Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

tidbit.co.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 55 posts

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#31

Post by rpicard »

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'm interested in seeing the Bitcoin mining module. Would you mind putting that up on GitHub?

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#35

Post by meowface »

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.…

To my knowledge, all the possible algorithmic optimizations have been developed and implemented since 2010 or 2011. Once you have as minimal a SHA256 implementation as possible, combined with retaining parts of the state for further calculation (as you describe), you can't really make it much faster in terms of software.

I believe the only optimization efforts possible beyond this point will be better utilization of GPU drivers (or maybe custom GPU drivers?), as well as designing new hardware.

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#36

Post by meowface »

possibilistic wrote: post #13
vbuterin wrote: post #5

Seriously? This idea was horrible back when Coinlab tried it in 2012 ( http://bitcoinmagazine.com/1086/bitcoin-mining-a-new-means-o... ) and it's even more horrible now. At the very least mine Litecoin or Primecoin.

How do the various cryptocurrencies compare? There appear to be quite a few of them [1,2]. Are BTC, Litecoin, and Primecoin the best/most popular? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies [2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/List_of_alternative_cryptocurrenc...

Last I checked, Litecoin was the only alternative currency that's been gaining serious traction over time.

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#37

Post by gibybo »

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.…

The obvious improvements have been done a long time ago (there are tens of millions of dollars to be gained here), and the current state of the art continues to spend tremendous effort pushing out every incremental gain they can. Most of the innovation is done in hardware implementations at the moment, because if you're running a software algorithm to find the hash you've already lost.

Solving a SHA256 hash for a particular value would require breaking the hash in some currently unknown way. However, looking at how past hash algorithms have fared, it seems likely this will eventually happen.

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#38

Post by dmix »

andrewla wrote: post #18
possibilistic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do the various cryptocurrencies compare? There appear to be quite a few of them [1,2]. Are BTC, Litecoin, and Primecoin the best/most popular? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies [2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/List_of_alternative_cryptocurrenc...

http://coinmarketcap.com/ has estimates of market capitalization based on exchanges for various cryptocurrencies. A reasonable proxy for popular in some cases.

Litecoin is #2 but when you click the bottom link "Looking for Ripple?", Ripple is #2.

Ripple/Opencoin has 10x the market cap of Litecoin: http://coinmarketcap.com/ripple.html

But Ripple isn't a typical open source "crypto-currency". It's well financed and backed by big SF investors with the intention of making the founders/investors money, instead of miners, as the currency scales in price.

Re: Tidbit: Client-Side Bitcoin Mining

#40

Post by simlevesque »

nathas wrote: post #3

This seems real scary. "Give us your wallet address, email, and a password, then let us run a bitcoin miner for everyone that hits your page that may magically cash out any where." Mmm... Although if it's legit I'd use it, but only if it's open source.

Just make a bitcoin wallet for this sole purpose, if they steal it then it won't be that bad.
Post reply on HN