Bitcoin Forum

Got an email through a local NYC crypto meetup about introducing a new miner manufacturer, Orion.


Anyone heard of this at all?  MOQ 100 units?  Sounds very sus.

https://www.orionminer.com (https://www.orionminer.com)

I doubt some random company noone has ever heard of is bringing a 7nm chip out of nowhere. Also they claim its parallel instead of a serial layout, which has been the dominant design for a while now.


I call BS

No one and I repeat NO ONE is making any 7nm chips outside of Engineering test structures. Even 10/12nm is just now beginning to be available with a high-cost/low-yield production status.

So unless they are doing pre-orders for something around 1 year away when the Foundries *might* be firing up 7nm production this company is at a minimum over exuberant in their claims and much like Halong seem to be following the Scamming for Dummies ^tm handbook...

100 MOQ presales to ship hopefully Q3 of this year for ORION 1 with 12 NM chips ... ORION 1 which is listed with almost identical numbers (Hash / power efficiency) to Dragonmint 16T , so relying on current technology available and calculating to account for ASIC boost I would imagine ... 

No way anyone is shelling out cash for these right?

Never heard of them before. Also that information about 7nm chips sounds a bit... well its less likely to be truth. Last time I head about 7nm chips was in some news, where it says that Samsung is making them for some company from China. Maybe Orion somehow got in trade with Samsung? But on their official site its says "our patented next-generation 7 nanometer design", which imply that they made it.
Honestly I would stay away from this company for now.

Considering their whois protected website domain name was only registered 2 months ago and is only for 1 year says it all ::).

Also website uses stock engineering images that can be found anywhere, no proof of their own development.

Looks like another typical lame scam website like thousands of others out there.

Moral of the story is only buy hardware from trusted sources :D.

Agreed - but then what is the idea behind hosting an in person meet and greet in NYC?  That is a lot of risk for a scammer...

Scammers are clever and always trying new tactics.

It might not definitely be a scam but I've seen stuff like this many times over the years ad 99% of the time it is.

Orion - To the moon!!  :D

https://i.imgur.com/bVNf7LO.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(spacecraft))

Honestly I don't see any signs for this being a legit company and a legit product.

I would be careful.

Not to mention their "innovative" design ... from about 3 YEARS ago where their chips are not string design.
Odd how that "innovation" was THE NORM for most miner designs except Bitfury 'till recently.

I smell a distinct stench of SCAM about this.

Hi,

I am one of the partners of Orion Crypto Mining and leading business development. We are a new ASIC hardware company, but our engineering team has a lot of experience in semiconductor design and have been designing ASIC chips for miners for the past several years.

I completely understand the skepticism and it is also expected. So far our approach has been to work directly with larger mining operations so that we can provide some due diligence materials for them to vet our designs and provide confidence we can meet our performance and delivery milestones. We strive to be as transparent as possible with our initial customers and are not trying to make a big public splash as of yet. We will have an E-commerce store eventually for retail customers after our hardware is more proven. We know ultimately the only thing that will provide confidence is getting units into the hands of customers.

We hope you will be open-minded and give us a chance to succeed. Our mission is to provide reliable and innovative mining hardware to ensure the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies. We are strong believers in Bitcoin and truly believe we can make a difference with our products. Please feel free to reach out by email to info@orionminer.com. We will be happy to speak to any potential customers by phone or in person.

The only way you will build confidence and prove this isn’t a fake is by inviting some of the high profile members here to your facility and showing them the hardware or sending them a demo model.

They will confirm if it’s real and inform all members here.

Until then, expect every bit of info you provide to be met with extreme skepticism.

Will you be showing the equipment in New York?  If so I wouldn't mind coming down and posting some photos/video.

There are deff some users here running 100s+ of units.

 *Volunteers myself HagssFIN and PhilipMa1957 as demo model reviewers*

Unfortunately we had to postpone the Meetup, but will reschedule and send around the new date to the group. We plan to have a demo unit by summer, for now we just have the FPGA demo on our site showing our front-end designs are functional.

Yeah, I would be more than happy to do a thorough review and guide for this machine, like I've done with other machines in past. :)

I have been to a New York Crypto Meet Up  I went with buysolar and 2 possible investors.

It was a   Russian Tea Room Club Restaurant  and around 100 plus people came to it.

So  the Meet Up club is real.  I don't know anything bout the miner  but I certainly would  be willing to demo it If I get a model.

I am in Howell NJ under 90 minutes from manhattan in non rush hour traffic.

So @ op shoot me a pm  if you want me to do a demo and a few you tube videos.

This "Launch" seems very similar to the way the Dragonmint was announced to the world.

Wouldn't surprise me if this possible probable scam; is just feeding off the fact that Dragonmint has almost proven to be a real product that will fulfill all orders. They really don't need a lot of people to fall for it with a MOQ of 100 it really only takes 1 person with more cash than brains.

Well. Maybe this is real.  I hope to get more info on it.

Well if we do 10nm then 7nm

That will be the end of the line.  As smaller then 7nm is not going to happen very easy.

14/16nm has proved to have legs in terms of time.

My guess 10nm and then 7nm will stick around for long time periods

"7nm" as currently announced isn't going to be a noteable improvement over "10nm" as currently announced.

https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/6895-standard-node-trend.html


Intel and IBM appear to still be standing by their statements that "10nm is the end of the road for pure silicon", though IBM has been working with a mixed Silicon/Germanium wafer setup on their next-gen node work I don't see that buying more than 1 or 2 generations of improvement.

Frankly  10nm for 3-5 years with a move to 7nm  in the 4th year would be better for the crypto industry.

