so v 2 prevents that by basically encrypting all that data.   Another another really nice thing about v 2, and I think Yan kinda talked about this a little bit, is   how much it actually reduces bandwidth usage.   So with v one,   my understanding of v one is that it sends JSON,   to and from the pool.  

Maybe encrypted. I'm not entirely sure. Maybe Kahuna knows a little more about that.   But it it sends JSON data between the pool and the miner.   Whereas,   because,   sorry, some history on this. In the past, you would want your stratum information to actually be human readable. You would want to be able to,   to basically,   if you if you really felt like it, go in and actually read your stratum data from your miner or from the pool or whatever. And so JSON data, JavaScript object notation data is human readable, and it's just a set of key value pairs.   Whereas something like Strata v 2, I believe, uses   binary.  

And so they're converting it into a nonhuman readable format, but the amount of bytes that are being used by it are actually considerably less.  

[01:31:34] Unknown:

And so those are just some of the benefits of v 2. I I don't know if you said the codes. Correct? I I just am not technical enough, but you hit hit the nail on the head. Just going from human reader readable to,   you know, a a smaller text format, you you have less data to less data to communicate between the pools   and the miners,   and that just requires less bandwidth. So if you're operating out in the middle of the ocean,   for a mining or a, you know, an oil rig or something that's less static, you have to transfer back and forth, and that allows you to operate under a, you know, a shittier Internet Internet connection.  

[01:32:10] Unknown:

Yon, did I did I mess up, VT? No.  

[01:32:13] Unknown:

I think I think you did. You did very well.   I don't know at what point my connection cut off. I just saw my might be muted. So,   can you guys hear me now? Right? Yes. That's that's impressive that I actually managed to Yeah. One one note done.   Yeah. One one note to noise is is is pretty much a standard thing that is being used by signal, and I think even WhatsApp uses it for the end to end encryption.   And what is good about it is it's it's a crypto,   done the right way, and it's very hard   to do it wrong because,   basically, all you do is you design the handshake. You just   there's a formal language for it, and you choose the handshake that fits your your use case. Like, if you want to authenticate both ends or just the server, which is the case for for v 2. And it   if I say, like, originally, we were considering going with TLS 2.0, but then I had a talk with Matt Carrel, and he'll be like, wow. Why you do wanna use TLS 2.0? Because, like, even though TLS 2.0 is a good,   like, technologically,   it's it's up to date with the the modern crypto. It's AAD, so it's authenticated encryption with associated data. So what that means is that all the data is automatically encrypted, but at at the same time, the protocol   detects if anybody tempers with the data. So if you touch the encrypted data with the intention to,   you know, the server thing that somebody sent garbage, but the garbage would get decrypted and interpreted. That's not the case because it's it's easily   detectable.  

So so TLS is a great thing, but at the same time, it has to deal with all the backward compatible shit, and it there's no, like, formal verification. Whereas for the noise, it it just doesn't have any backward compatible shit,   along with it. And,   it's a standard thing, and I think it has a formal verification.   So it was actually a pleasure developing something like this because,   everything was literally written in the spec of the noise particle framework, and we just chose, one of the handshakes   and used   Snow,   to to generate the code for us for Rust, for example. Nice. But yeah. So so so that's that's why we chose, and I'm very grateful for, for Matt Corral's input on this,   because he convinced me literally, like, saying, let's just do let's do it this way. I was like, that that makes perfect sense. And at that time, I didn't even know that that existed, which was my my engineering mistake. But yeah. So,   this part is, I think, very solid.  



[01:34:48] Unknown:

Oh, and by the way, for anybody in chat who wants to know just how crazy smart the team at brains are,   see if you can find the stratum v 2 specifications.   That stuff is full of so much technical data. It's it's crazy. These people are amazing, and Jan is super smart. So I'm I'm super excited for what v two is eventually gonna bring.  

[01:35:10] Unknown:

Yeah. And we have we have a question from Don Reddy in the chat about v 2 and whether or not it changes or shifts any incentives. What is your viewpoint there?  

[01:35:22] Unknown:

I don't   so, actually, I noticed the question,   a little   while ago. I I tried thinking about it.   I don't think so. It changes,   incentives. I mean,   depends how you look at it. Like, from from engineering perspective,   people should have the incentive to use it because I don't know how to get around, the man in the middle problem. At the same time,   currently, there are not too many pools implementing. And, essentially, we are the only ones, so it's sort of like the prototype implementation.   So that is not,   you know, a good environment to say that we have changed something. But it's, again, it's a it's a work in progress.   But yeah.  

So so the intention,   also the incentive   is very strong. But in order to,   be usable, you need the server and you need the client. Right? And until it's   publicly implemented,   by   our competitors, let's say,   it's   still not the case. Right?   And I guess the question was originally directed towards   the, transaction,   selection,   which in my opinion is a very logical extension   towards.  

[01:36:45] Unknown:

The the, it might be worth knowing that when you   when   whether a okay. If you're running stratum b 2, the miner and the pool still have to align with what the block   proposal is.   So   in a stratum v turner says, hey. I want to mine this block. They hand it off to the pool   If it's an empty block with no transactions in it,   or if it's a   block that doesn't pay the pool, the the Coinbase transaction, then they'll deny it.   So if there's something in there that they don't like, they'll they'll deny it.   But what I'm getting at is they they have to agree on the block that's being mined. And then once they do so, the miner is off to the races. They can they can mine that block. So   miner still gets to pick the block.  

That's a protection against the pool doing something nefarious,   but the pool still does have to does have to agree to let them mine it.  

[01:37:43] Unknown:

So so I was kinda asking the opposite. So do you remember do you remember when that guy, he accidentally   he accidentally   this was   last   last epoch.   He accidentally ordered   he accidentally added   the   the transaction   fees into the block reward   and mined that block, and it was, like, 13   13   Bitcoin   something   or whatever, and it got rejected.   So what happens if   if an individual minor doing this   does that?   I guess that was the question I was originally asking, and I I don't I maybe I missed it. Well, that's a yeah.  

