Bitcoin Forum

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Ah, the venerable Block Erupter USB - many a miner's first foray into ASIC Bitcoin mining.

But what are they doing now?  Collecting dust?  Fetching $5 each in flash sales only to be found on ebay for $15 each - and selling, too?  Still hashing away, forgotten behind a computer tower at a job you were fired from for completely unrelated reasons a long time ago?

Well you wish you'd remember it now, because Block Erupter USB mining hasn't been this profitable...ever?  Yeah, ever.

To celebrate the Block Erupter USB's upcoming 2-year anniversary, I'm 'giving' away BTC0.1 (a small prize for a small device) in a lottery.

To partake, rather than buying a ticket, all you have to do is mine using a Block Erupter USB or equivalent class for 3 days.  No tinkering, no wracking your brain, just using a miner for what it was originally intended to do: mine.

Prize: BTC0.1
It's not much, but it's more than you're going to get mining with one now, short of being a solo (http://solo.ckpool.org/) Bitcoin (http://bitsolo.net/) mining (http://solomining.com/) lottery (https://solo.nicehash.com/) winner :)

Rules:
1 You must register as a participant in this lottery in this thread.  After registration and well in advance the Three Days of Mining begins, you will be assigned a particpant number (sequential based on thread post order) and be sent a unique code that will allow you to participate.
2. You must mine using a Block Erupter USB or equivalent class miner at the specified Bitcoin mining pool for 3 days.
2.1 An equivalent class is determined purely by hash rate.  Values between 200Mh/s and 450Mh/s are accepted.  If you've got an old Avalon - welcome!  If you overclocked your Block Erupter USB, come on in!  If you find some place you can still rent 300Mh/s and point that specifically to a pool, more power to you, join on in.  If you manage to hack the driver for a 1Th/s miner to submit shares so infrequently as to appear as being 300MH/s... oh go on, you.
2.2 This hash rate must be achieved for no less than 90% of the time.  If you go under too much, you may be disqualified.  If you go over too much, you may be disqualified.
3. You must post or PM an address to which potential winnings should be sent (at time of submission or if selected as the winner), and - lest I send BTC into a void - you must sign the following message using that address to prove receivership:

Duration:
If you did suddenly remember where at your old place of employ you've left yours and all you need to do is sneak in after hours but that's going to take some scoping out of the guard shifts, not to worry, you have a little while to go fetch it and get up to speed.

• Registration for this lottery opens effective immediately and closes 2015-05-01 12:00am PST (night of 30th on 1st).  Not sure when that is?  Google is ever-so-helpful: current time pst (https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=current%20time%20pst)
• Mining measurement will begin 2015-05-01 12:00am PST and ends on 2015-05-04 12:00am PST (night of 3rd on 4th).
• You may begin mining before that the beginning if you wish to test settings and/or ensure that your miner gets a stable estimate of hash rate on the pool.

Winner selection:
The winner of the lottery will be determined by the blockchain as follows:

1. Take the first block mined after 2015-05-04 12:00am PST as determined by the block timestamp.
2. Take the (big-endian, leading zeros in front) hexadecimal representation of the hash of this block.  Example: 00000000000000000e65e8998a362a1149846f73d3f48a539c88bd05b695c979
3. Take the last four two bytes (four characters) of this hash.  Example: c979
4. Take the value of those two bytes.  Example: hex2dec(c979) = 51577
5. Modulo this number with the number of participants.  Example: 51577 % 5 = 2
6. Add 1 to get the winner.  Example: 2 + 1 = 3.  In case this participant is disqualified, the winner will be the next participant, with rollover.


Transparency and fraud:
The specified pool has a semi-public stats URL where you can track the performance of the miners.  Its output is in JSON, which you can use to keep track of yours and others' stats automatically, or use an online JSON viewer (http://json.parser.online.fr/) for clarity.
The pool will however require a code for mining so that one miner cannot affect another miner's hash rate out of either incompetence or malice.

