Meet Apollo II

Sticking to tradition, I gotta share the news here even if most of you already know! www.futurebit.io This is product number five and honestly, it’s the one I’ve been wanting to create since the beginning. Took a few years off my life, and yeah, it’s about six months behind schedule because we had to redesign it not just once, but three times. 5nm ASIC technology is no joke. Like always, we don’t announce or ship anything until we’re certain it’s ready. This is just the start for Futurebit; we’ve finally nearly caught up with the latest node tech, for the first time we have a PSU built right into the box for an easy plug-and-play experience, and we’ve developed a fully in-house thermal system that can cool 400 watts in almost the same size as Gen 1. Plus, we’re using a modern aluminum case and parts made through injection molding. One of the biggest hold-ups with the Apollo BTC design was the sheet metal case that took ages to produce, but with this one, we’ve already cranked out thousands of cases and now we’re just waiting on our thermal system and PCBs. We should have everything in by the end of December and aim to start shipping the Founders Edition in January. Another major announcement is our updated OS that’s finally rolling out the Solo mining feature everyone’s been waiting for, and this OS will be launched first on the original Apollo BTC, hopefully in about a month. We’re really hoping that with the Apollo II launch, we can put some serious focus on software this time since we didn’t really have the resources for it before.

Simply awesome! Can not wait to order this!

Great, giving everyone the chance to lose blocks with ck's solo code, like he does. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789369.msg61755036#msg61755036 5 so far, though if anyone found a block during his most recent problem where the solo ckpool kept going for a while, while bitcoin had stopped updating, that would have been another ck block lost ... At least be sure to point out to your buyers, that you are selling something with a much higher chance of losing a block due to being an orphan, unless they replace the tiny hardware in it with a fast CPU to do fast bitcoin block work changes, and add a distribution of high performance nodes around the world so their blocks are actually seen and not show up seconds late and thus ignored by ALL the pools.

Kano always a crab apple but i guess i do prefer consistency <3 nice work john looks great if this was the first one man oh man what a sight to see. i have considered modifying the 3 v1s using server heatsinks but just cant justify the cost vs hash. im tapped but look forward to watching this progress in this crazy space. i still have futurebit btcs running and an ltc apollo running. i can say these miners just run almost no issues beyond no easy api access perhaps ive overlooked the javascript i dont understand npm and refuse to.

@jstefanop how 'off the shelf' are the fans? From the USB sticks you used to sell and the LTC Apollo and the BTC Apollo I have wound up replacing just about every fan over the years. Probably just bad luck on my end, I don't think the office is THAT dusty, but are the fan(s) in these user replaceable and easily sourceable? -Dave

Went to extra lengths to discourage anyone from solo mining directly on the device unless they understand the limitations and risks, they can't enable it without pressing a big red button. With that being said con has fixed all the bugs you mentioned and we have ensured solo miners have risks mitigated as much as possible compared to the big guys. We have relationships with the major pools and will bootstrap all solo nodes directly to them. Any block found by a futurebit solo miner will propagate to the major pools first before the rest of the network. Our CPU is pretty fast as well and block creation is not a bottle neck. Also a valid block is a valid block, even if it shows up seconds late as long as no other block is found within those few seconds it will be included. 10 min block times were created for reasons like this where even small miners running regular computers can still participate at base layer... It's a custom 80x35mm 7k RPM PWM fan. Its a much more beefier fan that the original Apollo BTC and should last a pretty long time if your running in Eco/Balanced mode...fan runs at about 5-6k RPM in turbo but no where near max. [moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

So if you are only selling a total of 50 of these, that 'may' be possible. If you are selling more than 100 of them, it's not possible. Bitcoin wont allow 100's of connections by default since that would cause dramatic network performance issues. No pool in their right mind would allow that either. If instead you said you setup a transaction/block distribution network like bluematt used to run, for all these apollos, then yes that would be possible. However, without that, it's not possible what you said. It is a bottleneck on every CPU. The question that matters is how long it takes. e.g. does it include the CPU instructions to dramatically speed it up? (no it doesn't) Can it average block template generation well under 100ms? (no) Um, nope, seconds late is too late. It dramatically increases the chances of an orphan. Orphans still happen with the large pools every so often, they just don't tell anyone. Since I have a world wide distribution of nodes and I track/report the block submissions/reorgs that happen in my monitoring, I can see them when they happen. If the blocks generated by these nodes all say they are solo futurebit nodes, then that will be interesting to see what actually happens ...