[01:38:33] Unknown:

Those the the the answer is pretty simple because then such block is not valid and it's gonna be invalid. I mean, the proposal of the block is   is invalid and the pool is going to reject it. So the pool can temporarily let you submit,   results, but you can think about it as you have a as if you had a buggy miner,   and it would be generating shares with wrong,   I don't know, end time because it would be,   spinning the end time counter too fast. So, like,   moving the the time of the block, and there's a limit,   after which,   the the proposed shares are not,   you know, legal anymore and acceptable. So the pool will start rejecting it, and the the only difference is that the pool would initially accept your your shares because it doesn't,   know the details of the blog that you're mining on. But once it figures out that these shares are associated with with your own blog that you proposed,   in the final,   check, let's say, or a bill at the end. So when you go into some static sticks, you would see that eventually all the shares,   have been rejected.  

Like so so I I don't see it as a problem. It's a it's a firmware issue. It's a it's a problem with the What if your miner  

[01:39:51] Unknown:

what if your what if the person's miner who actually mined that block and then constructed the block poorly   so that it became a rejected block.  

[01:40:02] Unknown:

It's an economical damage  

[01:40:04] Unknown:

Then So then it's the pool doesn't hit the block either then, though. Right?  

[01:40:09] Unknown:

Right. But it's it it just,   from full perspective, it is the same as if that miner was not connected at all. Like, I mean, you can think about it that energy has been wasted because he has been,   mining and using that energy to generate shares that eventually are not valid because the pro the block proposal or the block template is not valid. But the system should be designed in a way that we're not talking about hours here. It's just a matter of seconds. So once you,   construct, such an invalid block template, you send it to the pool. It's doing its, you know, validation work. But at the same time, you already started mining on top of this Yes. So I so it's gonna be sorted out, and and it should be sorted out in seconds. But these seconds are critical   for,   the miner to to work efficiently because once it knows its template,   it it should start mining on top of it. Right? This is the same issue as with the pool. Like, anytime there's a new block found in the network, the the biggest job that each pool has is to generate a new template and distribute   it among the miners. V 2 pulls this a little bit further because it it tries to propose you an alternative   template to   to the to the current block or to the current block template that is being mined. And when a new block is found in network and this alternative template   is still valid, so it contains let's say it would be empty or it contains transactions that were from the second half of the mempool that were not for sure included with some probability. Let's say, you know,   you know, the ordering on different nodes is not always guaranteed,   then these miners, just by knowing or being notified by the pool that, they're supposed to start mining on top of a new block template. They can already start mining because they already have the templates from the pool. And this is exactly the same case with, with, locally generated templates. You have it really fast. Let's say you're you're a big fan of empty blocks, so you start mining on your own, empty block template. You you keep submitting, and you just made a small mistake that the,   block output   value is not 6.25,   but it's 7. And if, you know, if there's no no no transactions,   and that the reward is over the, consensus protocol, then this this template is invalid. While the pool is gonna tell you in a in a couple seconds probably or even faster, and then it would start rejecting your shares and all the shares that have been, like,   preliminary accepted until the point where we have found out that the block is not valid, although the template is not valid, they would be like, their status would be changed in the accounting. So you would you will see that you you know, essentially, your hash rate has dropped.  



[01:42:53] Unknown:

The miner would be the miner would be burning electricity  

[01:42:56] Unknown:

at the cost. No. It wasn't it it definitely wasn't a criticism. It it was just a question. I was just wondering how exactly that would work  

[01:43:05] Unknown:

because And it's, it is important to realize that all these things have been already experienced by the poor developers. And, I   mean, trust me that throughout the history,   all the different pool implementation   must have had this issue where they actually   waste   it, some of the,   you know, energy because they basically mined something that was not valid. And they realize it. It was a software mistake.   But by by this feature,   you   at the you you provide   a security feature for for for Bitcoin network because you can choose your own transactions, but it puts more responsibility   on the software that is distributing   distributed among miners, that it generates,   valid templates   based on their requirements.  



[01:43:55] Unknown:

Well yeah. And it was my it was my understanding that the person that   that screwed up that block, that add added   added wrong,   fat fingered something, whatever they did,   was they actually soul a mind to block, which is, in my understanding, damn near impossible.   And   they did that,   and they lost out on it anyways because and it just went to the next person that or the next mining pool or whomever   ended up mining the block afterwards.   So that's what I was that that's more what I was curious about was   whether or not   that had been taken into consideration because that could screw up things. But then you're saying that nobody is actually even gonna know   that you ever screwed up   the block template.  

You  

[01:44:48] Unknown:

just screwed up the block. The the the pool will know that you're,   an unfortunate miner that cannot generate valid templates.   But Got it. Check them out. And and then, the the the pool support may try contacting you. Like, if this is something that is happening   regularly, then it's a it's a software issue that should be fixed.   So But Yeah.  

[01:45:14] Unknown:

Like, as a minor, though, you should be probably   monitoring this. Like,   yeah, like like, if you're using v 2 and you're actually doing your own transaction   you   you would assume these would be the type of miners that would actually be paying attention to their rejected shares and stuff  

[01:45:39] Unknown:

to see if they've actually messed something up, wouldn't you, until they they learn better? Oh, yeah. Sure. I mean I mean, the the incentive is very strong, so I don't think this will be,  

[01:45:49] Unknown:

a very Yeah. But that's a that's a gigantic case. Yeah. The gigantic learning curve from   buying miners and plugging them in to   like, the first time I ever opened command mine   command line in my life   was   to install the brains OS software,   the brains OS   on the Antminer. So that is the first time I've ever opened command command line in my life. And then now you fast forward   a a year,   and I just got Hash rate coming out of my fucking ears.  

[01:46:29] Unknown:

And That's a terminal wizard.  

[01:46:33] Unknown:

Yeah.   Oh, I got another question.   Are you guys bringing push notifications back ever   on the app, slush pool   app?  

[01:46:49] Unknown:

For the blocks. Right?  

[01:46:52] Unknown:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.   Yeah.   Yeah.   Yeah.   Sorry. I didn't mean to just totally change. Just totally pivot in the middle of my sentence. I was reading Oh, that's okay. Because I   which I shouldn't have been doing, and a buddy of mine hit hit it up.  

[01:47:11] Unknown:

I will I will talk to the product guys. I I don't have the answer. I don't know.   Because push notifications   work, in terms of the rewards that you're getting.   I will check with them. I don't know.  

[01:47:26] Unknown:

Submit a ticket on Slushpool.  