Bitcoin pool
There are very few pools that would work with this type of contest, and only one that fits the bill perfectly, and that is BTCDig.  Details about the reasons for this are given in the next post.
Website: https://btcdig.com/
Difficulty: VarDiff, UserDiff=2
Public leaderboard: https://btcdig.com/user/toplist/
Public stats (JSON output): https://btcdig.com/api/v1/user/miner-stats/b54d615182ade3e9510670a0c286947f26739de9/
Pool URL: stratum+tcp://pool0.btcdig.com:3333
Pool username: BEUSB@ID (to be assigned)
Pool password: password (to be assigned)
Mining software config:

   bfgminer/cgminer -o stratum+tcp://pool0.btcdig.com:3333 -u BEUSB@ID -p PASS

If you're unsure how to get a Block Erupter USB working with your mining software, hit up Google :)

Pool donation is set to 5%

Lottery address:

• Winnings will be paid out from the following address: 1BEUSB4ayzai5jHKrwbiUh8asxZ1KK5e9t (http://btc.blockr.io/address/info/1BEUSB4ayzai5jHKrwbiUh8asxZ1KK5e9t)
• Signature (message as in rule 3): ILri6fCPtDJTfq1pi7ns+KURvItXHLVZziCbnbDSpTLaNghLVOJSPo0+QD4z5B5M9ZnlDR/8wQ86gpi0mKr1bHY= (https://brainwallet.github.io/#verify)

Disclaimer / the fine print:
I will not give feedback on this thread other than clarification of rules and technical support for posting. This lottery is open to any member of the BitcoinTalk Forum.  If you're not a member, now's a good time to become one.  By participating, you agree to the rules and disclaimer.  I'm not allowed to participate.  Bummer.  friedcat is totes allowed to participate, tho'.  Entries past the registration closing time will be disqualified.  If you choose to partake and mine at the designated pool, you implicitly agree to their terms, conditions and privacy statements.  Any amount mined that can be paid out by the pool will be added to the winner's prize.  I won't be responsible for entries not qualified due to technical errors.  A single winning entry will be chosen.  Only one entrant?  Winnar!  Only a single entry is allowed per person - you with the shill accounts, you know who you are, play nice.  Results and winners will be announced on 2015-05-04.  That's May 4th, not April 5th.  My decision is final and no further correspondence will be entertained unless it is entertaining.  Prizes are not exchangeable for cash or other products - I mean, by me, you can do whatever you want with it when it's yours.  I do not accept responsibility for any tax implications that may arise from the prizes or the use thereof, for you poor sods whose Bitcoin is taxed strictly. This post may receive updates in the below section at any time during the contest period.  I told you this was the fine print bit, right?

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2015/04/21: Fixed end date being last year - whoops!
2015/04/30: Fixed start date and pool setting (okay in PMs)

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Contests:
1. Block Erupter USB mod contest 2015 - 0.3/0.15/0.05 BTC prizes (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1011866)
2. Block Erupter USB Three Days of Mining lottery 2015 - 0.1 BTC prize (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1028498)
3. Block Erupter USB - StickMiners Horizons - 0.1 BTC prize (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1043833)

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okay I think I can do this.  I have an ice fury it can set freq o from 1 to 60

50 gets me 1.8gh

that is too high but if I set it to 10 my hash rate will drop very close to .200 gh - .450 gh which is  good


So would this qualify?  assuming I get hash rate to .3gh or so?

If not I think I will join anyway and you can donate the prize to some one else.

For any form of "this", as long as you get between 200Mhash/s and 450Mhash/s 90% of the time*, you're good to go :)  See rule 2.1

* Might need a bit of clarification - for the duration of the three days the hash rates will be polled automatically.  Each poll gives the pool-side apparent hash rate of the miner.  Over time this yields a certain number of samples.  The number of samples that falls between 200Mhash/s and 450Mhash/s (inclusive both ends) should be no less than 90% of the total number of samples.  See also: https://i.imgur.com/UL5WKcm.png

P.S. Thanks for the move, mod - Will post here for the third and last(?) contest as well https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif

Cool count me in, I can plug a BE in and run ye olde miner batch file with some new creds no worries.

