StickMiners a look at low-power USB mining gear

Last updated: October 01, 2015, 11:00 PM (price conversions are influenced by the update time!) This post is a rundown of USB stick-style mining machines (StickMiners). It’s meant to serve as a living document, contrasting with general overviews of mining hardware that often feel incomplete or overly focused on profit-making. If you're into rackmount setups, desktop systems, or mining card rigs, you might wanna check other places. If you're chasing miners that can actually deliver a decent Return on Investment (ROI), you might want to look elsewhere too. Details about the nature of this post are included below the overview. Manufacturer?Device? Talk thread?Pic?Chip? Board? comms[6]Announced StatusMhash/s claimed? found?USD/GhashPrice (/unit)? USD (/unit)?MHash/USD?J/Ghash?bitshopper.deCompac threadBitmain BM1384 GekkoScience Compac2015/06/26 in development8000…23000 5500…247505.59…1.94 8.13…1.81€39.95 $44.72178.89…514.31 122.99…553.440.34ManufacturerDevice Talk threadPicChip Board commsAnnounced StatusMhash/s claimed foundUSD/GhashPrice (/unit) USD (/unit)MHash/USDJ/GhashGekkoScienceCompac threadBitmain BM1384 GekkoScience Compac2015/03/23 shipping (2015-9-4)8000…16000 5500…247503.13…1.56 4.55…1.01$25$34.99320…640 220…9900.34Canaan CreativeAvalon Nano threadAvalon 3233 NXP LPC11U142014/09/161000…3600 1643…171319.05…5.29 11.59…11.12BTC0.08 $19.05¥99 $15.5852.49…188.98 86.25…89.920.76goodneyunnamed prototype threadAsicMiner BE2002014/08/16 canceled8000bitshopper.deNanoFury II (NF2) Gen.2Bitfury BF864C55 NanoF