[01:47:28] Unknown:

Send it to, the Slushpool team, and they'll help you out. Same thing that happens in the Crazy West chat. Yeah. No. I didn't I didn't mean to put a put a bunch of pressure on you guys. I was just reading it as I was talking, and then I got confused on what I was saying. So I was like, I'll just say that. Well, if there's anyone to ask, it's Jan.  

[01:47:47] Unknown:

It's alright.   It's alright.  

[01:47:50] Unknown:

Oh, there's an interesting question.   Could multiple pools collude and push the alternative   templates to include transactions that wouldn't be included otherwise?   Oh, yeah. Sure. As long as the transactions are valid. Right? The I mean, as long as the network accepts it.   So there was another one. From what I understand, they all with  

[01:48:13] Unknown:

With with regards to the first question,   wouldn't that mean that,   with these pools, it these would have to be pools that aren't letting their miners do their own transaction selection. You would need pools doing transaction non stratum 1 pools. Yeah. Yeah. So,   yeah, so you you'd have to have colluding pools that are fighting basically against,   against the actual people using them, being able to select their own transactions, and then colluding   to create their own block templates.  

[01:48:44] Unknown:

Another part of this comment is from what I I'm reading already. Right? From what I understand, the alternate different templates are pushed out to speed up the wait time for previous block found. Yes.   That is true. That is that could be actually   one reason that you could start mining on a new block faster than your colleagues.   The the point,   that I'm trying to make is that,   once   a a new block is found in the network,   So from that point when the pool knows about it,   all your shares are going to be rejected   until you learn about the new template.  



[01:49:28] Unknown:

Oh, okay. So that's so you that's   kinda part of what I was because if you cross if you cross the whole pool a block, then you're penalized for a little while until you can prove that   what you're using or what you're doing to assemble   to assemble the block is actually going to be valid next time that you assemble it, then you can then you can start  

[01:49:54] Unknown:

You won't even be able to start mining with the pool unless you propose a block that they're they agree with.   So if you if you, you know, put a piece of crap on my desk and I say, no. I'm not gonna even let you mine this, then you're you won't even be able to work with us. It it's like a contract. You have to agree to   mine a constructive block for yourself and the pool.  

[01:50:17] Unknown:

But then so then that only means that it that it follows the block   the   consensus rules.  

[01:50:24] Unknown:

But what If it doesn't if it's an empty block with no transactions   or it doesn't follow the consensus rules or it breaks a rule,   that your pool demands, then   it'll be rejected.   Okay. Okay.  

[01:50:38] Unknown:

Because I You won't even have started mining it because we will not have agreed to let you mine that block. Yeah. Because, essentially, what a pool is is they're just buying your hash. Right? Right? And then v 2 is different where you're actually   it's a different structure.  

[01:50:55] Unknown:

V 2 is I'm I'm building a house. I'm hiring you to do the drywall.   It's you know, here, I I will do all these walls. I will sand everything. I'll mud everything.   Do you agree? And I say, yes. And then you get to work.   If   if you just start,   you you know, if I say no, then, you know, you're you're not even gonna be contracted to work on my house. You're just gonna get back. So it's a sense it's a failure. You're buying you're buying the work.  

[01:51:25] Unknown:

Right. Yeah. It it's it's like you say, hey. Like, come in and and drywall my house, but submit me a plan for this first before you come in. And and if I don't like your plan, you can go away. I'll find someone else to do it. Yep.  

[01:51:39] Unknown:

Alright. I didn't know that v two worked like that. I get it now. I get it. But the the main difference the main difference is instead of the mining pool constructing the block. So you you take away that centralization   risk.  

[01:51:51] Unknown:

Yeah. I mean, in that example, the you know, I'm the I'm building a house. I tell b 1. I say, alright. Alright, Neil. You're gonna drywall all of these walls, and you're gonna you're gonna, you know, do it exactly how I say. But but in this example,   you're gonna propose me the the plan. And if I agree with it, then then we're off to the races.  

[01:52:14] Unknown:

So then in v 2, I say   I say, I'm mining all transactions. I don't care which ones are censored. And I I propose that   to you,   and I'm not saying I'm not saying you guys specifically. I'm just saying just arbitrarily.   I propose that to a mining pool,   and they say,   no.  

[01:52:38] Unknown:

You still need to exclude You need the center base? Yeah. You still need to exclude this Yeah. And this then you then you switch pools. Then you switch pool. That's not what it's protecting from. It's it's it's protecting from a minor a mining pool, like, specifically,   acting in bad faith, basically.   And then right? Like, you're you're preemptively stopping it instead of after the fact.  

[01:53:05] Unknown:

If that happens, you're gonna get all side eyed and be like, what's going on here? Why do you keep projecting my blocks? This is bullshit. Like, are you censoring something? And then you're just gonna flip pools, and everyone else is gonna do the same thing.  

[01:53:16] Unknown:

Rather   than me contributing my hash rate to a pool that then excludes   transactions   after the block has already been found, and then I have to leave. So you're just telling me straight up   in the beginning Exactly.   No.   We we are excluding these transactions. And if you don't wanna follow those rules, then you need to go somewhere else. Exactly. And that incentivizes  

[01:53:43] Unknown:

censorship resistance. Right? Because if you're a pool that's censoring some   transaction, and that transaction has a higher transaction fee than other transactions that are being put on a block, that's gonna incentivize miners to move to a different pool, which literally   deincentivizes   being a censoring pool.  

[01:54:03] Unknown:

Alright. I get it.  

[01:54:06] Unknown:

And it's it's kinda it's it's it's kind of important when it comes to regulation too. Right? That this idea that   that the that the pool isn't the one constructing the block in the first place. It's kinda like their hands are clean.  

[01:54:23] Unknown:

Oh, so there's so there so you're saying that there's less incentive for them   originally to even  

[01:54:29] Unknown:

Sensor because they're like, we're not constructing it. Yeah. Okay.   And then so that goes to a further question that r two, in the comments mentioned, who said he was gonna go to bed about 45 minutes ago, and he's still listening.   There's this pool, they're tiny, Laurentia pool,   that's run by Mind Farm and Buy, and they pay out the Coinbase transaction,   so they don't actually custody any funds.   I'm kind of curious on Jan's opinion of of that because, I mean, I think they're the only pool that's actually paying out directly from Coinbase. Are you aware of this?  

