Avalon Nano 3 discussion thread

I couldn't find any discussion about "Avalon Nano 3" on here, so I thought I’d start one myself. I found a post in the Marketplace section by Canaan Online Shop that caught my attention. Their official product page lists this miner with a hashrate of 4TH/s and an efficiency of 29J/TH, priced around $100 USD. It consumes a max of 140W. This puts it on the same efficiency level as other devices like the Avalon A1346 (check out the reference table below). The hashrate is solid enough to earn payouts from a mining pool within a reasonable time, and it’s only about a hundred bucks (plus the power supply). What’s really cool is that the design seems to double as a space heater. I think that’s a smart move. People have been trying to use heat from home mining setups to offset the lower efficiency of these smaller miners compared to the top industrial ASICs. But this is the first time I’ve seen a product that really checks off all these boxes: Made by a well-known ASIC manufacturer, meaning access to newer and more efficient chips Designed to heat your space right out of the box, no tweaks needed Super budget-friendly Good hashrate Just to give some perspective: a few years back, you’d have to shell out $250 for a USB stick miner, and now we’re getting a fully functional device for half that price. I’m really looking forward to trying this one out. What do you all think about it? As for some downsides I see at the moment: Seems to be locked to the Braiins pool I’m not sure about the remote control options yet.

checked this out, if it wasn't fixed to brains it would be good for solo ckpool mining wonder what the custom firmware is possible on this wish bitmain would jump on this boat and use some proper efficient 16W/T s21 chips

I am trying to get two of them I will post if I do.

My 1st guess is that the FW is Canaan's FMS which is what they've used from the A10xx on up. So far I've not seen anything in the specs stating it uses the Braiins pool. Where is that said? edit: Found it, it is on the indiegogo site That blows.  A. I hate the idea of using QR codes as it largely requires using a 'smartphone'.  B. there damn well better be a way to access the miner gui via a browser vs a smartphone.

The old antrouter and the heatbits were locked to certain pools. But hacking around that is (was) somewhat trivial. It depends how much time & effort they put into locking it down and how much of a controller they have onboard. If they took the cheapest - slowest - most basic SBC they could find to run it, then a fixed firmware setup that does not even have a GUI might be what you get. OTOH, if they are using something that runs the full setup that they have on their regular miners then it's a different story. Will have to wait and see. -Dave

It seems that, even if it was not initially considered, it will be possible to solo mine and change the pool. the software update should take several months to be released, according to the idiegogo discussion and the canaan shop telegram.

I fully agree. I'm already thinking about ways to change the pool. It really depends on how tightly integrated the controller is. If it runs software that just connects to a pool over Stratum, it should be possible to replace the URL and get it running. We shall see; I got one and will report what I can, as soon as I get it. Indeed, just saw it: I'd still want it not to be app / smartphone-based or at least have the option to do everything from a web browser. I guess there's an opportunity for some hacking here..

I got 2, so i will proceed to a teardown in photos and video with one of them as fast as i can. For the moment, it seems that canaan is listening their customers. we will see in the next weeks if they do what they said, but for the moment, its a good point. On the telegram, i've learned today that they are also working on a bigger version designed for home miners. can't wait to see the "technological war" between canaan and the bitaxe hex community. This is good for us.

For Bitcoin home miners, imo, there is two schools that can coexist : Solo/lottery miners and Pool (regular) miners These 2 types have different needs. As canaan is working on another model for home mining, and hopefully, maybe other brands will consider working on it, it could be wise to explicit the waited specifications for both types isn't it ? Even if its smell the wishfulthinking   So, first, pleb miners doesn't have the industrial price for electricity. For example, in france, the common price is 22.7cts€/kwh (~0.21$us) and very good price is average 13cts€/kwh. And, if it seems high, it is one of the lower price in europe for everyday people. Solo/lottery miners In this context, the power consumption have to be kept low. 150W seems the maximum, because it keep the electric bill and heat production low, for 24/7/365 operation. A special focus on the noise. It have to be extremely low, so you can run it wherever you want, even dormroom. this kind of tiny miners have to be able to mine through a local node or a stratum. they should connect through wifi and remain cheap, regarding their tiny hashrate. finaly, the efficiency is important. People are ok to fight, against swords, but not with a foam knife. concerning the "classic" pool miners the power should be in a range between 500-1500W. It is a correct power to remain the noise below 50dB, and be able to heat an appartment in winter, without being a nightmare to cool on summer. If people want more power, they just buy multiple devices. In a sens, they should be "rain proof", because, during summer, many people leaves their asic outside (on a balcony for example) and rain can sometime be an issue. Imo, design is not very revelant for things like that, but the price and efficiency (considering the additional cost to keep the noise low) remain the two major points. What do you think about that ? Do i forgot something ?

