[ANN] MinerFarm - Virtual Mining Game for Real Bitcoin

[ron7684]

What exactly separates this from a gambling style ponzi mining operation?

I don't quite understand. These things pop up and disappear overnight. What are we investing into exactly?

Aside from my involvement in the unofficial MinerFarm forums mentioned a couple posts above, I want to make it clear that I have no affiliation with the developer or admin or MinerFarm.  That said, I've been studying the concept quite a bit to see what separates it from other similar sites, especially the various cloud mining ponzi schemes that seem to plague the industry.  That said, here's a few key points.

1.)  I think one of the important things to understand is that when you purchase a 10GH/s miner or even using the existing miner in the game, it isn't like some lifetime contract for 10GH/s.  That mining hardware requires constant repairs and depreciates in power over time.  I certainly think with some strategies in place, many individuals can get a positive return on investment, but if you just look at the fees involved on a continual basis, the need for repairs, etc - you'll find that the investments are slanted toward benefiting the admin - and rightfully so.  

2.)  I think if you look at the game from a more strategic stand point, you'll find that not everyone is going to have a positive return on their investment, some people are going to straight up leave, and the game also requires you to log in once every 2 days to keep your miners active.  In a lot of ways, there's some similarities there with Bitcoin Faucets in that MinerFarm is constantly working to keep you engaged with the game and it's also fighting against you to ensure you don't make money and that only people who put time in and consider a plan of "attack" will end up ahead.

3.)  Revenues exist with banner ads to help further improve earnings and liquidity.

4.)  No one shuns casinos for being ponzi schemes, even though Casinos rely on continual "investments" to stay afloat, although the odds are in their favor.  I think the case is similar here.  I wouldn't call this gambling as I think you can put some thought into developing a good strategy for a return on investment, but I also don't think everyone is going to come out ahead and I think many members are going to get flimsy earnings and never even get to a point to justify the withdraw fee.

5.)  The admin also uses the site as marketing for existing and stable Bitcoin Faucets, which means if traffic to those faucets improves as a result of this site, there's a justification to any losses he/she may occur if they're offset positively elsewhere.

6.)  MinerFarm isn't the first game to allow individuals to invest or withdraw real money.  Planey Calypso has a real economy and keeping that economy in the game alive is also reliant on user interest and player base.  Such are just the risks involved in such a game.  In terms of what you're actual owning, well there's no surprise that what you own is virtual, but assuming the game is sustainable, is the purchased "virtual" mining power any less real than the people who buy and sell stuff on Second Life?

I mean, these are just some things to consider.

While I agree with most of your points, especially #4, I disagree with #6.

4) Minerfarm is a GAME, I think this is the main way to escape liability. Casinos are transparent, they display their hashes and allow proof of fairness; my issue with Minerfarm is the lack of transparency and the vast number of ways that they are cutting into user profits beyond realistic conditions (charging for available power, not just in-use power; requiring login every 48hr; double billing maintenance). That said, it's a game and technically anything they do falls under "allowable". They could have a "power surge" and send all miners to 50% hashing power and it would be within the "rules" of the game.

Double billing maintenance occurs because players are charged a maintenance fee of 192 Satoshi/GHS/day, and on top of this all miners experience slowly reducing effectiveness plus expenses for air conditioning.

6) This is not the same. Games like Second Life (and nearly all others) have a sustainable currency because people want to play the game. Minerfarm is a bitcoin mining simulator game and except for those that enjoy the ultimate boredom this "game" offers, most players are looking to profit by getting out and eventually there will be heavy downward pressure on the market (if there ever are enough people involved to actually consider it a market, I've never seen more than 7-8 sell trades posted).


My biggest issue with the site is that it has no proven source of income proportional to the mining power purchased in game, clear signs of a ponzi. When I ask in the game chat, people reply with reasoning such as "faucets" or "advertisements"; if someone purchases 10THS of mining power in game the site income does not increase but the payout must. Where does this new payout come from?

Aliser has yet to answer my questions about proof of investment (real miners, shares elsewhere), leading me to believe there is none. Another sign of a ponzi.

Paying out users based on new investments can only keep up for so long, you have to keep the average investment date per $ more recent than the number of days for ROI. Hint: This becomes exponentially harder to achieve.

The game must fail, and the owner knows that.