[01:55:06] Unknown:

Yes. We're aware of this. The problem is that this approach doesn't really scale because you are taking up, precious   box space,   and basically   reducing the the amount of fees. Right? So if you think about it, that you have   couple 1,000   minors that you're supposed to pay out, and you may not be left with any any space for regular transactions. So you would essentially   be mining, gigantic   and gigantic empty blocks,   with a huge,   fan out,   Coinbase transaction.  

[01:55:49] Unknown:

So I got a question about that.   So I thought about that.   I've heard about this. I haven't I haven't deep dove into it at all or anything like that.   But   so it's   completely  

[01:56:05] Unknown:

what's the word I'm looking for? Like, it's it's unusable  

[01:56:10] Unknown:

by your normal   home miner   because you can't pay somebody out their block reward   if they're mining on an s nine.  

[01:56:21] Unknown:

Because it's Think about it like you'd be paying out a bunch of tiny little transactions. It's essentially cost. Censoring   yourself because you you aren't paying enough transaction fee for it to even be worth paying.   Like, you'd have to be here. Whole your whole block.  

[01:56:35] Unknown:

Your whole block reward, what you what you get from a pool like that that pays out directly from Coinbase,   if you're a   a small   miner,   it's dust.   The only thing you're doing is paying   unless unless I'm missing something on that, like You're not. That's the issue. You're literally censoring yourself by not paying enough transaction fees to even, like, get your stuff through. You're mining for the miners. So you're showing the miners and that's it. For the listeners that are confused, we're not talking about Coinbase, the exchange. Coinbase  

[01:57:08] Unknown:

decided to name themselves after the Coinbase,   which is the transaction where the miners pay themselves.   What? So that has that has no fees   for the actual transaction, but the problem is that  

[01:57:22] Unknown:

the next transaction after that is It's in done at that point. In fact, this transaction collects the fees. So, let's say the block value is 6.25,   and all the fees of all the transactions are added to this output. So so the block value the the little literally, the the the amount being   inflated because that's the emission. Right? Bitcoin is 6.25   plus all the fees that are, in the transactions   that have been,   put into the block.   So you're completely right with the dust. So it works. Like, technically, it works.   The problem is it doesn't scale, and it has all these,   side effects. So you would have to have, I don't know, just a couple of miners, big miners, no small miners,   or you would have to somehow, like,   interleave   the,   the rewards   so not every miner would be included in a certain block. But I I don't wanna step into this because I'm not familiar with the exact algorithm that is,   being used in warranty approval.  



[01:58:29] Unknown:

Well, bay basically, I mean, I think   Mindfarm Buy, and I don't wanna   speak for him, but   I consider him a friend. I I I think that he understands that it's a major trade off,   but the concern is   if they start going aft if if government start going after   mining   pools for being custodians,   they don't have,   we wouldn't really have another solution besides   that.  

[01:59:05] Unknown:

Right. That's a valid,  

[01:59:06] Unknown:

valid point. But it's definitely if   if if we can avoid it, then avoid it.  

[01:59:16] Unknown:

Well, you can't you can't have small scale miners at that point. Right. And and then you're right back to the whole   block debate, but rather than debating nodes, you're   debating mining.   You're gonna have to you're gonna have to centralize mining again at that point.  

[01:59:35] Unknown:

If that's if that's a It's a trade off. It's a trade off like everything else. Right? It's it's the difference between more centralized mining pools versus more centralized miners. Yeah. It's not the ideal. You don't wanna be in that situation. Yeah. There's another question.   It's not even really a question. It's a statement about this guy,   K Joe, in the comments said that, you know, Blockware   shut down the facility that his miners were hosted in,   and now he's shit out of luck.   I'm curious what what the panelists think about this new, like, hosted mining phenomenon.   Blockware is one of the main ones who do it. Encompass is another one.  

What are your thoughts on that? I  

[02:00:19] Unknown:

if if I could start.   I don't understand   the the financials   of something like Compass.   So you give them I think the last the last numbers I saw somebody was asking me about was you give them $24,000   up front.   You give them   something   like $6,000   a month   for 6 months,   and they put one miner online for you   starting   February   of 2022.  

[02:00:52] Unknown:

It's definitely getting worse and worse. I mean Oh, yeah. Obviously, everything's so profitable that everyone's jumping on board, and they only have so much capacity.  

[02:01:01] Unknown:

I'm not I'm not the type of guy, like, that figures out  

[02:01:08] Unknown:

I mean, if you were if you were lucky enough to, you know, buy s nines at $50 a pop back in November or   join Compass.  

[02:01:16] Unknown:

S nines. I meant, like, s nineteens.  

[02:01:18] Unknown:

Well, what I'm gonna ask or, like, you know, subscribe to   Compass back in November, you could get   you would get, like, you know,   decent profits, and you'd be able to turn on a miner at that moment. But mining is so incredibly profitable right now that they don't have the capacity for it, so their miners aren't even turning on until   May of next year. So, yeah, it's it's   a it's a crapshoot. I mean Is it some kind of weird,  

[02:01:46] Unknown:

like,   the hell is it called? Layaway program   or something where, like, you give them all the money up front,   and they they go buy   whatever contracts they can get. I don't get it. It makes I can't figure out the business model.  

[02:02:04] Unknown:

I think their business not model, like,   really broke when they ran out of capacity because, like, there's so much demand for miners that,   like I like you said, they're not even turning on until May of next year, which is ridiculous. Like, am I am I willing to send them that much money to turn on the card? Sending them you're already sending them  

[02:02:24] Unknown:

off upfront payment, and then you're giving them   $6,000 a month or don't quote me on that. I I honestly can't remember exactly how much money it was.   It's way more. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not like that. It's just, it's just a market thing. Right? They do it every single month, and then they don't even turn your miners. They don't even turn one miner on for you for 6 months,   and then you only get one additional miner  

[02:02:51] Unknown:

each month for You're talking about their bundle programs. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's it seems weird to me. Well, there's that there's that weird package thing that they have. You can also just buy a minor,   and then it'll just go on and, like, you pay what, you know, it's like, $9 for an s 19 or whatever it is, and then it goes online on whatever time and then you start paying monthly.   But but what what I've kinda come to understand is that your your average home user that is not technically savvy, they have maybe a laptop that they barely function with, and they know enough about it and they wanna get in on it.   That's a reasonable way for somebody that just doesn't know anything   to operate it, you know, that's as close as they're gonna get to actually mining   Bitcoin on their own and not just purchasing it outright.  