Excellent! Your ID is 1 (BEUSB@1) and your password has been sent your way :)

Heh. Count me in!
Gives me an excuse to run one of my "hacked" BEUSBs (soon to appear in your other thread) that has been collecting dust for ~18 months.

Looking forward to that submission! :)

In the mean time: Your ID is 2 (BEUSB@2) and your password has been sent your way :)

Cool.  
I wondered if the first miner in the stats was yours (wake it up.  It looks a little sluggish).  Am I correct in assuming that these miners are collectively displayed as "Team BEUSB" at https://btcdig.com/user/toplist/ ?

I know, BEUSB@ID is a tad slow, but there's a reason for that - It's still within range, so it's all good ;)

That is correct - and we're not in last place ;D

BEUSB@1 has joined in and we're almost breaking 1Gh/s ;)
https://btcdig.com/user/toplist/

May I ask to join in or is it to late? Just found three old BE's. ;)

There's a few hours left :)
registration closes at midnight; current time pst (https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=current%20time%20pst)
Your username (BEUSB@3) / pass (see PM) are on their way.  Keep in mind that you should only use a single one, or your apparent hash rate will be too high :)

Thanks a bunch! Just plugged one of these little pieces of history in and hashing away. It feels like 2013. :)

I wish all participants good luck!

Will be busy the next days with observing hashrates. ;D

Sound like fun, I'm in!  I have about 50 of these packed away.  Been turning them into UARTs to use with other hardware.

But with greater ROI ;) (though FUN > ROI, of course)

They do make decent generic USBser devices; CP2102 is a decent chip :)  If you do want to join in with one of them, just say the word :)

Count me in! I even have one that is overclocked.

Wouldn't use an overclocked one - you'll quickly fall outside the acceptable range :)  Username (BEUSB@4) and password (see PM) on their way.

Count me in on this. I just forgot to say something sooner.

No prob - bit over 3 hours left :)  User (BEUSB@5) and password (see PM) all set up.

Just a heads-up: only ~55 minutes left to sign up and start hashing.
Edit: 10 minutes left.

I feel silly, I verified the OP message/BTC address and left that in my clipboard and pasted it into the PM requesting entry into this contest.  Asking payment to go back to TheRealSteve.

TheRealSteve, I got both of your replies, thanks for the speedy reply.

Everyone can laugh at me.

No problem :)  user (BEUSB@6) and password* (PM) all set up.
* looking at it, you might want to copy/paste yours - I should have used Base58 encoding  ;)

It's time  ;)

copy/paste successful, mining in progress.

Thanks TRS

It's 2015-05-01 12:00am PST - registration is now closed, and mining should commence.  If you aren't mining yet - not to worry, as long as 90% of the samples over the next 3 days are good, you'll be fine.  That doesn't mean that you should wait 6 hours to start mining, however, as you will have some invalid samples due to variance even at vardiff=2 :)

As there are 6 miners, you basically have a 1 in 6 chance of winning BTC0.1 .  To compare that to regular mining, you would need 28,170 Block Erupter USBs at stock frequency to mine the same amount of BTC at a 0% fee pool at current difficulty.

Good luck, and may the block chain be in your favor :)

What about waiting 8 hours?

Also, out of interest, who's using what versions of cgminer? I'm on 3.1.1 with the -S flag in play.

Fresh install of BFGminer 5.1 for me. 
I haven't been mining anything via USB since I turned off my silence/efficiency modified BFL singles last year (40GH @110W vs 60GH @300W).
https://forums.butterflylabs.com/post-sales-and-customer-service/8261-underclock-single-2.html#post81128 (https://forums.butterflylabs.com/post-sales-and-customer-service/8261-underclock-single-2.html#post81128)

Same here, but only because @ID is running off of a basement machine and I don't want to mess around with drivers on that thing.