[ StickMiners overview | Post History | Block Erupter USB Homage | Rant about ROI | Resellers ]Message Input welcomed Thanks for reading this thread! If you have any corrections, additional data, have found a new StickMiner, are selling StickMiners and think you've got competitive pricing, are designing a StickMiner, please do drop a line in this thread or send me a PM. Change log (Updates to exchange rates implied) 2015/10/01 The GekkoScience Compac is now available, in stock, from ASICPuppy ($34.99) and BitcoinWare ($44.95 CAD/$33.99 USD).  GekkoScience have suspended their own sales for now until a second batch is planned and produced.  Bitshopper.de ran into a few issues with suppliers but should open up sales later this week.2015/09/12 Added the missing CoinPal give-away version of the NanFury, added Bitshopper.de's version of the Compac (hopefully for sale soon), added an odd NanoFury-based miner that uses a QFN20 of the MCP2210 - if anybody has more information on that one, please do post – and updated some of the pictures.Avalon have made further progress on the Avalon Nano 2 – however, as it attaches to the host device using a cable (it has USB port), it doesn't qualify as a StickMiner.2015/07/01 The NanoFury 2, Gen 2 is now available for €39.95 ($51.20) from bitshopper.de (was: €49.95/$40.05)2015/05/13 Thread clean-up time!  For a full copy of the thread as it appeared before I zapped posts, check out: https://archive.is/kSk6E .  Thanks to ManeBjorn, Mikestang and notlist3d for helping several users out in this thread, unrealistic for not reading , vs3 for being vs3 (I have merged the post about the NanoFury project ending into the first post), Anonymailer for asking an obvious question that I did not obviously answer (“what software supports which miner?”, now answered in the first post).Thanks also to people in general for partaking in the three+one Block Erupter USB contests: mod contest (now updated with my 'mods'), Three Days of Mining lottery, StickMiners Horizons and StickMiners Googly Eyes.  There'll probably be a new contest soon I've updated some of the pictures in the first post with shiny new recent resolution angle shots, replaced broken links with archive.org links where available – probably plenty broken things left.2015/04/13 Added the GekkoScience Compac, single-chip Bitmain BM1382 miner currently in development.  GekkoScience may also be planning a 2-chip version (Amita) and, depending on demand, a miner based on the Spondoolies-Tech Hammer chipAdded missing BitFury gen1 rev1 aTg UltraLowCostMiner designs by aTg (design files available for 1st design, 2nd design canceled back in 2013)Added sasdjak's Klondike K1 clone – probably didn't go anywhere, but looks like there was a finished miner, loosely based on the Klondike K1Added missing BitFury gen1 rev1 101btc.com USB stick by MaRSe (101btc.com) (at least one prototype produced and tested - but did not work - in 2013)Added missing Avalon A3256 'chip-on-USB' by needbmw (canceled back in 2013)Added missing Avalon A3256 'Quarter Stick' by allten (canceled back in 2013)The LittleFury did make it past design and some may have been produced to satisfy pre-orders – if you own one, I'd love to get a proper picture up to replace the pcb design shot.Adjusted the announcement date of the BF1Gave the Klondike K1 an updated image, a photo of some assembled boards rather than the pcb design view.Added a reference to aauer1 (TwinFury)'s almost-StickMiner – if only it had used a male USB A connector, instead of a female USB mini B connector, it would have qualified.Added a reference to a BTC-Digger almost-StickMiner – which required a power supply separately for the chip.In trying to figure out some ASIC information for the Bitcoin wiki I ran into ASICminer's old site, and the Block Erupter USB was once to be called the 'Satoshi Stick', added that to the list and BE homage post.2015/01/27 The hex•fury is back in stock at £95/$144 from ASIC Runner2015/01/22 The CryptoRig HitchHiker is now available for $20 from cryptorig's ebay store (was: $25) (unlike the end-of-year promo, this appears to be 'permament' alas, up to $30 as of Feb20)2015/01/19 The bi•fury 4Gh/s is now available for $35 from cryptostore.io (was: $49)The bi•fury 5Gh/s is now available for $49 from cryptostore.io (was: $59)2014/12/29 The CryptoRig HitchHiker is now available for $20 from cryptorig's ebay store (was: $25) end-of-year promo is over2014/11/28 The NanoFury II Gen 2 has been fully restocked (100+ units) at bitshopper.de (€45.95/$57.38)2014/11/03 Added a missing rebranded NanoFury, the Orillia Edison, using Rev1 chips, available for €9,95 ($12.45) from Belgium.vs3 hasHAD a tray of 260 BitFury Rev2 (gen1) chips up for grabs that could easily be turned into either some powerful mining boards or perhaps some StickMiners. Edit: Long gone!2014/10/29 The NanoFury II Gen 2 is now available again from bitshopper.de (€45.95/$58.50)2014/10/25 The AntMiner U2 is now available for $12 from jonesgear.com (was: $23)Added data about the communication chip used by the StickMiners, given the recent FTDI driver kerfuffle (note: I have no indication that counterfeit FTDI chips were used on any StickMiners)2014/10/22 The NanoFury 6 is now available for €99 ($126) from bitshopper.de (was: €89/$113).  Note that they only have 3 2 units in stock. 2014/10/13 The NanoFury 2 Rev 2 is now available for €45.95 ($58.11) from bitshopper.de (was: €39.95/$50.52).  Note that they only have 1 unit in stock. 2014/10/06 The Avalon Nano is now available for BTC0.06 ($19.65) from ehash.com (was: BTC0.05/$16.40).  Update October 10, 2014, 03:00:00 PM: back down to BTC0.05Earlier non-bump update: Added some navigation links to the top right of each post, and made the date/time of thread update dynamic (displays date/time according to user's forum preferences)2014/09/22 Added the Avalon Nano from Canaan Creative to the list.  This is a new StickMiner based on the Avalon A3233 chip.  Like the BlockErupter USB and iMiner, it comes in several colors – but more innovative: it automatically adjusts its hashing rate based on its temperature.  Official max speed is 3.6Ghash/s (about half the chip's spec, probably to keep down power consumption), but a screenshot shows it to do up to 5.14Ghash/s.  Official pricing has it at BTC0.05/unit, but cybtc.com will sell it for 99 Yuan.  There are also some European sellers here on bitcointalk.  I'm unsure as to when this product was announced – images and listings have only popped up as of a few days ago, but the wiki entry and software downloads appear to be much older (going back to 2014/05) – perhaps those were only internal versions.  Anyway, good to see another StickMiner after all!Fixed broken image links.  I know the thumbnails still show up broken here from time to time – you can thank the bitcointalk proxy for that one.Replies clean-up again: bmoscato for asking how there's still a market for these, Buchi-88 for their reply to that question (my own reply has been merged into the ROI section), and primer10 for the kind words.2014/08/21 Added the cancelled NOVA-S from Novello Technologies to the list. Please read the Novello Technologies announcement thread or the footnotes in the first post for details on cancellation.Added a cancelled BE200-based miner.  This was cancelled due to the unfavorable power and thermal cooling requirements for a StickMiner form factor.2014/08/15 EU: The NanoFury 6 is now available for €89 ($119.05) from bitshopper.de (was: €$99/132.40)2014/08/12 The bi•fury 4Gh/s is now available for $59 from cryptostore.io (was: $70)The bi•fury 5Gh/s is now available for $79 from cryptostore.io (was: $89)The Hitch Hiker is now available for $25 from CryptoRig's ebay store (was: $35)EU: The AntMiner U2 was available (currently out of stock) for €15 ($20.05) from bitshopper.de (was: €24.99/$33.40)2014/07/14 The Hitch Hiker is now available for $35 from CryptoRig's ebay store (was: $55)2014/07/05 A 'n