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[ElscottHavoc]

Since launching the unofficial MinerFarmForums it is obvious that I have an incentive for the long term sustainability, legitimacy, and profitability of the site to justify continual development and community interaction, but I certainly don't have any better availability of information regarding monetization, liquidity for payouts, and profitability for sustainability than anyone else.  My bullet points were simply my own considerations of how the site is differentiating itself from ponzi schemes and scams.

I think we can all agree that we live in a digital age where things don't have to be tangible to convey or contain value, and my point with #6 was more or less rhetorical regarding "what are we investing in exactly?"  As you pointed out, Second Life and Entropia Universe are not great examples and their revenue model is certainly different as well.  Those games exist as massively multiplayer online games with worlds to explore and game play elements far beyond the reaches of what a Bitcoin mining simulation such as this could achieve, but ultimately the purpose was just to show that people are investing into economies in those games that are only as sustainable for as long as those servers remain online.  Look at Entropia Universe for example where a user invested into a virtual resort for the real life sum of $635,000 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropia_Universe.  Now again, the way in which those games are monetized are far different, but in the end, the risks associated with investing in that game vs investing in this game is similar at least from the perspective that investments in virtual property in a game is reliant upon the game remaining online.

Now, perhaps the transparency of how the site is going to remain profitable and sustainable is something that will be revealed over time or perhaps not, but my comment regarding casinos wasn't actually in regards to online crypto-currency casinos with accounts on the block chain, but rather with physical locations such as those in Las Vegas.  When we sit down at a slot machine, we don't know exactly what percentage it is in the house favor, we just know that the machine is programmed to make money and only pay out money once it has done so.  I appreciate the fact that Bitcoin and crypto-currencies are creating a world where we demand greater transparency, but I also think it's important to understand that things are not automatically a scam or unprofitable simply because they don't initially reveal their methods in a world of copy cats.  I don't know if that's why the developer has kept those concepts secretive, but it very well could be and at this point, based upon what I've seen from Aliser in other projects, I believe there is a certain algorithm at works behind the scenes that places the edge in his favor, if even by only a percentage point or two and I think the ways in which he is placing the edge in his favor is through the use of the various fees for which many people are complaining about.

All of these "unrealistic" fees (charging for power, then charging for maintenance, then charging for withdraws, then requiring logins every 48hrs, charging fees for MinerFarm technicians, having equipment detoriate and requiring repairs at unrealistic rates, etc) I think come together in a very calculated way that along with on site advertising, user investments, individuals who invest but eventually stop logging in, etc create a system that puts the edge in MinerFarm.com's favor.  Granted, I'm not going to lead everyone to believe that I have it all figured it out and everyone is entitled to debate the sustainability of MinerFarm as they wish, but this is at least the stance I'm taking at this point in time and once I have the money rounded up to invest, I think I'd be comfortable investing toward a few GH/s or a technician.  I think certainly what scares a lot of people away is not just the fear of this being a ponzi, but also that these are some pretty substantial investments to apply toward a "game" that's both under continual development and at the mercy of changes.

I think if people could throw $5 or $10 toward with the expectation of reasonable returns of investment, we'd probably see many of the same apprehensions, but we probably wouldn't be as concerned.

While I agree with most of your points, especially #4, I disagree with #6.

4) Minerfarm is a GAME, I think this is the main way to escape liability. Casinos are transparent, they display their hashes and allow proof of fairness; my issue with Minerfarm is the lack of transparency and the vast number of ways that they are cutting into user profits beyond realistic conditions (charging for available power, not just in-use power; requiring login every 48hr; double billing maintenance). That said, it's a game and technically anything they do falls under "allowable". They could have a "power surge" and send all miners to 50% hashing power and it would be within the "rules" of the game.

Double billing maintenance occurs because players are charged a maintenance fee of 192 Satoshi/GHS/day, and on top of this all miners experience slowly reducing effectiveness plus expenses for air conditioning.

6) This is not the same. Games like Second Life (and nearly all others) have a sustainable currency because people want to play the game. Minerfarm is a bitcoin mining simulator game and except for those that enjoy the ultimate boredom this "game" offers, most players are looking to profit by getting out and eventually there will be heavy downward pressure on the market (if there ever are enough people involved to actually consider it a market, I've never seen more than 7-8 sell trades posted).