Yeah. And I've I've had a couple of friends do that and, you know, he had a lot of money to throw at it and no technical abilities at all. And so mining at home, even if you have the capacity,   he just doesn't know how to do it. And so he went in on Compass, but, yeah, the demand is just   insane. And so but even if we just look at just a couple months ago, when the   when everything plummeted down, you could get a s 19 for 6 grand, 30 doubled in price.  

[02:04:08] Unknown:

Yeah. It it's a it's a market thing. Right? The demand is so high. The capacity is low. It's it's just what they can provide at this point. But I I mean, I could rant I could rant on this topic for a while. I think what they're doing is pretty incredible,   but it looks it looks so shitty just because they don't have the facilities that can plug these miners in yet because it takes so much time to plug them in. But if you definitely.  

[02:04:30] Unknown:

Oops. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off.  

[02:04:32] Unknown:

Oh, you're fine. I I'm just saying it's like a different it's a different dynamic buying a miner today through Compass versus buying 1 in November. Like like I said, November,   Bitcoin wasn't as profitable to mine with. You could get it plugged in today,   but your mind if you buy a miner through them   now,   you know, September,  

[02:04:52] Unknown:

it's it's delayed because they have no place to put it. And Yeah. It's just like it's just like you used to be able to actually buy and mine it directly on Bitmain's website. You know, it's just like you could just go there and get one one day, and then they ship it to you. And now  

[02:05:05] Unknown:

it would it just they're not there anymore. Right. And it's it's very enticing to have, like, a 6¢ per kilowatt hour. Like, I I mean Yeah. The people that have asked me about Compass, I've told them,   you know, you probably won't go wrong ever in the near future with 6¢ per kilowatt hour, but here's your risks.  

[02:05:23] Unknown:

Big kahuna. I told you I was gonna be ending up talking over you this whole time.   If I can't see your face and I can't see your mouth moving,  

[02:05:31] Unknown:

I told you, I won't Neil, how many how many claws are you in right now?  

[02:05:39] Unknown:

16.  

[02:05:40] Unknown:

Yeah. Well, there we go.  

[02:05:43] Unknown:

This is no. But no. I I I certainly agree with you,   Coinhir. Is,   it it solves it solves the problems   that most people have. It's the problems that all of us have.   And that's why   you and I turned to immersion heating   or immersion cooling was because there was just   too much noise, too much heat.   And that   this those solutions solves that for everyone. I think we talked about that in the last   Citadel dispatch that   we were talking about introduction   to,  

[02:06:22] Unknown:

Yeah. Serial dispatch 31.   I mean, my my opinion is I I tend to agree with Big Kuna. I mean, right now, mining is   there's a shortage of everything,   and it's super profitable to mine. So everything is kind of out of whack on Compassus' side.   It provided, like, a for for a while there, it provided a nice entry level way of getting in.   But my biggest concern has always been,   like, a not your keys, not your coins type of situation.   But in this case, it's it's hardware. Right? So,   to me, the holy grail has always been to to have your own hardware and to run it yourself and have full control over it.   But I do respect the fact that, you know, there's there's people that have extremely expensive,   power rates,   and,   you know, not even if you especially if you're not in America.  

In America, we're very privileged that we we tend to have very cheap power,   and and they don't have the skills to at least set it up in the beginning. But I I think more people are overwhelmed,   like, unrightfully   so overwhelmed about  

[02:07:31] Unknown:

entry level mining. Like, it is way easier than people expect. I I agree. This is I I a 100% agree with you there.   In my opinion,   like, the way people should start mining, buy 1 s 9   and, like, just throw it down in your garage or somewhere. Like, instead of running a garage heater in the winter or something like that. Like,   Steve Barber, the guy that I, I work for,   at Upstream Data, literally started with, like, 2 s nines in his garage just running during the winter. It was so hot in his garage. In the middle of winter in Canada. Like, it's it's minus 20, minus 30 outside, and it's it's crazy hot in his garage. And now he's, like, building data centers and putting them all over the US and Canada, and it's like, it's not that hard. And especially with some of the new stuff, like, we were this this whole thing's about firmware, but   yet another time for me to shill brains OS because I love the damn firmware. It's the best stuff on the market. Just they have a a toolbox application. It's a g y. It's it's a graphical user interface. You click buttons on it, and it installs for you, and then you're done. You go into the web interface,   and everything is accessible through, like, buttons and typing stuff out. There's no terminal. There's no nothing. It's easy.  



[02:08:46] Unknown:

And so I think everybody should do that. I was gonna ask about that. Oops. Sorry to interrupt you, Matt. But I was gonna ask about that, mate.   That was one of my main questions   was,   can you just you can just do brains without  

[02:09:01] Unknown:

without command line or anything now? You don't even need command line, dude. This toolbox tool they put out, it it it literally looks like any other app that you're running on your computer. You just download it, you run it, and and, yeah, click install, and you give it an IP IP address and maybe some pool information if you want, and then you just hit run. Like, anything else, you can find anywhere on the Internet. You can find how to do pools. You can do all that stuff. It's so, so simple, and there's so much support out there for it now. Nice. Because last time last time I did it,  

[02:09:31] Unknown:

probably about a year ago,   it was   the boss toolbox was available, but it was, like,   drag and drop in the command line, and I didn't   I didn't know. What did you That's what you got to learn.  

[02:09:46] Unknown:

I'll I'll let you go here, Jonathan, but I have I have some some stuff about this after when you, get a chance to talk. Hit it.  

[02:09:55] Unknown:

Oh, I forgot what I was going to say now. Somebody did just point out, there is actually s 19s on Bitmain site right now.   That's really interesting. But, yeah, I I did start off, I I I started to They're preorders,  

[02:10:09] Unknown:

I think. The s nineteens are preorders.  

[02:10:11] Unknown:

Shipping in 3 working days after paid.   Oh, wow.   How many days?   3.  

[02:10:18] Unknown:

Wow. Okay.  

[02:10:20] Unknown:

Yeah. But you gotta take a new account that,   there's no ships leaving port right now. So that's another 3 months. That's a deep, deep conversation.  

[02:10:28] Unknown:

But so but that was how I started out too. I I had a an electric heater in my garage   looking at it one day. I'm like, it's it's a 100% waste products. I mean, yes, I want the heat, but it doesn't do anything else. And then then I got a, an s 9 on eBay and they shipped it to me with no packaging at all. They just tossed it in an empty cardboard box. It got here. They traded them like bricks.  