This list last updated: October 10, 2015, 03:55:01 AM [ StickMiners overview | Post History | Block Erupter USB Homage | Rant about ROI | Resellers ]Where to buy So you've read through the Financial ROI post and still want to buy a StickMiner – good on ye! The main post table has price indications with links to the resellers from which the price was sourced.  But they are not necessarily the only sellers. Below is a slightly bigger list of resellers of StickMiners, with little regard to their price. GekkoScience Compac[ e | x | h | a | g ][US] /u/ (0) GekkoScience[DE] /u/ (TBA) bitshopper[CA] /u/ (?) bitcoinware[US] /u/ (?) ASICPuppyGekkoScience Compac[ e | x | h | a | g ][US] /u/ (13) HolyBitcoinAvalon Nano[ e | x | h | a | g ][CN] /u/ (178) ehash[CN] /u/ (20) cybtc[US] /u/ (14) HolyBitcoin.com[DE] /u/ (0) manfred87 NanoFury II (NF2) Gen.2[ e | x | h | a | g ][DE] /u/ (?) bitshopper[DE] /u/ (?) bitshopper (ebay)NanoFury 6 (NF6)[ e | x | h | a | g ][DE] /u/ (0) bitshopper[US] /u/ (0) Moonlight Miner[DE] /u/ bitshopper (ebay) (0)[US] /u/ (0) BTC ValetOrillia Edison[ e | x | h | a | g ][BE] /u/ (?) OrilliaTwin Chip Fury[ e | x | h | a | g ][HK] /u/ (0) Eyeboot[US] /u/ (0) Miner Source[UK] /u/ (0) cryptowareDrillbit Avalon Thumb[ e | x | h | a | g ][AU] /u/ (239) Drillbit Systems  BlackBit Avalon Thumb[ e | x | h | a | g ][NO] (0) BlackBit AntMiner U2[ e | x | h | a | g ][US] /u/ (0) jonesgear[CN] /u/ (0) Bitmain[DE] /u/ (0) bitshopper[DE] /u/ (0) asicminer-shop.deNanoFury II (NF2)[ e | x | h | a | g ][US] /u/ (0) Swimmer63[US] /u/ (0) Moonlight Miner iMiner[ e | x | h | a | g ][CN] /u/ (394) iCoinTech[CN] /u/ (0) cybtcYellowjacket[ e | x | h | a | g ][UK] /u/ (?) ASIC Runner[US/CA] /u/ (0) HashRateStore[AU] /u/ (0) Bitgretiefter DualMiner USB[ e | x | h | a | g ][CN] /u/ (0) DualMiner.com[HK] /u/ (0) Eyeboot[NL] /u/ (1) USBMinershex•fury[ e | x | h | a | g ][UK] /u/ (?) ASIC Runner Avalon-Mono[ e | x | h | a | g ][HK] (?) Peak Hash[CN] /u/ (0) cybtc[CN] /u/ (0) einzelnHitch Hiker[ e | x | h | a | g ][US] /u/ (?) Crypto Rig[US] /u/ (?) Crypto Rig (e-bay)iceFURY[ e | x | h | a | g ][CA] /u/ (0) neXgen Mining  Twinfury[ e | x | h | a | g ][AT] /u/ (0) Minecoin.net AntMiner U1[ e | x | h | a | g ][CN] /u/ (0) Bitmain[US] /u/ (0) arashd NanoFury (NF1)[ e | x | h | a | g ][ES] /u/ (0) Miner FactoryRed Fury[ e | x | h | a | g ][HK] /u/ (0) Eyeboot[US] /u/ (0) Bitcoinminerz.com[CA] /u/ (0) FuryMiners Blue Fury[ e | x | h | a | g ][US] /u/ (0) Bitcoinminerz.com  BitFury (BF1)[ e | x | h | a | g ] Bi•Fury (5GH/s)[ e | x | h | a | g ][PL] /u/ (0x1 / 3x5 / 1x3+hub) Crypto Store Bi•Fury (4GH/s)[ e | x | h | a | g ][PL] /u/ (16) Crypto Store Fury Thumb[ e | x | h | a | g ][AU] /u/ (0) Drillbit Systems Block Erupter USB[ e | x | h | a | g ][CA] /u/ (0) neXgen Mining[CN] /u/ (0) friedcatlegendgrayOut of stock at time of updateorangeTaking pre-ordersredNo longer selling this productstrike-throughCeased operations[CC]Country code – physical presence of reseller/u/Link to reseller's Bitcointalk.org user profile(n)Number in stock at time of update.  (?) means the store only shows the product is 'in stock', but not how many.[ e | x | h | a | g ]Generic searches at e-bay.com, AliExpress, dhgate, amazon.com and a generic store google search.  Please note that you may run across scam sites/sellers with these searches, so do double-check and if something seems too good to be true, give it a pass.  Specifically, if a seller found through such a search only accepts Bitcoin, and you can't find any reputable information on them at bitcointalk, just don't do it;  There are plenty of reputable stores that accept credit cards or paypal where you at least have some level of buyer protection.* new, unvetted reseller Do you sell StickMiners? Would you like to be listed here, or do you know a (regional) store that sells StickMiners?  Just drop a line here or in a PM with the store URL and, preferably, country and bitcointalk username, and I'll check it out.