Unfortunately for you, math tells me that 8 out of 72 hours is 11.11% - so even if all samples from here on are valid, there's no way to reach 90% anymore.  You're free to continue mining just for the heck of it, of course - or try your luck in one of the other two Block Erupter USB contests, modding a Block Erupter USB or guessing USB mining devices :)

Fortunately for the rest of you, sidehack's loss is your gain as this increases your odds of winning ;)

cgminer 4.9.1 on a raspberry pi2

Built from commit # 57de2cc (https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/commit/57de2ccda7490d626b7484f930893bafde3581d8).  The newer commits wouldn't build for me at the time (Mar 7).

BTCdig seems to be claiming my hashrate is a little low; slightly in range for this lottery.  currently 207 hourly.  I started mining about 2 minutes before the official start of the contest, so it doesn't leave much room for mining to be down for any reason (internet going down, cat pulling on a usb cable, etc)

The apparent hash rate at the pool stabilizes fairly quickly thanks to the low diff - while your miner does appear a bit slow, it's within the range I had determined out of my batch of 8 + bit of margin.. as long as it stays there, it'll be fine :)

I forgot the start time and my block erupter was at the shop. If I'd thought about it I'd have set it going before leaving work last night (8:45 local, 6:45PST) and been okay. Maybe I should mess with y'all and point a few TH of old gear at it for the weekend.

Oh well, no reason to turn it off now. It's on the same machine I've had the GPU running 30Mkey worth of humorous vanitygen addresses (1buttcheek, etc) for about the last five months just because. Woo, add another 2.5W to it.

As for modding, I'm not sure I'll have the time to do what I'd really want to for one. Novak's walked on his sweet idea, we got too much other stuff going on at the shop these days. I guess I could hijack one as the USB/UART for my Compac prototype and add that to the competition but I think I'd rather do nothing than do something halfass.

Haha - I'm sure the pool operator wouldn't mind ;)

Ever thought of pointing that at the vanity 'pool'?  I'm still half tempted to dig into FPGAs and seeing what sort of performance/efficiency I can get out of a reasonably modern Xilinx for vanity generation.

Slightly back on-topic:

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Graphs

	BEUSB@1	BEUSB@2	BEUSB@3	BEUSB@4	BEUSB@5	BEUSB@6
	https://i.imgur.com/goMgVdi.png (https://i.imgur.com/goMgVdi.png)	https://i.imgur.com/096xCXg.png (https://i.imgur.com/096xCXg.png)	https://i.imgur.com/xHuKVJh.png (https://i.imgur.com/xHuKVJh.png)	https://i.imgur.com/CWFAENb.png (https://i.imgur.com/CWFAENb.png)	https://i.imgur.com/TPf5rrG.png (https://i.imgur.com/TPf5rrG.png)	https://i.imgur.com/IoTUHVs.png (https://i.imgur.com/IoTUHVs.png)

BEUSB@6 does seem to dip out of bounds, I'd check on it :)

Same here.  I have 6 BFL singles modded to 0.8VDC.  Think they use about 120W.  Using CGminer 3.12 for my BE.

Well, we learned a lot and had a bunch of fun, I consider this as our ROI. Same as joining this lottery, not expecting to win (even if the chances are higher than 2013) but having fun at the moment and crossing my finger the pool will find infinite blocks during the next three days <-= you could have a ROI as well. :D

bfgminer 3.10.0 - don't judge me on this - just had it installed on an rpi located close to the BE. ;)

Well, 264 blocks to go... I'd take it ;)

Graphs

	BEUSB@1	BEUSB@2	BEUSB@3	BEUSB@4	BEUSB@5	BEUSB@6
	https://i.imgur.com/N0Xb6u3.png (https://i.imgur.com/N0Xb6u3.png)	https://i.imgur.com/NxNOMRk.png (https://i.imgur.com/NxNOMRk.png)	https://i.imgur.com/J4jQYNI.png (https://i.imgur.com/J4jQYNI.png)	https://i.imgur.com/kQVz6Iz.png (https://i.imgur.com/kQVz6Iz.png)	https://i.imgur.com/ZVjeFHd.png (https://i.imgur.com/ZVjeFHd.png)	https://i.imgur.com/GL8b7IH.png (https://i.imgur.com/GL8b7IH.png)

BEUSB@6 has clawed its way back into valid range.