[02:10:52] Unknown:

Yeah. It's actually, like and and dealing with thousands of these over the course of a few weeks, man, you start to understand that they're they're literally, like,   crazy common. Like and and people I've seen people, like, using them   to, to, like, lift weights as a meme. They're they're funny, like  

[02:11:12] Unknown:

So they were refunding me because the fans were damaged, and then they didn't want it back. So I got a free s nine on top of that. And then I was using it to heat my garage. I'm like, okay. And and I've just I've been nonstop ever since. The thing I already did this. Throw away as fans now.  

[02:11:29] Unknown:

And and, like, this is the crazy thing. Like, if you if you are heating any part of your house with a space heater,  

[02:11:36] Unknown:

just put a miner there instead. If you're a pleb who wants to get into mining, dude, just put a miner in your house. And really the issue is the fan noise and that that's that's the biggest turn off and then 2 20 volts.  

[02:11:48] Unknown:

I I guarantee you can get quieter fans and on top of that install brains OS   and you can bring your fan speeds down. That makes it so much quieter. You just tune the wattage down, you get quieter fans if you're really that worried about it, and and you can get a really quiet miner. Yeah. Absolutely can. I I mean, I think that's a great transition back to our, you know, how to improve your at home mining,  

[02:12:12] Unknown:

setup.   I I I made a very crudely drawn   drawing,   for Matt to share.   But there there's actually a threshold. Oh, there it is. It's beautiful. It's very beautiful. Oh, okay.   There's actually a threshold. Like, you you lower your wattage,   which which you can't really do in a lot of custom firmwares, like or a lot of stock firmwares. You you have, like, a low, medium, high   setting.   But these miners are actually more energy efficient   on a lower setting. So so in this ugly ass drawing that I sent, I I marked the x there.   If you use the s nine as reference, they are sold   to mine at about 1400 watts. But if you tune them down to about a 1000 watts there,   they you get more bang for your buck,   at a much quieter,   like, quieter noise level,   using way less energy.  

And if you're mining at home at with, like, not the best energy rate,   you're gonna be mining more Bitcoin, spending less money. Your wife's happy because it's not as loud and,   you know, you're you're earning more. So there is like,   well, the percentage is more. Your total earnings, you know, because your  

[02:13:31] Unknown:

wattage goes down, your hash is less.   But the percentage   that you get, you know, in that chart, that's the   the,   cost of energy versus return on on Bitcoin is ideal.   Yeah. Right. And that's what and that's what I would get.   Yep. Go ahead. I'll say and then that's why the seventeens,   from brands, they they come out, like, 27, 28 watts.   2,007, 28 watts, and they found that that's   kind of the ideal. It's a bit under what they would run at stock, but that's kind of the sweet spot where you get maximum efficiency   for what you're generating.  



[02:14:11] Unknown:

Yeah. And and so,   yeah. No. My understanding from what I've seen from people running brains of asset somewhere in the 900 to 1200 range of watts. It all depends on,   on on what you're,   it all depends on your miner. Every miner is completely different. You have to kinda test. But that's the nice thing about being a one miner person. Like, you just throw that minor in your basement, you you fiddle with it, like, because that's the nice thing. This is this is a learning experience for a lot of people. Once you get it down there, you'll you'll learn. I guarantee   if you go out and buy an s nine right now, put some brains OS on it, and just play around with it, you will learn. And you'll learn really fast because it's not that difficult.  

And It's not.   Yeah. So so really, it's about taking that first step. Like, as as a whole miner, just take that first step, get a miner,   get get an s nine in my opinion, 100%. Just get an s nine. They're easy, they're cheap, and they don't use a ton of power. And then play around with that tuning until you can get a good watts per terahash, and then you're spending less of your Bitcoin to pay for your power. And you can you can start to stack your stats at home.  

[02:15:15] Unknown:

So I have I had 2 questions before,   we wrap this up. I mean, the first one   relates directly to what you just said, Brett.   I mean, s nines have been on the network for, I believe, like, 5 years now almost or maybe 4.   How long do you guys think,   we'll still see s nines mining for? Because they kinda seem like the a k 47  

[02:15:38] Unknown:

fuel source. I mean, if you literally have a free fuel source,   you know?  

[02:15:44] Unknown:

Yeah. I think they're gonna start dying out. I I think they'll live through this having because, I mean, if we continue this trend where price runs up quicker than   miners go online,   but I do think that the the halving will be,   you know,   the shot to the heel.  

[02:16:01] Unknown:

Yeah. But like you said, field source. Right? It it ultimately comes down to that. Because it's an efficiency game. Right? Like, the they're less efficient than the new ones, but they're   cheaper entry level.  

[02:16:12] Unknown:

And they're redundant. And if you're literally trying to burn off fuel already, you know, and out in the oil fields and stuff where where they're what they're,   where they're doing that. And you want to get rid of fuel   to have lower emissions.   You would actually want something less efficient,   potentially   and cheaper   just to have something. Because your   your your percent kilowatt,   the only real cost is the generator.   Like the actual generator itself and then the maintenance on it, of course.   And so, like, what what does that cost you? It ends up being like what, 2¢ a kilowatt hour or something?  

[02:16:58] Unknown:

I should, I should mention something too.   So   upstream data, we're developing something that we call the black box. That was my second question. Yeah. Yeah. Hit us with it. Hit us with it. The details.   I I gotta find, like, a picture or Steve's Twitter post on this,   but we're building this black box. It's basically just   a box. You put some miners in it. It's,   it's not very big. Like, it's you probably wanna put, like, s nineteens or something in it because it's more efficient. But the idea of the box is to quiet down the miners,   keep airflow good,   and also for it to be weather resistant   and to not,   not, you know,   screw your miners up. So basically, the idea is you'd buy this thing, you'd buy some s 19s along with it, you'd put this down in your backyard wherever,   even like inside your house if you have a spot you wanna heat, and then literally just get an electrician to plug it in for you and   then you can start home mining that way too.  

Hook it up to Internet.   Yeah.  