[ StickMiners overview | Post History | Block Erupter USB Homage | Rant about ROI | Resellers ]Some rants about Financial ROI On April 1st, 2014, I attended a small informal Bitcoin enthusiasts meet-up in DC and somebody asked me why it is that I tell people not to bother with StickMiners if they want ROI.  I tried to explain it to them, which got a couple of people talking about mining in general, but what it generally boils down to is this: If you want ROI, you need a miner that is fast, delivered on time, and cheap.  Unfortunately in the current climate for miners - ANY miners - you're most likely going to get the "pick any two" offerings. Then they pointed to some online calculators and how they showed that people could actually break even or even make a profit, which resulted in a discussion about these calculators (especially as I was involved in an earlier thread discussing these where I got puzzled, myself).  I pointed out that most of them are flawed - which is okay, because some of the bigger variables in these calculations are practically unpredictable anyway, so some relatively minor flaws in calculators are not that much of a problem. Nevertheless, I whipped up my own calculator in a spreadsheet just for demonstrating to them what I'm talking about - and I thought I'd share some of the discussion here. The first thing that we had to agree upon is those big variables that are practically unpredictable: Difficulty and Exchange Rate. Here's a graph of Bitcoin's Difficulty for mining, since its inception: While it's perfectly possible to make the prediction that it will likely keep increasing (note that it did have a few decreases), I think you'd be hard-pressed to put this into a formula that actually gives you something that gives you usable values for peering into the future. So if you're going to have to make an assumption, perhaps it's best that you do so based on just the most recent difficulty increases. Here's the exchange rate over the past 12 months (courtesy of https://bitcoinaverage.com/ ): If you can make reasonably accurate predictions on that one, you're probably not even really reading this thread - you're over in the Economics section, and you're only imagining that you're reading this. Making an assumption here is as easy as "the price will stay the same", so that people can plug in their own values and see what happens. The next thing was the flaws in calculators.  They all make some assumptions because given the above, assumptions are all you can make. Or can you? Consider http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ If you were to plug in some optimistic values for a StickMiner: Power Consumption (W): 9.5 Hash rate (GH/s): 12G Cost of mining hardware (USD): $250 It will report that the break-even point is in: 2 years, 109 days But how is it actually calculating that?  These are some of the other variables it uses: Bitcoin difficulty: 5,006,860,589 Bitcoins per Block (BTC/block): 25 Conversion rate (USD/BTC): 442.00 Electricity rate (USD/kWh): 0.15 Profitability decline per year: 0.61 Bitcoins per Block is going to stay the same for another year or two.. Conversion rate is that unpredictable USD/BTC bit. Profitability decline per year... well that's just based on the conversion rate, difficulty increase, and then making some manner of assumptions on them that, over the course of a year, results in profitability being only 0.61x as much as in the beginning. Let's ignore all these for now, and instead focus on the Bitcoin difficulty value. Right now it's using 5,006,860,589 - which is the current difficulty.  Unfortunately, all of the calculations run from that number onward using a fixed decline that (as far as I could figure out) is applied per-day.  ( At e.g. https://tradeblock.com/mining/ , this is the difficulty increase/month .  That very label should tell you how wrong that can be. ) 'Onward' actually means that in approximately 3 days, the difficulty will be at 6,075,877,556 ( https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty ) Let's plug that number in, and re-calculate.  Now it will reports that the break-even point is in: 3 years, 240 days.  A whole year longer.  Just imagine what happens if a miner takes 2 weeks to get to you and difficulty is about to (likely) increase again. So while you have to make some assumptions - and 'when will the difficulty increase' is one of those assumptions as well, but at least it's a pretty well-established one - you can certainly reduce the margin of error in those assumptions. So let's say you did that, reduced the margin of error of assumptions, use the difficulty as it is now, the projected next difficulty, the number of days in which that will happen, the average number of days between adjustments lately (closer to 12 days than the ideal 14 - and that's still being generous), assume that the difficulty will keep increasing by about 20%, the exchange rate will stay the same, and plot it over time for that same theoretical stickminer: So much for that. Okay, maybe the exchange rate doubles tomorrow: Okay, obviously that only doubles the revenue which is still much less than what you paid for it. Hey, I know!  You get your electricity for free as well: Electricity is cheap on these StickMiners - it's practically a non-factor. Alright, time for some drastic measures.  A bunch of miners pop out of existence and the difficulty only rises by 5% each time: Well at least it forced having to extend the X axis to 2 years, but there's still no break even.  Not after 3 years either, nor after 4 years, not ever. You can't even continue the plot 'as is' because in less than 3 years the block reward will have halved from BTC25 to BTC12.5. And this is why I tell people not to bother with StickMiners when looking for a monetary ROI. At least, according to these calculations;  Keep in mind again that I don't have a crystal ball (I do, but it only peers into the past) - I still made assumptions, just with lower margins of error.  Situations certainly could change to where even a StickMiner could become profitable (and some calculators may suggest that it would).  The question that then pops up is: would you not have been better off simply buying Bitcoin? ( Especially now. ) That's a discussion I'll well and truly leave to the Economics section and to the random strangers who were still 'discussing' that by the time I had to leave ( Note that people have had monetary ROI from StickMiners in the early days - that ship has sailed.  Unless somebody makes a faster ship, for cheap, and delivers it on time. ) tl;dr: StickMiners are for FUN, not ROI. One user asked a slightly different question: How is there still a market for these? Below is my original reply: This discussion's been had before, so let me point you to these threads Are stick miners worth it? Why USB miners? Though your question is very slightly different [edit: asking from a manufacturer/reseller point of view, perhaps], so let me address it specifically: I'm not sure there is, at least for new units, unless they bring something special to the game (actually ROI, be a completely self-contained unit with a little LCD display, whatever).  The reason for that is that these products have practically never given net financial ROI (see the ROI section for more info). This means that these would mainly be used either by people who don't know any better, enthusiasts, tinkerers and people who just want to try a little mining before deciding to drop several thousand on a serious miner.  Ignoring the first category as that's an incredibly marginal market to begin with, that leaves the enthusiasts/tinkerers/beginners who might as well pick up a second-hand BlockErupter USB / Red Fury / AntMiner U1 or U2 for cheap, and play around with those. For those making them, the market is very unfavorable. Even with the rather nice NF6, the retail price was almost double what they would fetch at auction on e-bay.  Materials cost-wise, they