Phew.

I only changed 1 thing: switched to a different block erupter.  This one has a better heat sink or is just overall faster.

I was going to try to switch to mining on my windows pc but couldn't find a cgminer executable that was compiled with the ability to run block erupters.

Just to satisfy everyone's curiosity, the cgminer running on my RPI, was compiled with the icarus support and without the specific asicminer block erupter support.  (adding the blockerupter support allows it to mine for about a minute then error out and give up on accessing the blockerupter devices again)
Then I launch the newly compiled cgminer with no command line switches and just enter the mining pool server, username, and password and let it go.

Would be interesting to try and figure out what the problem might have been - but unless you're getting HW errors, it's likely something internal - not much that can be done about that :)



kano keeps a bunch binaries in his repo:
https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer-binaries

I'd stick to the rpi though :)

Graphs

	BEUSB@1	BEUSB@2	BEUSB@3	BEUSB@4	BEUSB@5	BEUSB@6
	https://i.imgur.com/sNBsN7W.png (https://i.imgur.com/sNBsN7W.png)	https://i.imgur.com/RTxBDIx.png (https://i.imgur.com/RTxBDIx.png)	https://i.imgur.com/8Y4MRDA.png (https://i.imgur.com/8Y4MRDA.png)	https://i.imgur.com/FyEi6vn.png (https://i.imgur.com/FyEi6vn.png)	https://i.imgur.com/9GwxFcP.png (https://i.imgur.com/9GwxFcP.png)	https://i.imgur.com/3RpsTPF.png (https://i.imgur.com/3RpsTPF.png)

BEUSB@6 is indeed performing much better.
BEUSB@4 still has zero rejected shares (doesn't matter for the lottery - just surprising)

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If anybody was monitoring the hash rates and was wondering about BEUSB@ID...
https://i.imgur.com/KHPqFaR.png (https://i.imgur.com/KHPqFaR.png)
...I had to stop it for a little bit to take some pictures and video, plugged it back in proper, and after a little while:
Idle for more than 60 seconds, declaring SICK!
Not responded for more than 10 minutes, declaring DEAD!
And it wasn't wrong - tried restarting it, but I suspect it's done for. Not entirely surprising after the abuse, but unfortunate nevertheless :)
BEUSB@ID of course doesn't partake in the lottery - but I'll drop in a relatively fresh Block Erupter USB just for kicks.

Graphs

	BEUSB@1	BEUSB@2	BEUSB@3	BEUSB@4	BEUSB@5	BEUSB@6
	https://i.imgur.com/aVgTeqW.png (https://i.imgur.com/aVgTeqW.png)	https://i.imgur.com/W7I5uyI.png (https://i.imgur.com/W7I5uyI.png)	https://i.imgur.com/cMzlosY.png (https://i.imgur.com/cMzlosY.png)	https://i.imgur.com/blB08BX.png (https://i.imgur.com/blB08BX.png)	https://i.imgur.com/GvXVnK6.png (https://i.imgur.com/GvXVnK6.png)	https://i.imgur.com/NSHajVH.png (https://i.imgur.com/NSHajVH.png)

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As an aside, just a heads-up that the third contest is just under 10 hours away from opening up (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1043833) :)

Contest 3: Block Erupter USB - StickMiners Horizons - 0.1 BTC prize (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1043833)

Is about to go live - good luck :)

Graphs

	BEUSB@1	BEUSB@2	BEUSB@3	BEUSB@4	BEUSB@5	BEUSB@6
	https://i.imgur.com/W8elkkN.png (https://i.imgur.com/W8elkkN.png)	https://i.imgur.com/8wZ5UN8.png (https://i.imgur.com/8wZ5UN8.png)	https://i.imgur.com/vHZ8fI1.png (https://i.imgur.com/vHZ8fI1.png)	https://i.imgur.com/AxK6Jpx.png (https://i.imgur.com/AxK6Jpx.png)	https://i.imgur.com/GQO67eu.png (https://i.imgur.com/GQO67eu.png)	https://i.imgur.com/um9Jrpc.png (https://i.imgur.com/um9Jrpc.png)

Only 12 more hours to go :)

Time's up, time to declare the winner!

