Topics:
- 1. Disclaimer
- 2. What is NerdMiner
- 3. Why it is relevant
- 4. How do I get a NerdMiner
- 5. NerdMiner Setup
- 6. Community
- 7. Resources
- 8. Other projects
1. Disclaimer
Before even starting to read this thread, read carefully the following statement:
VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER
This is a non-profit project. That is a no profit for the user. With such a setup, you won't probably mine a single satoshi in your lifetime. This is NOT for economic profit. The total loss of monetary funds invested in this project is almost inevitable. 2. What is NerdMiner
NerdMiner is a project that originated from Valerio Vaccaro's idea of HanSolo mining.
Valerio is the ideator of "Satoshi Spritz", a format for informal local meetups of bitcoiners that is now spread all over Italy in more than 20 instances.
During these meetups, typically held in Bitcoin-friendly pubs, Valerio presented some gadgetry: Bitcoin nodes, LN nodes, and LN ATMs, but a proper mining device was missing. So, he decided to close that gap and started coding. He used some commodity programmable board and assembled the very first instance of his portable mining device. As he is, of course, an übernerd, he dubbed his device HanSolo Miner.
That was essential software with an uncanny graphical interface and limited features.
Bitmaker discovered the project and, in the spirit of pure Open-Source Software, forked it, rebranded NerdMiner, and added a friendly graphical interface and a few more features.
NerdMiner can run on a variety of boards, but the most common one is the Lilygo S3:
The following is the full list of boards capable of running firmware 1.61.
- -- LILYGO T-Display S3
- -- ESP32-WROOM-32, ESP32-Devkit1..
- -- LILYGO T-QT
- -- LILYGO T-Display 1.14
- -- LILYGO T-Display S3 AMOLED
- -- LILYGO T-Dongle S3
- -- ESP32-2432S028R 2,8"
The latest release of the firmware added support to other boards, and many more are coming.
This board has a power consumption of less than 2W, meaning that you can power it for a whole year for way less than 5 EUR.
With the latest firmware, the total hash power of this device is 55Kh/s maximum (peak value, not sustained).
This means that the NerdMiner has an efficiency ratio of 36,360 J/GHs. An S19 XP Hydro has an efficiency of 0.021J/GHs. The NerdMiner is 1,500,000 times less efficient than a S19 miner.
Once online, this is the Pool where the NerdMiners connect to:
https://web.public-pool.io/#/
Many pools would reject NerdMiners or similar low hash power devices because of the too-low hash rate. Publicpool will accept even the smallest mining machine without any fees. Only miners above 50 TH/s will incur in a 1.5% mining pool.
Please note that the 4,500 NerdMiners have a hash power 10^-10 times of a single Antminer. This means that it would take 2,750,000,000 S3 NerdMiners to make a single S19. Imagine giving every person on planet Earth 1 NerdMiner: this would equal hash power to just three S19.
Remember that the Bitcoin network is currently powered by 2.5 million equivalent of those machines. This means that a single S19 is expected to mine a block a block every 46 years.
If 2,500,000 S19 are able to find a block every 10 minutes on average, a single S3 NerdMiner will take 125,570,776,256 years (basically 10 times the age of the universe) to find a block.
This should persuade you that you won't mine anything during your lifetime with this setup.
If you want to further deep-dive into this, I suggest you to read the following link:
Bitcoin – Are NerdMiner and BitAxe profitable?
In addition to that, I worked on an Excel spreadsheet:
3. Why it is relevant
Why all this fuss if the prospected earning is null? Why lose money and time if the Pool won't mine a block in our entire lifetime?
Well, the reason is twofold:
Learning
Bitcoin mining is a capital-intensive, ultra-competitive industry. Many users wouldn't consider participating in this part of the Bitcoin protocol.
With NerdMiner, you can mine in production with a little initial and running cost. This will allow you to deal with the actual and fundamental dynamics of mining: running the hardware, managing the pools, interacting with mining protocols, etc. The learning curve is steep, but this device can allow you to practically learn something that would otherwise be extremely difficult.
In addition to that you will learn something about the basic mining operations, temperature management, compiling firmwares etc.
In this project Learning something new vastly overcomes the financial aspect of the whole project.
Bitcoin canary in the mine
Bitcoin is an open-source and distributed technology. As long as every user can run the network's primary function in an open-source, affordable manner, the assumptions of the Bitcoin technology will be maintained valid.