[ StickMiners overview | Post History | Block Erupter USB Homage | Rant about ROI | Resellers ]                        An Homage to The Block Erupter USB                                                                        An unassuming little device, the Bitfountain/ASICMiner Block Erupter USB was announced back on May 4th, 2013* - exactly 2 years ago.  This thread would probably not exist without the Block Erupter.  Nor would a whole ecosystem of peripherals and, arguably, continued adoption of mining by the masses the moment ASICs hit the market. * As many have come to know it, in its ultimately very popular Block Erupter V3.00 form.  The earlier very limited release Block Erupter v2.00 was announced May 2nd, 2013 and a Block Erupter prototype was unveiled on April 12th, 2013, to much praise                                                 The Block Erupter was put to market catering directly to the common user - besides the fact that it was a StickMiner (running straight off of a USB port - a first for Bitcoin miners – and at one point to be named “Satoshi Stick”), one need to look no further than the fact that it came in multiple colors and finishes (matte, and spun metal introduced on August 11th, 2013). Colors were great from a marketing viewpoint, but the general body design should not be dismissed either - the form factor and the flat heat spreader-slash-heat sink proved to be so popular, that the currently popular Antminer U1 practically copied both verbatim, and both the DualMiner and the YellowJacket opted for flat heat sinks as well. 2015 Anniversary: Even the packaging was consumer-oriented, with simple plastic boxes with foam inserts (the cutouts leaving huge bags of trash) – an approach that would end up getting used by the iMiner as well, with the exact same plastic boxes and foam (with different cutout).                                                 Aside from the design, the Block Erupter also put the power of fast Bitcoin mining back into people's hands. By today's standards its ASICMiner BE100-provided hashing power may be rather limited at 333Mhash/s (between 300Mhash/s and 375Mhash/s, a hashing speed you can buy in the form factor of a small USB drive these days), but back then that wasn't all that terrible as it had to be compared to power-hungry and noisy GPUs, relatively expensive FPGAs such as the Lancelot dual FPGA board or even FPGA manufacturer (mainly the big two: Xilinx /Altera) development boards, and more powerful, and more expensive up front, ASIC hardware from BFL or Asicminer themselves that may or may not be delivered on time.  Its price of BTC1.99 translated to about $220 at that time - which even then resulted in much jeering Nevertheless, had you purchased one at that time, the ROI graph would have looked like the one depicted. Yes, once upon a time, StickMiners did break even, and gave net financial ROI* for those willing to wager, even with the complaints about price.  That expressed itself in crazy sales of many of them and some people getting a little carried away jamming a Block Erupter into every unoccupied USB port they laid their eyes on, and probably learned to control computers entirely by keyboard just to replace the mouse with another Block Erupter. * in fiat - buying BTC at that time and holding would have been even better                                                 Exaggeration aside, the search for the perfect Block Erupter USB hub led to a whole thread of its own, practically cemented certain models of the Anker brand (along with D-Link) as the go-to for great USB hubs to fit Block Erupters and later StickMiners into, and even led to the creation of a 49-port USB hub monster specifically made for mining with Block Erupters.  All of these Block Erupters also needed cooling, and the 'virtually silent' (aside from a characteristic 200Hz hum) Arctic Cooling Breeze mobile can be seen in many Block Erupter rigs. Some even went so far as to put their Block Erupter USB inside liquid cooling solutions, like oil. Even with rigs with dozens of Block Erupters, some people decided to try and push the Block Erupter to its limits with overclocking, with a detailed guide titled simply How to overclock your Block Erupter And possibly destroy it in the process. This overclocking itself led to further entrepreneurial endeavours, as sly sellers at sites like e-bay would start selling tiny heatsinks to be applied to the chips on the Block Erupter (even if those chips, aside from the actual hashing BE100 chip, generated negligible heat to begin with).                                                 Even today, a Block Erupter may not be a complete waste if you're willing to gamble, and get lucky. User ttyson reported on May 1st, 2014: "Holy crap I found a block!".  The block referred to, 298562 was mined at a pool, and the block reward was split up among many miners, but had he solo mined, he would have received BTC25 - approximately $11,375USD at the time.  Of course, the odds of this happening with his Block Erupter is very low; at the cited difficulty of 8,000,872,135.97 he could typically expect the average time between blocks to be 28 years, so he got very lucky indeed. Observant readers will have noticed that ttyson's Block Erupter was actually the Block Erupter Cube, a 38Ghash/s miner based on the same chip as the Block Erupter USB - he essentially bought 114 lottery tickets; the average time between blocks for a Block Erupter USB? 3,270 years.  But, people win the lottery all the time, right? Note: Many low powered miners may in fact be better off solo mining rather than pooled mining, as the low hash rate may mean your pool worker will effectively never reach the pool's payout threshold, making mining there moot, and 'playing the lottery' would be a better proposition.                                                 The Block Erupter ended up being the only StickMiner based on the ASICMiner BE100 chip. The BitFury chip design proved to be a winner in terms of cost, power use, and hashing power for many of the StickMiners that would follow and they quickly replaced the Block Erupter as the most popular choice.  Nevertheless, the initial popularity of the Block Erupter USB still resonates to this day, as evidenced not just by the fact that Block Erupters are still for sale, but that for many of the StickMiners for sale now, sellers will mention Block Erupter just to get the SEO gears turning. However, Bitfountain/ASICMiner have not been sitting still.  On January 29th, 2014, they announced a new BE200 chip design that is competitive with other current-generation chips.  Whether or not they will find their way onto a new Block Erupter or third party StickMiners remains to be seen - but if they will, it was the original Block Erupter that paved the way.   2015 Anniversary: A year on and it's clear that the BE200 ended up not being suitable for a StickMiner design, despite a valiant effort by goodney.  Additionally, ASICMiner itself now appears defunct after its lead designer, friedcat, has disappeared.  Wherever he is – so long, and thanks for all the sticks!                                                 So here's to you, Block Erupter - Happy 2nd Anniversary, and may at least some more StickMiners try to fill your shoes!