That's cool, but in my humble opinion, 100W is a really good sweet spot for home mining. I personally don't hope there will be a 'war' because these are very different products. Canaan has access to latest-gen ASIC chips and provides a finished, but closed-source, possibly pool-locked product at an incredibly affordable price. Meanwhile Bitaxe is open-source, which creates open access to information / knowledge of how to make your own miner and as such ensures ASIC miner production will not become fully centralized, so ultimately it ensures people will continue to be able to home mine. Keep in mind that Canaan building a home miner is a first from a big company like that and while it's nice, we don't want to rely / trust them to continue making these devices in the future. That's why I'd hate for the Bitaxe project to be out-priced or otherwise harmed by big corporations' alternative products. What you get with Bitaxe is not just an ASIC miner, but the knowledge & ability to make it yourself and therefore somewhat secured access to home mining.

It's true that being able to mine and understand how it works and get that knowledge is better. But not everyone wants to understand how it works. I think that the current situation is good competition and allows us to maximize decentralization by addressing as many people as possible. The heating idea is a really great idea. I understood that this brand was working on a bigger heater. Could someone give me the address of their Telegram or Discord?

I was interested until I saw it was locked to Braiins.  Then was like nah..

100 watt is okay locked to braiins not so good. I was going to get 4 of them run one to ckpool and 3 to viabtc on some junk sha256 coin xec I can afford 400 watts a day for the rest of my life

https://t.me/canaanofficialshop

I totally agree. Moreover, in some cases, it allow to solo mine without worries But i also consider that more powerful miners, in the 500-1500W range could be more effective in therms of price per TH/s I have 2 KD-lite asic, with a 900W "low power" mode and 1300W "hashrate" mode. they are great ! Low power is very quiet. maybe the loki plebs design are the correct way in this range at the end of the day. I think both are great because they will allow many creative design for various usage

That's not what I was saying; even if you don't want to know how it works for yourself, by supporting a project like Bitaxe, you allow devs and people who are interested in it, to continue working on open-source ASIC miners and expose this knowledge to more and more such people. This will ultimately ensure home miners (like yourself) will be able to purchase reasonably efficient home miners at reasonable prices years down the road. Apparently they're ditching that and adding regular Stratum v2 configs, but we shall see. Sure, I showed above that there are sub-20W/TH miners nowadays like the WhatsMiner M60S. But with 1kW you're looking at 10x the power cost and you have to see whether you can really pay that every month. It's not a design thing, it's an ASIC chip thing. If you have the latest chips on the latest node, you'll have the best efficiency. A Bitmain S17 has the same efficiency as a Terminus R909.

I found the proposal very interesting. Although it is not extremely profitable (currently), it can be a minimally simple way to mine BTC. Has anyone here bought it? What platform did you buy from? I also found it interesting, although in my country most of the year, I don't need a radiator. The problem is with my energy cost, which is around €0.17/kWh. Do I think it will be viable?

I bought 2 on indiegogo. But the delivery occur in a month

I made some calculus. And for me, now, this tiny miner is super exciting https://i.ibb.co/BLyF380/Capture-d-cran-2024-01-23-090144.png

It depends; if you have a shed or a small guest bathroom that is heated with electricity anyway for instance, you don't burn any more money when switching from a resistive to a 'semiconductor-based' electric heater. I just checked their Indiegogo updates page and there was an update only a few minutes ago. They make the housing in other colors now, which I find unnecessary, but what's more exciting is that they finished making some demo units and started production.