My biggest issue with the site is that it has no proven source of income proportional to the mining power purchased in game, clear signs of a ponzi. When I ask in the game chat, people reply with reasoning such as "faucets" or "advertisements"; if someone purchases 10THS of mining power in game the site income does not increase but the payout must. Where does this new payout come from?

Aliser has yet to answer my questions about proof of investment (real miners, shares elsewhere), leading me to believe there is none. Another sign of a ponzi.

Paying out users based on new investments can only keep up for so long, you have to keep the average investment date per $ more recent than the number of days for ROI. Hint: This becomes exponentially harder to achieve.

The game must fail, and the owner knows that.

[imarh75]

I love the innovation in this. Good job so far. Hope everyone has fun with this one.

there isn't any referral program in the game right now.

[thefaucetrunner]

Yeah that's another strange thing. The concept is clearly popular, but I'm just unsure of the exact mechanics still.

I haven't logged in for a few days, I expect my miner will have deteriorated then (if I understand correctly?)

[rodrigobitcoin]

What exactly separates this from a gambling style ponzi mining operation?

I don't quite understand. These things pop up and disappear overnight. What are we investing into exactly?

Well the game itself doesn't force you to invest. You can literally used the allocated 10GH/s as a start of your potential earnings and it's up to you and your strategy on how will you multiply that. And besides, you have nothing to lose when you play it, unless you deposited something and your strategy doesn't play out well. It's a fun game though, and I'm getting hooked up into it.

Yes but with 10 free ghs, you can earn how many satoshi ? I have join the second day of game and later all this week my balance is 0.00017420฿ and the fee for withdraw is 0.0005  

[ron7684]

What exactly separates this from a gambling style ponzi mining operation?

I don't quite understand. These things pop up and disappear overnight. What are we investing into exactly?

Well the game itself doesn't force you to invest. You can literally used the allocated 10GH/s as a start of your potential earnings and it's up to you and your strategy on how will you multiply that. And besides, you have nothing to lose when you play it, unless you deposited something and your strategy doesn't play out well. It's a fun game though, and I'm getting hooked up into it.

Yes but with 10 free ghs, you can earn how many satoshi ? I have join the second day of game and later all this week my balance is 0.00017420฿ and the fee for withdraw is 0.0005  

After 30-40 days you will get minimum withdrawal 100k satoshi, the withdrawal fee is 50k.

This leaves you with $0.12 for logging in 15-20 times and wasting your thoughts.

[ElscottHavoc]

I love the innovation in this. Good job so far. Hope everyone has fun with this one.

there isn't any referral program in the game right now.

Actually, there is a referral system.

http://www.minerfarm.com/reference

[kronkodil]

But if don't get a login every day, my ghs free decrease? Because i don't sign in for 3-4 day and now have only 9 ghs. How i can re up ?

[ElscottHavoc]

But if don't get a login every day, my ghs free decrease? Because i don't sign in for 3-4 day and now have only 9 ghs. How i can re up ?

According to the official Help page, you must login at least once every "2-3 days" (yes, that's exactly the vague wording in the FAQ) otherwise miners will pause. 
I'm not exactly sure if the hashing power decreases even if your devices are paused, but decreasing efficiency (lower hashing power) is a feature in the game that simulates deteriorating hardware.  Whether the feature is realistic or not, it's simply an aspect of the game as a level of complexity.  You can increase the hashing power back to the original peak power by having the units repaired using a technician.  If you don't own a technician, you can also optionally lease them in the employee market from other individuals who have hired them out for a fee.

Technicians you lease are under your control for an hour, so there are some things to consider before just spending the money on repairs right away.  But, I'll probably look into that in more depth on my MinerFarmForums.com website as I've already made the mistake of repairing a miner prematurely and wasting money.

[fakirn]

it would be a good idea to sell some cheeper miners.  Maybe even .001 bitcoin a piece.  It would make the non depositors fell like they are making progress and in turn can cause them to deposit more

[tyrexs]

But if don't get a login every day, my ghs free decrease? Because i don't sign in for 3-4 day and now have only 9 ghs. How i can re up ?

yes i get same problem like you my ghs only 9 ghs and i dont know my earning is still same or not but i get my earning even i'm not login

[tennozer]

But if don't get a login every day, my ghs free decrease? Because i don't sign in for 3-4 day and now have only 9 ghs. How i can re up ?

yes i get same problem like you my ghs only 9 ghs and i dont know my earning is still same or not but i get my earning even i'm not login

Your miners are working and loosing some performance. It is normal like same real world. Just think, if you do not look after your computer, your computer will have problem then loose performance. If you want a full performance, you can fix it with a technician.