This thread is primarily for Bitcoin StickMiners - as it is, I'm only aware of a single altcoin StickMiner anyway, which is the DualMiner 2; a DualMiner, which can mine both Bitcoin and Litecoin, with the BTC portion 'disabled' (and thus not in the list). I also have no immediate intention of adding altcoin StickMiners - if I do, it will be in the altcoin section anyway. However, I thought this one was worth pointing out not for its mining prowess (altcoin StickMiners are practically relegated to the same target audience as Bitcoin StickMiners; FUN > ROI), but for a key feature. Back in the end of june, vs3 (of NanoFury fame) posted in a NanoFury 6 thread: At that point I posted the following to his official NanoFury development thread: The lower block is indeed the 'U 盘存储芯片' or 'disk consign store-up core block' (I think I might be doing worse than Google there) - basically the Flash memory chip.You can probably guess what that key feature is by now; created by LK Group, Ltd. some time back in July, the 'U disk Wright' or 'U-Wright' or 'USB Wright' (among 'roast cat', 'grilled cat', and 'burnt cat' - you'll have to excuse the Google Translateisms) is a Litecoin miner capable of 144Khash/s standard or 280Khash/s with overclocking (extra cooling required), using up about 5W, and has all the required software on-board on its 8GB Flash memory. And that is the 'U disk Wright' using that Flash memory to present itself as a drive to the operating system. So today I was proven wrong twice - first there's the new Avalon Nano meaning the NF6 was not the last of the StickMiners after all, and second somebody goes and does exactly what I would have thought cost-prohibitive - and I couldn't be happier about it.

Time for a bit of haphazard ranting. I just finished (insofar as it can ever be finished) the ASIC page at the Bitcoin wiki.  Besides being a fair bit of work unto itself, some of the things found along the way and effectively over time since the last wordy post make me want to write a few things here; it's as good a place as any. More people and/or companies should edit the wiki. There's a place for everything, and while the wiki is terrible for discussion, it's pretty good for basic findings that tend not to change very often.  This StickMiner thread is effectively one of those things, and I'll be moving it over to the wiki in due time.  Don't worry, I'll still be making update posts here as well and it'll be a while before the main content is moved over anyway.  But it does mean that this list will no longer be at the sole whim of yours truly. But there are many more threads that are effectively posts of information, rather than pure topics of discussion.  Canaan Creative / Avalon project are, so far, the only manufacturer who have embraced the Bitcoin wiki as effectively the place to go for information about their own hardware - chips, miners, software, people to contact, etc. In the course of making the ASIC page, I wound up creating pages for most of the manufacturers.  I certainly invite them to flesh out their own pages - it's not wikipedia, original research is perfectly acceptable Scams are everywhere. Holy bejeebus are scams everywhere in Bitcoin ASICs.  Not so much any more, but certainly late 2013, early 2014, coinciding with rising Bitcoin exchange rates and people eager to throw money at everything, there was a great boom in scams.  In the wiki I largely refer to them as being 'dishonest', but if you read between the lines on the references (yes, practically everything has source references), 'scam' should be the easy conclusion for most of them. Now I've had to deal with scammy things before.  Personally - heck, I might be in the process of being scammed right now.  That's okay, I know what amount of money I can stand to lose - but also again in terms of editing the wiki.  Specifically, two curious cases of manufacturers claiming to have certain hardware, (pre-)selling it, but offering no proof whatsoever of that hardware's existence. In reaction to that, I ended up penning the Why was my hardware removed Talk section, which outlines a few things on how a manufacturer can better prove themselves legit.  From providing pictures to providing videos.  However, I aslo concluded that "Ultimately, you may have to have a third party review one of your miners in order to build your credibility."  Poring over pages and pages of information about ASICs really proved that point; You can post a picture of a miner, but if you Photoshop an existing miner, you're gonna have a bad day, ASICRigsYou can post a picture of a miner, but if you badly Photoshop an external drive enclosure you're gonna have a bad day, Phoenix TechnologiesYou can post a picture of a board, but if you badly Photoshop a motherboard you're gonna have a bad day, CedarTecYou can post a picture of a chip, but if you badly Photoshop away the markings you're gonna have a bad day, labcoinYou can post a picture of a mining screen, but if you badly fake the numbers you're gonna have a bad day, HashCoinsYou can post a video of a supposed mining rig mining away, but if you screw up the rest of it, nobody's going to believe that video.But here's the thing - those were badly done (even though some took a while to be caught and some people had already lost money at that point) - what if they were well done, or there's simply no good information either way? Personally, I'd say hold off - let somebody else be the person risking the money on getting a potential product sooner than you, be happily proven wrong. Thus is the case with, for example, HashCoins.  There's no actual product being shown other than a (render of) a case), and it's known that they have been less than forthcoming with information in the past - be it with regard to a miner that was supposedly their own board design (incidentally, an explanation of the difference was for sale for $100,000 but bears a striking resemblance to reference HashFast boards, or faking hashing details (yes, two for the price of one), or claiming custom chip and miner solutions for Scrypt miners when it's just another Alcheminer clone. HashRa isn't in a particularly better position, emulating Butterfly Labs' early days of '2 weeks'.  Granted, Butterfly Labs eventually delivered.  Too little, too late, but delivered. And thus I haphazardly jump back a bit and say, what good is a review if the reviewer is bound by certain conditions for the review?  In this particular case, Dogie was asked to obscure the markings on the chips used in a miner.  While the markings would be immaterial to the purposes of his guides, the fact that this was done under an NDA may lead one to wonder what else isn't entirely on the up-and-up (drag the VAT thing into this thread and see your post deleted, thanks). NDAs suck.. mostly Whether it's the aforementioned NDA, or the NDA that covered Dogie/Spondoolies-Tech, KnCMiner's Jupiter datasheet being behind an NDA, or just about any other NDA - they all suck.  They're overly broad in scope and more often than not introduce a very lopsided relationship where the party who drafted the NDA holds almost all of the power. Just as with preorders, the incentive is often to be privy to information that others will not learn or only learn much later.  But unless that significantly benefits you personally, odds are it'll just haunt you further down the road.  I've rarely signed a voluntary NDA myself for this very reason, but I fully acknowledge that other times there's a good incentive - or it's just not particularly voluntary (e.g. required as part of job) Patents Just as a quick aside - as it fits in with the topic of NDAs - remember when HashFast released their Golden Nonce protocol specification as open source?  Well maybe you shouldn't click that, because they neglected to mention that HashFast has patent applications on parts of that thing (page 6).  Who knows what else in Bitcoin hardware is patented - which is a shame, as a lot of Bitcoin technology development came from the early days of open source everything (often by necessity) and collaboration. 'Free' reviews Haphazard jumping back a bit again and speaking of incentives, there is of course no shortage of reviewers; as long as they get the gear for free.  A good example, SFARDS tape-out announcement thread.  There's about a dozen people in there already who will happily do a review if they're sent a sample.  You know, for free. Now, I get it - there's something to be said for both approaches.  If you send a product for free, the reviewer may be biased to write a more positive review (not to mention that they can then go on and sell the product - decent profit to be made there on high value items even when offset against time+equipment; low value items not so much, to the point where a reviewer may opt not to perform a review, even if it's sent for free (alas, NF6, a guide was not meant to be)).  If instead the reviewer has bought the product, they might still be biased because they don't want to admit that they bought a dude. Of course there is a middle ground - sending a product but expecting it back, for example, is becoming more common for many hardware review sites - but I certainly lean more toward buy-and-review than review-for-free-and-sell-for-profit. Home mining - Part 1 Hey speaking of SFARDS, they already mentioned that they'd try to target various levels of mining equipment, which may mean a home miner of sort. Now, this caught my eye because: BitFury has exited the home miner market, including chip sales, at this time (yes, the same BitFury whose chips are found in most StickMiners and oodles of other miners), while they had their share of setback

