What is a bitcoin digger? What's the function?

A bitcoin digger is a computer used to earn bitcoin. This kind of computer generally has professional mining chip, which works by installing a large number of video cards and consumes a large amount of power. One of the ways to get bitcoin is to download mining software and run a specific algorithm to communicate with remote servers._DJMINER

name

Bitcoin mining machine

Explain

Bitcoin earning computers

Characteristic

Professional mining chip

Classification

ASIC, GPU, IPFs, FPGA, etc.

Field

Blockchain Finance

function

Bitcoin mining machine is one of the ways to get bitcoin. Bitcoin is a kind of network virtual currency produced by open-source P2P software. It does not rely on the issuance of specific monetary institutions, but is generated by a large number of calculations of specific algorithms. Bitcoin economy uses the distributed database composed of many nodes in the whole P2P network to confirm and record all transactions. The decentralized characteristics and algorithms of P2P can ensure that the value of currency cannot be controlled artificially by mass production of bitcoin.

Any computer can become a mining machine, but the benefits will be relatively low, probably less than one bitcoin in ten years. Many companies have developed professional bitcoin mining machines, which are equipped with specially designed mining chips, and their computing speed is dozens or hundreds of times higher than that of ordinary computers._DJMINER

principle

Bitcoin system is composed of users (users control wallet through key), transactions (transactions will be broadcasted to the whole bitcoin network) and miners (blockchain generated by competitive computing to reach consensus in each node, which is a distributed public authority account book, including all transactions occurred in bitcoin network).

Bitcoin miners manage bitcoin networks by solving the problem of workload proof mechanism with a certain amount of work - confirming transactions and preventing double payments. Because of the irreversibility of hash operation, it is very difficult to find the random adjustment number required by matching. It needs a continuous trial and error process that can predict the total number of times. At this point, the workload proof mechanism works. When a node finds the solution of matching requirements, it can broadcast its results to the whole network. Other nodes can receive the new data block and check whether it matches the rules. If other nodes do meet the requirements (bitcoin required operation target) by calculating hash value, then the data block is valid, and other nodes will accept the data block.

Nakamoto likens the generation of bitcoin through the consumption of CPU power and time to the consumption of gold resources to inject gold into the economy. Bitcoin's mining and node software mainly initiates zero knowledge proof and verification transactions through point-to-point network, digital signature and interactive proof system. Each network node broadcasts transactions to the network. After these broadcast transactions are verified by the miner (computer on the network), the miner can use his own work certification results to express the confirmation. The confirmed transactions will be packed into data blocks, and the data blocks will be linked to form a continuous data block chain. Each bitcoin node collects all the unconfirmed transactions and collects them into a data block. The miner node appends a random adjustment number and calculates the sha256 hash value of the previous data block. The mining node repeatedly tries until it finds a random adjustment number that causes the hash value to be lower than a specific target._DJMINER

Mining process

Mining is a process of increasing bitcoin money supply. Mining also protects the security of bitcoin system, prevents fraudulent transactions, and avoids "double payment", which means spending the same bitcoin multiple times. Miners offer bitcoin networks algorithms in exchange for bitcoin rewards. The miners verify each new transaction and record them in the general ledger. Every 10 minutes, a new block will be "mined" out, and each block contains all the transactions occurred in the period from the generation of the previous block to the present. These transactions are added to the blockchain in turn. We call the transaction included in the block and added to the blockchain "confirm" transaction. After the transaction is "confirmed", the new owner can spend the bitcoin he gets in the transaction.

There are two types of rewards for miners in the process of Mining: the new currency reward for creating a new block, and the transaction fee for the transactions included in the block. In order to get these rewards, miners compete to complete a mathematical problem based on the encryption hash algorithm, that is, using bitcoin mining machine to calculate the hash algorithm, which requires strong computing power, how much calculation process, and the quality of calculation results as the proof of miners' calculation work, known as "proof of workload". The competition mechanism of the algorithm and the mechanism that the winner has the right to record transactions on the blockchain ensure the security of bitcoin.

The miners will also be paid a transaction fee. Each transaction may include a transaction fee, which is the difference between the input and output of each transaction. A miner who successfully "digs" a new block during the mining process can receive a "tip" for all transactions included in the block. As mining rewards decline and the number of transactions included in each block increases, the proportion of transaction fees in miners' earnings will gradually increase. After 2140, all miners' earnings will be made up of transaction fees.

Mining is a process of decentralization of settlement. Each settlement verifies and settles the transactions processed. Mining protects the security of bitcoin system, and it can make the whole bitcoin network reach a consensus without a central organization. The invention of mining makes bitcoin very special. This decentralized security mechanism is the basis of point-to-point electronic money. As an incentive mechanism, the incentive and transaction fee of new coin casting can regulate the behavior of miners and network security, while completing the issuance of bitcoin._DJMINER

Profit

Bitcoin was issued and traded through mining, and it was cast at a certain but slowing rate. Each new block is accompanied by a certain number of brand-new bitcoin from scratch, which is rewarded to the miners who find the block as a coinbase transaction. The rewards for each block are not fixed. For every 210000 blocks mined, it will take about four years and the currency issuance rate will be reduced by 50%. In the first four years of bitcoin operation, each block created 50 new bitcoins. Each block creates 12.5 new bitcoins. In addition to the block reward, the miner will also receive handling fees for all transactions within the block.