[ron7684]

I guess what I really don't understand is why smart people like us would prefer to waste time with Minerfarm instead of a well known cloudhash platform like Hashnest, the only reason I even used Minerfarm was because I didn't know about Hashnest.

I have to say Bitmain runs their cloud hashing business excellently, you know what hardware is backing your GHS and *there is data available on when the market will close*. If someone invests in Hashnest a day before the market closes, I would call them an idiot; all the data is available and they just didn't bother educating themselves. However on MinerFarm if someone makes a deposit the day before the site closes (and it will close, there is no method of sustainability unless a miner will never reach ROI due to "game events"), I would say they got scammed; no way to know anything about the game/market status.


MinerFarm is based on an interesting concept and makes use of a pretty good user interface. However, the game is clearly designed to be a waste of time without additional investment.

I don't get how this isn't just a dirt cheap team or facebook game you play with tokens to compete with your friends, consider what you would think if any of your other stupid games suddenly required hundreds of $$ of real investment to play. SMH at people deciding to "invest" their money in subpar, nontransparent opportunities.

[ron7684]

But if don't get a login every day, my ghs free decrease? Because i don't sign in for 3-4 day and now have only 9 ghs. How i can re up ?

These are two separate issues.

1) Miners slowly lose effectiveness and decrease your GHS. As ElscottHavoc mentioned, you can use a technician to repair these.
2) Not signing in for 2-3 days stops all your miners completely. Whether or not they continue to lose effectiveness during this period is unclear.

[ranlo]

This is an interesting game! Just got started with it and am evaluating it, . I'm curious, though, as I didn't see anything related to this: how accurate is this in terms of RL earnings vs. in-game earnings? And are the "blocks" in-game based on RL blocks that are mined by you, or in BTC in general, or?

And how often are earnings added to the user balances?

[ElscottHavoc]

The simple answer is that people are desperate to make easy, big money.  I don't think that that's what MinerFarm bills itself as, but its especially true I feel here in the crypto-currency crowd where everyone is grasping on to whatever new thing that comes along with the hopes that jumping on the band wagon early will result in massive earnings - and I think in a lot of cases that clouds their vision of actually analyzing a project for what it is or what it is not.

Isn't Hashnest also at the mercy of Bitmain just deciding to shut down their servers for whatever reason?  Perhaps I am not well versed on Hashnest of Bitmain...

I guess what I really don't understand is why smart people like us would prefer to waste time with Minerfarm instead of a well known cloudhash platform like Hashnest, the only reason I even used Minerfarm was because I didn't know about Hashnest.

I have to say Bitmain runs their cloud hashing business excellently, you know what hardware is backing your GHS and *there is data available on when the market will close*. If someone invests in Hashnest a day before the market closes, I would call them an idiot; all the data is available and they just didn't bother educating themselves. However on MinerFarm if someone makes a deposit the day before the site closes (and it will close, there is no method of sustainability unless a miner will never reach ROI due to "game events"), I would say they got scammed; no way to know anything about the game/market status.


MinerFarm is based on an interesting concept and makes use of a pretty good user interface. However, the game is clearly designed to be a waste of time without additional investment.

I don't get how this isn't just a dirt cheap team or facebook game you play with tokens to compete with your friends, consider what you would think if any of your other stupid games suddenly required hundreds of $$ of real investment to play. SMH at people deciding to "invest" their money in subpar, nontransparent opportunities.

[ron7684]

The simple answer is that people are desperate to make easy, big money.  I don't think that that's what MinerFarm bills itself as, but its especially true I feel here in the crypto-currency crowd where everyone is grasping on to whatever new thing that comes along with the hopes that jumping on the band wagon early will result in massive earnings - and I think in a lot of cases that clouds their vision of actually analyzing a project for what it is or what it is not.

Isn't Hashnest also at the mercy of Bitmain just deciding to shut down their servers for whatever reason?  Perhaps I am not well versed on Hashnest of Bitmain...