2015/05/13 Thread clean-up time!  For a full copy of the thread as it appeared before I zapped posts, check out: https://archive.is/kSk6E .  Thanks to ManeBjorn, Mikestang and notlist3d for helping several users out in this thread, unrealistic for not reading , vs3 for being vs3 (I have merged the post about the NanoFury project ending into the first post), Anonymailer for asking an obvious question that I did not obviously answer (“what software supports which miner?”, now answered in the first post).Thanks also to people in general for partaking in the three+one Block Erupter USB contests: mod contest (now updated with my 'mods'), Three Days of Mining lottery, StickMiners Horizons and StickMiners Googly Eyes.  There'll probably be a new contest soon I've updated some of the pictures in the first post with shiny new recent resolution angle shots, replaced broken links with archive.org links where available – probably plenty broken things left. Some peculiar bits: The Dualminer is now available for $22 from eyeboot.com (was: $30)The Red Fury is now available for $25 from eyeboot.com (was: $30)Why peculiar? Because they're not actually in stock, and haven't been for a very long time The above ranty-post will also disappear soon, but just to touch on some developments since: We still don't know what 21, Inc. wants to do, exactly - and few people are seeing a solid business plan other than "get VC now".BitFury's "portable Bitcoin processor" may or may not have ended up being a lightbulb - but at least their network hash rate is up.Spondoolies-Tech moved forward with the BTCS merger - at the same time rebranding miners as transaction verification servers - oh, and you can get shares of BTCSMiner Edge holds off on commercial production - profits are too slim and SP-T chip supply is limited, but plans to keep going with newer chipsBitmine AG (CoinCraft miners, CoinCraft A1 chip) went bankrupt - and largely blames InnosiliconKnC continues to claim hardware progress, deploying 16nm - while still facing legal threatsBlack Arrow Software cancels their 14nm chip plans - ..yepAvalon wiki is updated with a reference to an Avalon Mini - but not yet launched.SFARDS delivers their chips - and they're very shiny and hopefully integrated into a miner by J4bberwock soonGekkoScience delivers their prototype StickMiners - chip's not as shiny, but the product is certainly more relevant to this thread And, finally, after I messed a bit with retro calculations (a la http://retrocalc.net/) for StickMiners, I have to say congratulations to the Drillbit Systems / Barntech's Fury Thumb /for actually giving positive financial ROI.  At least, in simplistic theory: Introduced August 1st, 2013.  Price was $130.  USD/BTC at that time was ~$96.62.  Purchasing BTC would have yielded BTC1.345477 If you started mining right here and then, assuming 2.5Gh/s, you'd now be looking at about BTC1.6.  Electricity doesn't put much of a dent in that. It was in the sweet spot of being launched just before the difficulty starting going through the roof, and having vastly more hashing power (~2.7Gh/s) than the Block Erupter USB (0.330Gh/s) for the price.