@jstefanop The noise level for the ECO mode [less than 40 dba] is good for home miners, but I'm curious to know what the noise levels are on the TURBO mode [especially for using custom settings to get it up to 11 TH/s].

What do you consider to be a fast cpu for that? Wondering if I get the full node from futurebit or just the miner addon and build my own full node. This would only be true for the full node package right? Or could also do that if we run the addon miner off a non futurebit full node?

Some high end 4+GHz CPU with lotsa cores. As I mentioned above, this isn't possible. Even if they did setup a distribution network in the future, you talk to that first, not the major pools. If not, then only a very few of the futurebit's will ever be able to talk directly to a major pool.

Hope anyone can share the $150 coupon code via PM . Here in India the custom duties are whopping 36%. With shipping and duties it is almost half of the amount.

Just ordered a Founder's edition to help support Futurebit and home miner growth. Although I won't be utilizing the local solo mining option I do look forward to adding this to my other Apollo BTC's Edit: Actually maybe I will give the local solo mining a shot. Hopefully either the Apollo UI or integrated pool clearly shows best share!

Apart from the North American region, the closest thing to a local reseller is a couple of retailers in the European [bitshopper] and African [bitmart] regions. Note: I prefer not to vouch (DYOR)!

Yes we are in the process of creating a few regional supernodes that are all connected to major pools, and those nodes are connected to our backend infrastructure that will send a block notify to every single solo miner that is opted in within milliseconds of a valid block detected. Backend is a propriety network that bypasses the p2p bitcoin network similar to what all major pools use among themselves. Regardless you are still exaggerating the chances of an orphaned block even on the normal p2p network. There are 600 seconds within a block, lets say you are on a slow network and broadcast hits the major pools 6 seconds late, thats just a 1% chance someone will find another block before you (ie if EVERYONE solo mining has a slow connection, for ever 100 solo blocks found one will be extremely unlucky and get their block orphaned). If you really want to get into the meat of the matter and the type of research I do to come up with the systems we do you can read these research publications for a deep dive on the topic: https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~rich/class/cs293b-cloud/papers/bitcoin-delay#:~:text=The%20median%20time%20until%20a,not%20yet%20received%20the%20block. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363879722_Analysis_of_segregated_witness_implementation_for_increasing_efficiency_and_security_of_the_Bitcoin_cryptocurrency Mean block propagation times were on the order of 6 seconds in the early days (2013 when the first article was published), due to more efficient core upgrades/computational increase/network bandwidth increases the mean has come down to around 2 seconds. For everyday users trying to secure the network a .333% chance of orphaning a block compared to lets say major pools of .1% wont matter at the end of the day (and im not discounting the fact that it will matter HORRIBLY for that one person that will find a solo block after mining solo for years and it ends up orphaning but that is the nature of the bitcoin network and the risk solo miners take). It's a 7k RPM fan and Turbo mode ~9-10TH sits at around 55dB @5-6kRPM depending on local environment. If you max it out you'll max out the RPMs and will prob be over 60db. We left a lot overhead on the original Apollo BTC (and mostly limited by the 6 Pin power connectors). Now that we eliminated that with internal PSU and high gauge internal connections the limitation is cooling on the high end and noise levels are much louder but wanted to give everyone the option to take full advantage of the ASICs especially in winter/heating conditions. In short turbo mode will live up to its name this time so dont expect to be able to run it in your bedroom. I would say up to 8TH or so is doable in most room settings based on my personal testing. [moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

So when is the release date for this..

I preorder standard unit, releise date?

We are getting ready to start shipping this month. Tail end of pre-orders might slip into bigining of April but majority should go out by end of the month! FYI follow the @futurebit account on X for more regular updates.

What is this coupon code you speak of?  This is the only time I've seen it mentioned.  I did see that gift cards through Fold were available temporarily with a cash back % offer. If we placed an order today for shipping in the United States, when could we realistically expect to receive a unit?  I'm glad to see that you guys continue to roll out new units.  There aren't enough people building miners for 110v home users that don't want to sound like they live in an airplane hanger.

The coupon was sent out to people who bought out the Apollo v1

Should have most Dec/Jan pre-orders out by end of the month, later orders early April, and new orders end of April/early May...of course this is all tentative and contingent on production ramp going smoothly but first units being shipped now are showing high yield with no major issues!