[02:18:06] Unknown:

And and then we're basically, that say that same thing but in the oil version. So they got the air version and,   and, yeah, and I talked to Steve about this too. We may work together possibly on an immersion one. I don't know. But, I I got other emerging stuff going on. So but, yeah, having that smaller   smaller setup that you can do at home,  

[02:18:30] Unknown:

it's a good way to go. And the whole find this video because I have a really good there's a really good video that Steve put up on Twitter of just how much quieter it makes this thing.  

[02:18:39] Unknown:

And the whole the whole idea is that   you can put it outside too. Right? It's like that it not only is it quieter, but but you can just keep it outside on your Yep. Your porch or something. Yeah. Because you don't want it inside in the winter, but if you wanted to, then you could bring it inside.  

[02:18:56] Unknown:

You could put the noise outside.   Oh, that whole unit. Oh, I haven't seen that. They they have a box. Seen that. That's cool.  

[02:19:06] Unknown:

This one I wanna see more of. I wanna see more of this innovation that that enables home miners because then we really have distributed hash.  

[02:19:13] Unknown:

You guys got a nice picture of me putting the, putting the s 19 in the box. That's odd. That's an earlier prototype of the thing.   It's actually the new one we have is black. I I sent to you guys in the chat if you wanna put it in here. But,   the the newest version, there's a video up on Twitter of us, like, opening and closing this box with s nineteens in it. I think it drops at, like, 15 decibels or something stupid.   It's it's crazy. And decibels are, like, every   10 decibels is, like, 10 times as loud or something. I can't quite remember how it works, but   it's something similar to that. It's a it's a weird exponential scale or something, but it it's actually quite a bit quieter. Like, it's it's very, very loud.  



[02:19:58] Unknown:

Ty's asking in the chat,   if you're starting from 0,   is there a downside to buying a few 100   s nines   versus a few dozen, he says, micro b t's or Bitmain miners. So is there a downside to s nines compared   100 of s nines compared to dozens   of new generation?  

[02:20:24] Unknown:

Yes. There's power limit. Power limit or power,  

[02:20:28] Unknown:

issues with that. K. Look. The easiest way to do it is buy 1 s 9, put it in your basement, get started. Once you have that under your belt,   like, it depends on what kind of power you're running,   depends   what you're doing, what your plan is. But if if you have expensive power, run new gen miners,   but do it after you get a good understanding of the miners. Don't go out and buy a 15 10, $15,000,   s 19   before you get an s nine and understand how mining works because it's gonna make it difficult for you. Agreed.  

[02:21:03] Unknown:

Yeah. I think  

[02:21:04] Unknown:

okay. I'm gonna pull up I'm gonna pull up the sound test of the   of the black box.  

[02:21:12] Unknown:

Are we gonna get you fired, Brad? Are you revealing information you shouldn't be? No. This is all over Twitter, man. Good. Yeah. No. I I I cosigned that.   Oh my god.  

[02:21:27] Unknown:

And so you can hear there's a huge difference there. Like, it's   it's ridiculous   just how, just how loud that thing actually is inside there. Any cutting issues? Clint Forrester said in the chat, every 3 decibels doubles the the volume. So we were at 15, so   2 to the 5   is how much quieter that thing is.  

[02:21:50] Unknown:

When this when this   feed started before before we went live,   I had   just one miner running in the basement at the place I was at, and it sounded like that over the live feed. I'm I'm pretty sure, like, 3 guys in here had to go shut their minors off just now.  

[02:22:11] Unknown:

Yeah. It it gets pretty loud. Like, people   I I understand that this is definitely a big turn off for a lot of people looking to get into mining. Like, you put that thing ahead like, even outside, I know people that like, their neighbors are just like, turn that off. It's too loud.   Like and I I totally understand that. And, obviously, your wife's not gonna be amused, and your kids might not be amused if you have kids, that kind of stuff.   But the idea of this black box is to make it more accessible for everybody,   so that once you like, again, I'd still recommend buy an s 9 and and and play with it a little bit before you do something like that that's a little bigger scale.  

But it it's designed to make it a little more accessible to people who don't wanna go out and buy a big commercial setup or something like that, but want to be able to mine at home and start getting their own KYC free Bitcoin. Right?  

[02:23:01] Unknown:

The one thing that I think a lot of people misunderstand is,   you know, actual power draw. One one thing I'm learning about is if you look at if you look at the standard plug in the United States, it's a 1 10 outlet. But if you look at the rest of the world, like Europe, their standard plug is a 2 is a 2 20 or 2 30,   outlet, and that that kinda baffled me.  

[02:23:24] Unknown:

Yep. You need an electrician to basically wire these these s nines in because they're they need that much power.  

[02:23:31] Unknown:

Right. And the s nine is a very old hardware, but it was designed   in China where 240   is the standard.   So you can run an s nine  

[02:23:42] Unknown:

at on a on a 110 power, but you have to underclock it. You want a solution for that? You need, the APW 3 plus plus switching power supply. They run on, 110   volts, but on a, on a higher amperage,   because volts times amps is equal to your watts. So if you have the right amount of amperage   running through,   one 110.   I'm I'm I might be absolutely confusing myself here. Either way, watts times amp or volts times amps is equal to watts. So as long as you have the right voltage and amperage running into that switching power supply, the APW 3 plus plus,  

[02:24:18] Unknown:

you're fine. You can you can mine on pretty much anything. I'm I may have to talk to you about this a little bit because that Consider consider amps and watts the same.  

[02:24:27] Unknown:

Like, the for that conversion, it's, like, 2.3  

[02:24:31] Unknown:

by 1 or something like that. Yeah. It it doesn't matter. I just can't remember if walletlets or watts or volt or or Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, like,  

[02:24:40] Unknown:

but miners   miners actually consume so little   actual electricity   to do the work that they do   that   everything that they take in   as amps, they put out as watts.   So it's   almost a a a one for 1, but   the conversion   amps to watts is, like, 2.3 to 1 or something like that. Because everything everything is expelled as heat.  

[02:25:12] Unknown:

I guess what what I'm getting at is, like, you know, you do need to be careful plugging in these the s nines into 110 outlets. If you scale them down, they're fine,   but they are meant to be ran off of a 2 240 volt.   And a lot of people kinda trick themselves up on that. They either pop breakers or damage   damage the minor or damage the yeah.  