It would force emphasis to products that work well and last backed up by decent service.

   I have been contacted by Orion Miner reps  via email.
 I have no new info other then they plan to have some phone conversations with me . As always I try to be as transparent as I can.  I am hoping this gear is legit and I can get a sample to review.

I will post back later tonight or on Monday.

Yeah, Kevin from Orion Miner contacted me as well and said that they want to have a phone conversation with me.
I sent him my email and Skype username.

I had a 20 minute phone conversation.  I will write thoughts on it in the morning.

They also contacted me by mail, but no phone yet (I was kinda busy today though and might have missed a call).

Phil would probably be best from their point of view as a "near local".

Are u guys real and serious? It makes no sense to spend money into manufacturing a miner now for the usual algos that already have asic. Why not make an asic for a new algo that has no asic yet?  In any case, if this turns out to be real which I currently doubt, it would be great if u give one for quick demo to the respective individuals quickly. Less headache

Actually you are completely correct or totally wrong.

Downturn makes them attractive.

But I talked and I don't have the coin needed  to get in.

And what is tough about putting in money is they have a long lead time.

More then 60 days before first set of chips are ready.

They think they can make  a better product then the Dragonmint.

If I had a pocketful of cash I would take a shot as I would look to get in as a partner not a buyer.

That is why a downturn is good for a large investor that wants to be involved I would think he or they could get a good position with them.

Bring 5 million to bitmain you get nothing but a pile of gear
Bring 5 million to avalon same thing  some gear and maybe better service.
Bring 5 million to a startup like these guys maybe you get a say.
This is not for many people I know.  

NJ solar rules are good you could create a solar array of 40 acres for 20 million it is a 30 year asset . this would give you
40 x 35 = 1400 kwatt 24/7/365

you could buy 1000 of these and cut a good deal since they are a startup. net money in = 22,000,000  and you would earn

276,000 a month.  100 months you would be paid off.  what you are really doing is getting a 20 million dollar solar array for free in 10 years.  At that time it would still have 15-20 years of use left to it.

While buysolar and I could build the field and the farm  we are not that rich to have the cash to do it.

But even with the shit price /diff ratio today it is still viable.

If you came to me and buysolar today with serious cash I would consider using this company as the gear supplier

but note 20 of the 22 million is the solar array only 2 million is the mining gear.

I feel is approached by a big money player I would really sit down to talk with this company and Avalon would be my other choice.   The attraction to this company would only be if I could get a foot into it as a member of the team.

If not hands down I would deal with Avalon.  But this is most likely not going to happen as I am not aware of a player looking to put in $$

There is a much bigger market for SHA256 miners than for anything else - far more likely to be able to pay off the HUGE design/engineering/chip costs than for any other algorithm, even if you only manage to get 5-10% of the market.
Most algorithms can't support the sale of enough miners to be able to pay off the $MILLIONS of up-front costs - note that quite a few of the recent "small algorithm" miners have been 28nm to keep the cost down.

We had a good chat with Kevin via Skype.

Long story short,
He said that they will go more public about their plans and other information when things go forward.

Their first miner ORION 1 will be based on the 12nm technology and the planned launch date is in October 2018.

I mentioned that they will be good at gathering trust if they do it better than Halong Mining did when they started the company.

So at the moment I'm very optimistic about this and I have a wait and see attitude on this.

I hope that there will also be a possibility for a thorough review to create more trust towards this piece of equipment.

Gotta say that them being more open ^^ about node size and dates is a breath of fresh air vs the stench that comes from Halongitosis. Given size and dates 20TH should be entirely doable. I also take it that 20TH/s is true raw SHA processing speed we will see on non-AB tweaked pools, right?

Also have to add that facts be facts - I hope it does NOT support non-defeatable ASICBOOST. If it can be switched on/off like Bitmain's version of it seems to have been without harming 'straight' the SHA256 hash rates then fine.

Website just updated to show 18 TH/s and 22.5 TH/s per unit.

Over night.   ???

Noticed in Jimmy Song's recent article that he links to Orion Miner when talking about startups set to compete with Bitmain ... almost to the end of the article :

...First, there is a lot of competition coming. There are no less than 4 startups that I know of that are entering the mining space attempting to dethrone Bitmain. There are also larger companies like Samsung, Intel and Nvidia that are looking into getting into this very lucrative industry....

https://medium.com/@jimmysong/mining-centralization-scenarios-b74102adbd36

Not sure if he's vetted them or what, but interesting he links to Orion and Halong as valid up an comers to compete for market share soon ....

Interesting that he claims 4 but only provides links to 3 (there's a link to someone called "oasis mining" in there as well).

I also don't buy the "larger companies" claims - Samsung has no reports of being interested in making miners, all of the reports to date appear to be about their CONTRACT FOUNDRY work to make chips for EBang, Nvidia has not shown any interest in getting into cryptocurrency at all and has stated multiple times they don't like their GPUs being used for mining, Intel has had a few vague reports of some sort of interest but ZERO confirmed interest.

Sounds like yet another "I want to sound important by repeating vague claims I've not bothered actually checking into" type "journalist".

This "journalist" also happens to be a Bitcoin Core contributor (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commits?author=jimmysong), the founder of Programming Blockchain (http://programmingblockchain.com), and a venture partner at Blockchain Capital (https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-dev-jimmy-song-is-now-a-blockchain-capital-partner/).

Jimmy happens to be pretty well respected and know wtf he's talking about. I trust what he says.

Thanks for sharing that video, great stuff, interesting that Orion says they are focused on production, but aren't operating a mining operation themselves (to avoid a conflict of interest)