I guess what I really don't understand is why smart people like us would prefer to waste time with Minerfarm instead of a well known cloudhash platform like Hashnest, the only reason I even used Minerfarm was because I didn't know about Hashnest.

I have to say Bitmain runs their cloud hashing business excellently, you know what hardware is backing your GHS and *there is data available on when the market will close*. If someone invests in Hashnest a day before the market closes, I would call them an idiot; all the data is available and they just didn't bother educating themselves. However on MinerFarm if someone makes a deposit the day before the site closes (and it will close, there is no method of sustainability unless a miner will never reach ROI due to "game events"), I would say they got scammed; no way to know anything about the game/market status.


MinerFarm is based on an interesting concept and makes use of a pretty good user interface. However, the game is clearly designed to be a waste of time without additional investment.

I don't get how this isn't just a dirt cheap team or facebook game you play with tokens to compete with your friends, consider what you would think if any of your other stupid games suddenly required hundreds of $$ of real investment to play. SMH at people deciding to "invest" their money in subpar, nontransparent opportunities.

Bitmain is the manufacturer of Antminer and the owners of Hashnest. All GHS purchased on hashnest is backed by real physical hardware, once mining is no longer viable with ideal hardware at $0.0976/kWh the markets close. The option to redeem the hardware is available, but shipping is ridiculously expensive to anywhere but China.

It's reassuring to see that they create a different market for each set of mining hardware, S3 GHS is cheaper than S4 GHS which is in turn cheaper than S5 GHS.

Hashnest is at the mercy of its creators shutting it down, but I see a very strong reason for them not to:
They are a reputable hardware manufacturer. There are very clear terms for when the markets close, straying from this would severely hurt their reputation and likely ruin the entire parent company. MAD is always the solution.

Setting up a site like MinerFarm could take a few days/weeks. Setting up a multi-million dollar hardware manufacturing factory with a distribution network takes much longer. In short, unless MinerFarm can provide some proof of longevity then it's clear that the benefits to the owner of closing up in the short term outweigh staying open; Hashnest, on the other hand, is heavily invested and has a clear plan for long-term profits that would much outweigh any short-term scam attempt.

tl;dr

• Interests of owners are purely financial
• MinerFarm can make more money by closing down and scamming people. They have not proven how they will make long-term gain (or any for that matter).
• Hashnest can make more money by staying open and continuing to be legit, closing obsolete markets as announced and opening new ones as Bitmaintech develops cutting-edge ASIC hardware

[ElscottHavoc]

This is an interesting game! Just got started with it and am evaluating it, . I'm curious, though, as I didn't see anything related to this: how accurate is this in terms of RL earnings vs. in-game earnings? And are the "blocks" in-game based on RL blocks that are mined by you, or in BTC in general, or?

And how often are earnings added to the user balances?

According to the FAQ, the difficulty of mining in the game follows the difficulty in real life, but the FAQ also specify that blocks are released at certain intervals and of a certain minimum amount.  So there is a guaranteed block each hour, but the pool who gets that block is determined by chance per their hashing capabilities as a team.

So earnings are added to users balances immediately following the discovery of that block.

I'm under the impression the blocks that are found are not based on actual blocks are also simulated, but I'm not entirely sure and haven't looked into it.  But the reason I assume they're virtual is because you can't guarantee a block being found in real life each hour.  I mean, with the amount of hashing power existing there's tons of blocks being found, but ultimately the guarantees of blocks being released made in MinerFarm don't correspond to the lack of guarantees in real life.

Hopefully that makes sense.


And thanks for the response ron on Bitmain.  Regardless of what side of an argument individuals are on, for or against something, I think its great to be able to discuss and in those discussions find new interests - and so I've been looking to Hashnest to see what it is all about.

[bct-user]

so, for repair or get back my ghs which decreased, i need to hire technicians, but the technician is permanent right? so if my hardware have a damage and need to repair, the technician repair it automatically?

[aliser]

so, for repair or get back my ghs which decreased, i need to hire technicians, but the technician is permanent right? so if my hardware have a damage and need to repair, the technician repair it automatically?

Technicians do not repair automatically, you have to chose when to repair your device. If you buy a tech it is permanent. But you can also rent from employee market for 1 hour, it's cheaper than buying.