My personal DIY setup for basic Bitcoin Protocol Functions (credit card for reference) |
Now, you can run a full Bitcoin node with a few hundred dollars of hardware value, a Bitcoin miner with 50 dollars, and secure your private keys with a DIY hardware wallet for 15 dollars.
With your Bitcoin node, you will be able to validate the blockchain and transactions; with a mining node, you can add a block to the blockchain; and with a hardware wallet, you can sign a new transaction securely. All this with open-source software and, in some cases, open-source hardware.
Of course, you don't have all the bells and whistles of commercial solutions, or in the case of the mining hardware, you won't have any real chance of competing for the block. Still, the important thing is that you are doing the exact computation of a professional miner.
Your small NerdMiner is playing on a statistically levelled play with the most advanced miners. Only the incredible capital they put into this competitive industry grants them an advantage, as the PoW dictates, not a technical protocol advantage over your hardware.
The network's decentralisation will be granted as long as simple users can perform all the required protocol functions, a mining device, a Bitcoin node and a hardware wallet, all through open-source projects with limited financial and technical effort. This is of utmost importance for the Bitcoin protocol to succeed.
4. How Do I Get a NerdMiner
I will quote Valerio Vaccaro's post here.
You have three options.
1 | DIY | Buying all the pieces on ALI, flashing the device and solving the (few) issues that it implies. You will have fun, learn something and save some money. |
2 | Official NerdMiner Website | You will support the developers of NerdMiners, helping them to improve their work with new releases, with increased usability and new functionalities. |
3 | Getting in contact with other bitcoiners and having fun together | Meeting other bitcoiners IRL at local meetups, buying their NerdMiners, sustaining the local community and exchanging knowledge. This is how the virus spread in Italy. |
5. NerdMiner Setup
Setting up a NerdMiner is really simple.
Actually, you have at least a couple of methods, the easy way, and the "hardcore" way. It' 's up to you, your time, and your technical capabilities to decide which one to go.
I went the easy way, and I must say it was really simple.
The process is described step by step on this NerdMiner website:
NerdMiner Setup Guide
Once I get the easy way, I am intended to start playing with the software, to get some tricks.
Basically, you have to:
- Connect the Nerminer to a USB port of your PC
- Connect to the the website https://bitmaker-hub.github.io/diyflasher/ to flash your device
- Click a button to flash the NerdMiner
- Connect to your NerdMiner via Wi-FI (connect to NerdMinerAP with your mobile, just as per instruction on screen
- Set up the Wi-Fi credentials and a Bitcoin address where to deposit your satoshi (just in case).
Very easy.
When your NerdMiner is connected, you can connect to the pool and monitor its functioning.
Just open a browser and reach: https://web.public-pool.io/#/app/YournerminerBitcoinaddress to monitor it.
Here you can control the mining stats of your NerdMiner(s) connected to the pool. |
There are also a few physical buttons to monitor the status of your NerdMiner:
6. Community
NerdMiner has a thriving community.
Everything centres around the Telegram channel, where a nice community of enthusiasts has developed a few fun ideas:
You are invited to join this crazy community!
7. Resources
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https://bitronics.store/nerdminer/ | Official NerdMiner Website | |
https://twitter.com/BitMaker_ | Twitter Handle of Bitmaker, the creator of NerdMiners | |
https://t.me/teamNerdMiner | Official Telegram Group | |
Micro $3 Bitcoin miners won't make bank, but that's not the point — Inventors | BitMaker's interview on Cointelegraph. | |
In-depth explanation of Bitcoin Mining Difficulty | A primer on Bitcoin difficulty. Many concepts used in mining are clearly explained on this page. | |
8. Other projects
NerdMiner is not the only open-source mining project. There are other projects going beyond that. Some of them are even trying to develop a (sort of) open-source hardware.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ | |
Han Solo Mining | Where all this started. Valerio Vaccaro is still developing HanSolo miners. He is adding support to new boards and improving the current software. All this work might eventually be merged in the NerdMiner code. |
BitAxe | An open-source software on a (quasi) open-source hardware. The smallest ever ASICs made of a single Antminer S17 chip. Mining 520 GH/s on a 10W consumption. Here you have a Telegram Group. This project also has a thread on the forum: Open Source Bitcoin ASIC miner project that uses 2x BM1387 (Antminer S9). |
CPUMiner-Android | An Android application wrapper for Pooler's CPUMiner. Ubiquotous mining with your old Android phone. |
VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER
This is a non-profit project. That is a no profit for the user. With such a setup, you probably won't mine a single satoshi in your lifetime. This is NOT for economic profit. The total loss of monetary funds invested in this project is almost inevitable.