note: KNC's chips are for their own use ONLY and IPO $$$ for their new data hall they want to control  20% of bitcoin mining fyi... so no hope of getting that 16nm chip their www.kncminer.com site CLAIMS deployment of such happening now currently KNC is at 7%? according to the below article https://bitcoinist.net/knc-miners-announces-20mw-data-center-near-the-arctic-circle-after-turning-backs-on-their-customers/

Yeah, KnC claims a lot of things.  Sadly, one of those things is ~5-7% of the network hash rate.  ( organofcorti should have an updated block maker stats post later today. ) Unfortunately, that is the business model for most of the hardware makers now - while those who propose to do something else entirely, or still cater to the little guy by making a StickMiner (next to a planned bigger board), get mocked; though by a company that seems to have itchy keyboard fingers and nothing as of yet to show for it.  Hey, at least they read these forums. That said, there's plenty to smile about.. if not SFARDS's chip or Avalon's plans or GekkoScience's progress, then you can always go watch a Block Erupter USB beep or get smashed about

Link?

I'd say start here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=844727.msg11611547#msg11611547

I read some mocking for 21e6 embedded stuff and Bitfury Light Bulbs, both of which ideas I openly despise. But yeah, that was a lot of words that didn't actually say anything (or instill any confidence in them). I hope they're full of hot air and can't do what they say, because it sounds to me like they want to centralize mining almost entirely, dole out subscriptions to their gear, and glut the blockchain with billions of stupid transactions for completely unrelated things. None of which is an actually good idea. Once a few more halvings occur and transaction fees dominate the mining revenues, how many miners are still going to be in business when the blockchain is dominated by your zero-fee authentication and communication microtransactions for (id)IoT everything everywhere? How many nodes are there going to be when you're trying to transfer several gigabytes of zero-fee transactions per minute? Why should anyone think this is a good idea? I think I'll continue to work with real people instead of overwealth'd jackasses. Thanks for the link.

2015/07/01 The NanoFury 2, Gen 2 is now available for €39.95 ($51.20) from bitshopper.de (was: €49.95/$40.05) In other news: J4bberwock is making further progress on his dual SFARDS SF3301 dev board of own designAvalon's online store has posted a few more details on the 5-chip Avalon MiniGekkoScience's second batch of Compac test/review boards are on their way, Amita design is progressing, and steps to the larger miner design are being taken. Bitmain confirmed chip availability and the order for them has been placed.Oh and BTC price is up, LTC price is up, block sizes up down up-XT down-with-XT 8MB something, something about replace-by-fee, what's this about blockchains, and block attribution chatter over on organofcorti's blog

Small cosmetic update, just putting a few notes here: The Avalon Nano has sold out at ehash.com. The Avalon Mini may become available mid-august. J4bberwock Unveiled one of his SFARDS SF3301-based designs, it's a podminer (a la Gridseed Orb, Antminer U3, R-Box) design with 2 chips. GekkoScience are also entertaining the idea of a podminer. The GekkoScience Compac single BM1384 miner may go on presale as early as next week with a German licensee and seller also lined up for those on that side of the pond.  You can read several impressions of the GekkoScience Compac in the official combined review thread, including my own.  Keep in mind that it's for an earlier version. In bigger miner news, Bitmain's S7 may or may not get announced this month, the same applies to SFARDS' SF100, BitFury's 'Bitlamp' should go on sale before the end of the year, and Spondoolies-Tech teased a little:

I was happy they said something.  Raises my hopes they might be getting closer.  I really do like my SP20's. Now I just need to hope they will sell to small customers.  They do make great gear.

Final minor bump regarding the GekkoScience Compac (see earlier post): Official sales started July 21st, 2015 Pricing off of GekkoScience is at $25/unit (excluding shipping), 10 unit maximum, contact them if you need bulk. Because of the low price of these units, shipping can seem daunting.  Group buys or waiting for retail sales can be an option in that case. RegionForum UserWhere to goGlobalsidehackhttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1126705United StatesHolyScotthttp://holybitcoin.com/ - TBACanadavalkirhttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1121237AustraliaAJRGalehttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1123519Venezuelachiguireitorhttp://contimita.com/ / TBAEuropeMacEntyrehttps://www.bitshopper.de/shop/usb-miner-bitcoin/gekkoscience-compac/ (design licensee, own manufacturing run) Design thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=995675 Reviews thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1086011 My non-technical review/feedback: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1086011.msg11816899#msg11816899 My technical review/feedback: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1086011.msg11902625#msg11902625

While still little is known about the Avalon Mini, Canaan Creative have additionally hinted at an Avalon nano2.  As with the mini, they appear to plan building a Chrome App for control.

Last chance, for now, to pledge for a GekkoScience Compac: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1126705  Either direct, or through one of the group buys (see 2 posts up in this thread).