Graphs

	BEUSB@1	BEUSB@2	BEUSB@3	BEUSB@4	BEUSB@5	BEUSB@6
	https://i.imgur.com/RmYaDg2.png (https://i.imgur.com/RmYaDg2.png)	https://i.imgur.com/oADdtFA.png (https://i.imgur.com/oADdtFA.png)	https://i.imgur.com/l4E3Q2r.png (https://i.imgur.com/l4E3Q2r.png)	https://i.imgur.com/GozJlwK.png (https://i.imgur.com/GozJlwK.png)	https://i.imgur.com/yvLFyy6.png (https://i.imgur.com/yvLFyy6.png)	https://i.imgur.com/enijtxd.png (https://i.imgur.com/enijtxd.png)

As you can seee, BEUSB@5 did not meet the 90% valid hash rate requirement, and is therefore disqualified.  This leaves the following:
Qualified participants (index and miner):

• BEUSB@1
• BEUSB@2
• BEUSB@3
• BEUSB@4
• BEUSB@6

Winner selection:
First block mined after 2015-05-04 12:00am (7am UTC block timestamp): 354892 (http://btc.blockr.io/block/info/354892)
Block hash and last two bytes: 00000000000000000fe61fbc01011127e556418399c1bcc15e08acdc9fa85700
Decimal value of last two bytes: 22272
Number of qualified participants: 5
Decimal modulo participants: 2
Add 1, look up winner: 3. BEUSB@3

Congratulations to BEUSB@3 (Dunkelheit667) for winning BTC0.1 - their winnings will be paid out to the address of their choice.

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Clean-up
As mentioned in the first post, you're welcome to continue mining at BTCDIG - I'll keep the workers live so no machines throw unnecessary alerts.  If you'd like yours explicitly disabled, just say the word.  Continuing to mine there however will not yield you any payment.  Disclosure: payment address is the one used for this contest.  Automatic payout is set to BTC0.01 (minimum allowed).  Donation level to the pool is 5% (maximum allowed).  Expected reward, balance, etc. can be viewed via the API (https://btcdig.com/api/v1/user/stats/b54d615182ade3e9510670a0c286947f26739de9/).

Congrats Dunkelheit667.

Thank you doubledave! Will cross my fingers for you during the next event. :)

And thanks again TRS for organizing this lottery/providing the wonderful graphs and of course the price!

Just received the 0.1 BTC and will keep mining with this lucky BE for fun until my raspberry will take care of something else. ;)

Giveaway started way back in April. is this still going on?

Edit: nevermind, just saw someone who just won.

'way back' :D

Perhaps again next year, or perhaps I'll organize something with nanofury-class devices.. since that's essentially an artifact of a era past in its own right.  I'd say keep an eye on my StickMiners thread, as that's the most likely place where I'd announce anything of the sort.

	BEUSB@1	BEUSB@2	BEUSB@3	BEUSB@4	BEUSB@5	BEUSB@6
	https://i.imgur.com/qbtTsQn.png (https://i.imgur.com/qbtTsQn.png)	https://i.imgur.com/eRfUwiB.png (https://i.imgur.com/eRfUwiB.png)	https://i.imgur.com/PPruIYk.png (https://i.imgur.com/PPruIYk.png)	https://i.imgur.com/Rzo6tR2.png (https://i.imgur.com/Rzo6tR2.png)	https://i.imgur.com/D9TRyMd.png (https://i.imgur.com/D9TRyMd.png)	https://i.imgur.com/vwbQ5qP.png (https://i.imgur.com/vwbQ5qP.png)

As things were still running - just a quick 'one day later' graphs update :)

Thanks again to all for playing, and to BTCDIG for running a suitable pool.

Just a minor heads-up: in about an hour and a half (noon PST), the last in this series of contests will go live: Block Erupter USB - StickMiners Googly Eyes - 0.1BTC prize (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1053725)