When talking about blockchain and bitcoin, there will be a word “mining”, and a role called “miner”, etc., isn’t blockchain belong to the technology circle? What does this have to do with mining? I’ve only heard that the people in the IT circle are called code farmers, how can there be miners? In this issue of Blockchain 100, we will take a look at these terms: mining, miner, and mining machine, and see how miners use mining machines to “mine” and gain digital currency.

1

dig

Earlier we introduced: why is the blockchain called “block” “chain”? And what bitcoin is: Bitcoin’s blockchain network generates a block every ten minutes. The contents of this block are all the transactions of the entire blockchain network in the last ten minutes on top of the contents of the previous block. Doing this is called packing. This process of work is called “mining”. The essence of “mining” is to compete for packaging rights.

The advantage of mining is that the miner gets the right to pack and when he does, he gets bitcoin. Bitcoin is created by mining, and Satoshi nakamoto originally designed it by halving the reward for every 210,000 blocks created until it could no longer be subdivided. Because bitcoin, like gold, is limited in quantity. So bitcoin is called digital gold, and bitcoin production is also commonly known as mining.

In plain English: it’s a way for people to participate in bookkeeping. You can think of a database as a big ledger, and in a blockchain system, everyone in the system has a chance to participate in the bookkeeping. If there is any data change within a certain period of time, everyone can in the system to charge to an account, the system will judge the time an account is the fastest, the best people, write his record the contents of the book, to the content of the book this period of time in all of the others for backup system, so that everyone in the system have a full set of books.

Bitcoin is backed by a public ledger that needs to be re-recorded every 10 minutes, with successful bookkeepers rewarded with a certain amount of Bitcoins. How do you decide who does the bookkeeping? The answer is mining. Whoever digs it out first gets it.

2

Mine workers

The person who completes the mining work is called a miner. Every 10 minutes, the whole network of miners calculates an arithmetic problem together. The one who works out the answer first is equivalent to digging the block, and he or she will get the new bitcoin reward of the system.

There’s more than one miner, so how do you decide to give it to that miner? In designing bitcoin’s blockchain network, Mr. Nakamoto uses a method called Proof Of Work, or POW, to determine “packaging rights.” (Proof of workload will be covered in more detail in a future article)

Unlike traditional miners, miners in the blockchain industry are more tech-savvy. If you want to become a miner, it’s relatively easy. Buy a dedicated computing device, download mining software, and start digging. The miners don’t need to do the digging themselves, but rather the computers that perform the specific calculations, as long as the miners have power and Internet connections.

3

mill

The evolution of Bitcoin mining machine: CPU mining →GPU mining → professional mining machine mining → mining pool mining

On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s founder, mined the first bitcoins using a computer CPU. With everyone’s recognition of Bitcoin, more and more people are mining, the whole network computing power is rising, and the difficulty of mining is gradually rising.

September 18, 2010 the first graphics card mining software was released. A graphics card is equivalent to dozens of CPUS, mining ability has been significantly improved.

Then someone invented a professional mining equipment based on mining chips, namely mining machine. The current industry-leading ant mining machine is equipped with nearly 200 BM1387 chips, equivalent to the computing power of more than 30,000 Gpus. If you want to mine, first you need to prepare the mining machine, bitcoin address, mining software and so on.

As more mining machines join the fray, it will become harder for individual mining machines to find bitcoin. Miners then pooled their mining machines to form mines and pools. The mine does the calculations, the pool does the information packaging.

4

Mine field

Mine is the centralized management of mining machine place, generally located in the electricity is relatively cheap and relatively stable place. The early mine operation is more extensive, that is, build a shelf, and then put the mining machine on it, you can start to operate. Later, it was found that under this operation mode, the damage rate of mining machine was high, and the maintenance cost was too high. Later came ventilation, and dust isolation schemes, and later, strict control of indoor temperature and humidity.

The operation plan of the entire mine is still being upgraded and evolved. When a mining machine is running, the noise measured at one meter is about 73dB(a). When thousands of mining machines are running, the impact on the surrounding area can be expected. Therefore, some places have been designed and renovated to produce silent mines.

5

Ore pool

As more and more people get involved in mining, the computing power of the bitcoin network continues to rise, making it difficult for a single device or a small amount of computing power to mine bitcoin. At this point, the ore pool was born. The pool breaks through the limitations of geographical location and connects the computing power of miners scattered around the world. The pool is responsible for information packaging, and the mines that come in compete for billing rights. Since the computing power of many miners is collected, the computing power of the mining pool accounts for a large proportion, and the probability of mining bitcoin is higher.

The bitcoin rewards from the pool are divided according to the percentage of computing power each miner contributes. Compared with mining alone, adding ore pool can obtain more stable income. There are F2Pool, AntPool, BW Pool, BTCC Pool, BitFury Pool with high computing power in the world. All but BitFury are from China.

6

Let’s review it a little bit more simply

Let’s review it with simpler chestnuts:

  • I write random numbers on a piece of paper and give partial hints. Whoever guesses correctly will be rewarded (mining).

  • The more intelligent of the guessers (miners) were able to make more guesses based on the cues (numeracy)

  • Someone paid a lot of people to come back and guess.

  • Someone called everyone together to guess, no matter who guessed, in proportion to the number of guesses each person will be allocated the prize (mining pool)

For another example, there are people will be mining analogy playing mahjong: a game of mahjong, is a round of mining, mahjong has hu rules, mining has mining play. Each miner has a handful of cards in his hand, and a pile of cards that he has not yet touched. There is no rule. The miner is not sure what cards he will get, but at last one of them gets together and he wins.

I’ll leave you there and continue in the next video. Do you understand the concepts of “mining”, “miner”, “mining machine”, “mine” and “mine pool”? When you go back to your hometown to play mah-jongg, you can share some tips with your aunts and make sure you are still David in town, not the village dog

The content of this article comes from: Baidu Encyclopedia, Financial a-share news, Huobi, etc

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