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Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

tidbit.co.in

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Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#21

Post by Retric »

possibilistic wrote: post #12
ck2 wrote: post #11

20K hashes/client ha, good luck with that 28nm asic miners are out and they do 600GH/sec at $4k + 1Watt/GHs bitcoin is just about out of reach for normal people, we missed the train

I'm only casually familiar with ASIC mining, but I do recall hearing that the best position to be in is selling tools to the miners. Still, I'm curious; how much would you have to invest into modern mining hardware in order to see a return on investment? I'm going to assume you either need a lot of these or have to join a pool. Is this a game only playable by those with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Assuming your payoff for that 4k is 3 months ignoring energy costs...

600 * 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 30 * 3 / 4000 = 1166400000 thousand hashes per dollar. If the average person spent 60 at 20,000 Hashes seconds on your site you would need 972,000 people to connect to make a dollar... ouch.

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#22

Post by axus »

Retric wrote: post #21
possibilistic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only casually familiar with ASIC mining, but I do recall hearing that the best position to be in is selling tools to the miners. Still, I'm curious; how much would you have to invest into modern mining hardware in order to see a return on investment? I'm going to assume you either need a lot of these or have to join a pool. Is this a game only playable by those with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Assuming your payoff for that 4k is 3 months ignoring energy costs... 600 * 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 30 * 3 / 4000 = 1166400000 thousand hashes per dollar. If the average person spent 60 at 20,000 Hashes seconds on your site you would need 972,000 people to connect to make a dollar... ouch.

And more hashing power is coming online all the time. Here's a link to long-term plots of the difficulty and reward for Bitcoin mining: http://www.blockchained.com/chart_large_log.png

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#23

Post by Xcelerate »

ck2 wrote: post #11

20K hashes/client ha, good luck with that 28nm asic miners are out and they do 600GH/sec at $4k + 1Watt/GHs bitcoin is just about out of reach for normal people, we missed the train

I'm curious about algorithmic speed-ups to Bitcoin mining instead of hardware improvements.

I know to collect a mining reward you have to calculate a SHA256 hash of a block of transactions (or a block header -- I can't remember which) combined with a nonce. This hash must be below a certain value, and this value becomes smaller over time so that there's a lower chance of finding a nonce that satisfies the inequality.

I know mathematically, it's essentially impossible to find collisions or figure out some data that produces a particular hash, but what I wonder is whether it is possible to figure out some technique to speed up the hash calculation.

For instance, you have SHA256(nonce1 + block data). That doesn't work, so you try a new nonce: SHA256(nonce2 + block data). It seems to me that because there is a lot of redundant initial data used within the calculation (same block data every time) that there might be a way to exploit this and speed up the calculation of all future attempts. If this was this case, you'd have a huge advantage over all the people starting each new calculation from scratch.

Another option would be to figure out a way to compute SHA256 more quickly than is currently done. I know there's incremental speed-up techniques that are figured out from time to time, but what are the chances of discovering a vast speed-up?

Any cryptographers here? What is the feasibility of either of these options?

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#24

Post by Avalaxy »

jlrubin wrote: post #17

Hey HN! I'm Jeremy, one of the devs of this hackathon project. Thanks for checking this out, glad to see the community has interest in it. We made this project for NodeKnockout, and did not intend for it to be posted on HN. In the current release, we have a couple of things blocked out for various reasons (legal, ethical, etc) so that it is not 100% functional. We are very well aware that our current hashrate is pret…

I really like this idea actually. If the performance would be (a lot) better, it could be a very nice alternative to advertising. Everyone who visits your website would 'pay' you with some CPU/GPU cycles, and in trade for that you give them a web page that's completely rid of advertising, third-party tracking cookies, and other stuff that users find annoying.

Personally I think advertising has been dying for years now, especially with all the adblockers that become more and more popular. It's time to come up with an alternative business model for websites (no, not talking about SaaS here..).

What's your share in this? You take a certain percentage of the mined coins?

Too bad mining is becoming more and more difficult, meaning that you will earn less and less.

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#27

Post by maaku »

Xcelerate wrote: post #23
ck2 wrote: post #11

20K hashes/client ha, good luck with that 28nm asic miners are out and they do 600GH/sec at $4k + 1Watt/GHs bitcoin is just about out of reach for normal people, we missed the train

I'm curious about algorithmic speed-ups to Bitcoin mining instead of hardware improvements. I know to collect a mining reward you have to calculate a SHA256 hash of a block of transactions (or a block header -- I can't remember which) combined with a nonce. This hash must be below a certain value, and this value becomes smaller over time so that there's a lower chance of finding a nonce that satisfies the inequality.…

Already done, pretty much from day one (It's called 'midstate' if you want to google it).

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#29

Post by veemjeem »

xSwag wrote: post #25
Scaevolus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 million, given present work factor and 20khashes/s per client.

For what time duration?

1 day? I think it was mentioned in OP in the form of 0.1bc/day. If someone big like cnn.com integrates this js code, you might make $20 a day. I still think adsense has better pay with that many viewers. One would need 5 million visitors to stay on your site for 24 hours. There are very few websites where people do that... maybe facebook/gmail.

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#30

Post by teraflop »

mistercow wrote: post #10

Aren't we well past the point where bitcoin mining on general purpose hardware costs more in energy usage than you earn by mining? I don't think that a model that has you earning less for viewing your site than the power company is going to be viable.

We're long past the point where mining on a GPU makes economic sense, and this thing is roughly 1/10,000 as energy-efficient as a GPU.
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