Miner risk

Electricity charges

The "mining" of the graphics card requires that the graphics card be fully loaded for a long time, and the power consumption will be quite high, and the cost of electricity will be higher and higher. There are many professional mines at home and abroad in areas with extremely low electricity charges such as hydropower stations, while more users can only mine at home or in ordinary mines, so the electricity charge is naturally not cheap. Even in a small area of Yunnan Province, some people have carried out crazy mining, which led to a large area of tripping in the small area and burned down the transformer.

Hardware expenditure

Mining is actually a competition of performance and equipment. Some mining machines are made up of more such graphics card arrays. When tens or even hundreds of graphics cards come together, various costs such as hardware price are very high, and there is a considerable expenditure in mining. In addition to the video card burning machines, some ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) professional mining machines are also being put into the battlefield. ASIC is specially designed for hash operation, and its computing power is quite strong. Moreover, because their power consumption is far lower than that of the video card, it is easier to form a scale, and the power cost is lower. It is difficult for a single card to compete with these mining machines, but at the same time, this kind of machine It costs more.

Monetary security

The withdrawal of bitcoin requires hundreds of keys, and most people will record this long string of numbers on the computer. However, frequent problems such as hard disk damage will cause the key to be lost permanently, which also leads to the loss of bitcoin.

system risk

System risk is very common in bitcoin, and the most common one is bifurcation. The bifurcation will lead to a drop in the currency price and a sharp decrease in mining revenue. However, a lot of cases show that the forked coins will benefit the miners, and the forked competitive coins also need the miners' computing power to complete the process of coining and trading. In order to win more miners, the competitive coins will provide more block rewards and handling fees to attract the miners. Risk makes the miner._DJMINER

Mine type

ASIC mine

ASIC miner refers to the miner using ASIC chip as the core computing part. ASIC chip is a kind of chip specially designed for a specific purpose. It must be noted that it is not only used for mining, but also for a wider range of applications. The features of this chip are simple and efficient. For example, if bitcoin adopts sha256 algorithm, then bitcoin ASIC miner chip is designed to only calculate sha256. Therefore, in terms of mining, the performance of ASIC miner chip exceeds the current top computer CPU. Because ASIC mining machine has an absolute advantage in computing power, so the computer, video card mining machine began to be phased out gradually.

GPU mine

GPU mining machine, a simple explanation is through the graphics card (GPU) mining digital currency mining machine. After bitcoin, there are some other digital assets in succession, such as Ethereum, Dasco, litecoin, etc., some of which use different algorithms from bitcoin. In order to achieve higher mining efficiency, the miners did different tests, and finally found that the digital currency of sha256 algorithm uses ASIC to mine the highest efficiency. The digital currency of script and other algorithms has the highest mining efficiency with GPU graphics card, thus spawning a special GPU miner.

IPFS mine

IPFs, similar to HTTP, is a file transfer protocol. In order to run IPFs, there are many computers (storage devices) in the network as nodes. In a broad sense, all participating computers can be called IPFs mining machines. In order to attract more users to join the IPFs network and make contributions to the network, an encryption currency named filecoin is designed, which is distributed to participants (nodes) as rewards according to the amount of contributed storage space and bandwidth. In a narrow sense, the computer designed for the purpose of obtaining filecoin reward is called IPFs miner. Because IPFs network needs storage space and network bandwidth, in order to obtain the highest benefit ratio, IPFs miner usually strengthens the storage space and reduces the power consumption of the whole machine. For example, it is equipped with more than 10 large capacity hard disks, Gigabit or higher speed network cards, and ultra-low power architecture processors.

FPGA mine

FPGA mining machine, which uses FPGA chip as the core of computing power. FPGA miner is one of the early miners. It first appeared at the end of 2011. It was once regarded as a promising miner at that time, but its active period was not long. Later, it was gradually replaced by ASIC miner and GPU miner. FPGA (field programmable gate array), Chinese name is field programmable gate array. It is generally understood that FPGA is to package a large number of logic devices (such as and gate, non gate, or gate, selector) in a box. How to connect the logic elements in the box is all decided by the user (programming).

If the mining program is written in the FPGA, the FPGA miner is created. Because of its high flexibility, the FPGA can not only support the sha256 algorithm of bitcoin, but also support the crypt algorithm that GPU miner is good at. In the active period of FPGA mining machine, compared with CPU and GPU mining machine of the same era, FPGA is not superior in computing power performance, but its power consumption is much lower and its comprehensive power consumption ratio is very high._DJMINER