[02:25:37] Unknown:

Or just try to understand that. This yourself. Get an electrician. Like, trust me when I say this. This is, like, this is easy for an electrician, but it's complicated for most people. And electricians aren't that expensive, so just don't fuck around. Yeah. Don't don't like we're not always guilty of that. Suggesting that. Please do not. And especially especially new generation miners because those are 2 20 volt. No. That that'll that'll kill you. Yeah. And people think they can buy those and just plug them in their their standard wall, but you you need to, if you're in the US, unplug your   dryer. Right? Unplug your mean, I don't need an oven.  



[02:26:13] Unknown:

Yeah. Yeah.   There's a there's a beautiful meme. If I just unplug the dryer, I'd plug in another s 9. Well, that's what the Airbnb miners have to do. Yeah. Yeah. And, see, an electrician will just come in, wire 2 110 volt,  

[02:26:27] Unknown:

breakers together, and give you 2 20. Like, they'll they'll just And it's very cheap. So easy. It's cheap and it's quick. Just get a licensed electrician.  

[02:26:35] Unknown:

Yep.  

[02:26:36] Unknown:

Guys, we're nearing the 2 and a half hour point. This has been an absolutely fantastic conversation.   I thank you all for joining. I hope to have you all back on at some point.   I figure we should wrap it up with some final thoughts.  

[02:26:52] Unknown:

We'll Can you just say one thing?  

[02:26:54] Unknown:

Yeah. Of course, Neil.  

[02:26:56] Unknown:

Thank you.   SecretSats.  

[02:27:01] Unknown:

SecretSats,   first of all, I own the domain name, but it's a horrible name. Are you shaming me? Yeah. Because you guys kept chirping at me about SecretSats, so I bought the domain name, but I didn't really like it. I wasn't chirping at you. It was it was fucking Australian chick.   Well, I own the domain name, but I don't really think it's a good  

[02:27:19] Unknown:

name. I told her I was gonna say it. I had to say  

[02:27:23] Unknown:

it. That's all I got to say. Okay. So we started the final thoughts with Neil. Bighoon, final thoughts?  

[02:27:29] Unknown:

Oh, man. I feel like I'm on the spot.   You are.   I I am. If you guys ever wanna talk to me, I mean, you can find me on Telegram or or Twitter. I love talking about this shit. So if you have any questions,   obviously, I work for Brian, so I'm I'm incentivized to kinda help out with that stuff.   This has been fun. I'm very excited to get to talk with all you guys and hopefully be on more podcasts in the future.  

[02:27:58] Unknown:

Jonathan, coin needed. Final thoughts. Thank you,  

[02:28:02] Unknown:

Yeah. So I guess the biggest thing is, you know, I I'm really just excited to try and bring in more home mining stuff to people, because I I really see that,   expanding out more and more   instead of consolidating into the mega data centers in single points of failure or, you know, if   if Compass goes offline tomorrow and they go bankrupt, what what happens to everything? And having it at home, you know you own it. It's yours.   So,   you know, that's what I'm working towards, and, I'm on Twitter and, Telegram,   at coin heated.  

Always feel free to hit me up. Awesome. Thank you, Jonathan.  

[02:28:40] Unknown:

Jan, final thoughts?  

[02:28:43] Unknown:

If you're a miner, you may wanna talk to your local manufacturer of the mining machines and trying to convince them that you are the valuable customer and that you wanna own the actual machine,   which implies   no secure boots   and full control of the machine. You wanna put any firmware that you want on it.   If the miners I mean, I'm partially   explaining it as a joke, but I mean it seriously that, it   the the trend that we're seeing in how the manufacturers   are treating treating the customers,   is pretty much a result of, let's say, a duopoly currently.   And we should have more players,   in the game   soon so that,   new standards are going to be set.  



[02:29:31] Unknown:

A 100%. Thank you, Jan. Brett, final thoughts?  

[02:29:36] Unknown:

Yeah. I was just gonna say, like,   I I I definitely wanna shout out, mister Steve Barber. He's, he's kinda given me all these opportunities over the years to to learn about this stuff, and so I've been it's been super exciting   being able to get in and, come on this podcast with you guys, and that's all because of him. So go check him out on Twitter. Show him some love. He's he's an awesome guy. And, Yeah. I'm I'm excited to to kinda see where the home mining scene goes after this. I'd I'd love to see more people mining at home. Thank you, Brett. It it's been an absolute pleasure meeting you through the Internet. To the freaks,  

[02:30:09] Unknown:

you can find Steve on Twitter at atsgbarber.   Barber with a u,   b r  

[02:30:16] Unknown:

b o u r. B o u r. Yes, sir. Correct.  

[02:30:20] Unknown:

Neil, final thoughts.  

[02:30:22] Unknown:

What the fuck?   Very good. That's why now you go off.  

[02:30:33] Unknown:

I really appreciate this conversation. As the freaks know, when I'm quiet,   it means it's a very good dispatch. I'm just sitting here listening and learning and enjoying myself.   Thank you to all the freaks who joined us in the live chat as usual.   Thank you to the freaks who's continued to support,   the show and keep it ad free and sponsor free.   As always,   recording of this will be available on bitcoin tv.com,   YouTube   as well, and in our podcast feeds.   The best way to subscribe on the podcast feeds is using podcasting 2.0.   If you go to new podcast apps.com,   pick your podcast app of choice,   load it up with stats, search for Citadel dispatch. You can stream sats as you listen.  

It's truly rewarding,   seeing the sats roll in after I publish.   With all that said, I wanna thank the panelist once again, and I wanna thank,   all the freaks who joined us live. Cheers, guys. Thank you.  

[02:31:32] Unknown:

Bye, guys. Thanks.  

[02:31:34] Unknown:

Thanks for coming, everybody. Thanks for having us.  

[02:32:49] Unknown:

Trying to find a beauty in the letdown. Going through my text now. Trying to find the things I never said to prove a point. I'm a roll my feelings in a joint. Pieces of the story that got left that I checked out. Wish it wasn't, wish   Love you, freaks. Thanks again for joining as always. I'll see you for rabbit hole recap on Thursday. I'll see you for another sale dispatch   on next Bitcoin Tuesday.   Little hat update, we got a freak   who does embroidery for a living.   He's sending me 50 dispatch hats. So if you're on the wait list, if you've been patiently waiting for me to actually ship you   some quality dispatch merch,   You should be getting it, hopefully, within the next few weeks.  

Reminder, you can also buy merch from BTC pins and [email protected]/stack.   Help support the show. I do appreciate it as always. Love you all. Stay humble and stack.