BlockBurner LLC - Crucible FPGA Scrypt Miner - Announcement Aug-19

[newtothescene]

He mentioned submitting some of the legal paperwork to operate above board as a "real" company, so I guess that is the reasoning. 

[Operatr]

Why the "Going Legit" in the title.  Was it not legit before.  Are you moving toward legitimacy?

Legal legitimacy, yes. BlockBurner will very soon be BlockBurner LLC in my home state of Montana.

 It took a while to get to this point, but as a bunch of strangers at first no one was too quick to want to jump into binding legal statues. The project itself has been going since day 1 however, a lot of design work has been completed up to this point.

It may not be seen as something I really needed to point out, but I said this would be a transparent enterprise, and I meant it. This all started from the OP, you are watching the formation of a company in real time



That aside, awesome feedback! These are all great ideas we would be pleased to deliver. We have a fine balance of enough features to be good but not so many that we get bogged down in creating the first unit, some of these may need to be saved for future revisions. I really do like the prospect of remote/mobile management, as it appeals to the IT guy in me 

[BitcoinFX]

OK. So I sent Operatr a PM regarding some FPGA 'tinkering' that I've been doing on my 'lame' AVNET Spartan 6 FPGA LX9 Microboard for scrypt mining.

See this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=220621.0

Basically, scrypt mining is very RAM intensive and you can currently get the best performance in windows utilizing the available host system RAM as the FPGA equivalent of CPU / GPU 'Hyper-Threading' / 'Hyper-Memory'.

I'm trying to find a perfect balance between hardware and software with my 'home brew' project, so that I can perhaps look to scale it up on bigger and better FPGA boards.

Operatr's response thus far has been 'nothing'. A simple not interested would suffice. However, I'm sure he is busy and this might just be an oversight.

Although, I hope this isn't going to be another BFL type project i.e. 'style over substance' ?

I think I'll stick with my 'home brew' project / boards for now and might look to sell them via ebay if they are worthwhile, cost efficient and stable enough.

Good luck anyway. It's an interesting project and I might consider purchasing one in the future.

Cheers

[WindMaster]

Operatr's response thus far has been 'nothing'. A simple not interested would suffice. However, I'm sure he is busy and this might just be an oversight.

Hehe, in the early days he at least Emailed me a "not interested" response (and I *do* have working scrypt FPGA hardware, as evidenced by my scrypt+chacha implementation that mined huge amounts of YACoin while N=32, but have made no claims that they perform anywhere close to the price/performance ratio of GPU's for scrypt+salsa(1024,1,1)).

Guess things have evolved from there to no response at all!  

[Operatr]

OK. So I sent Operatr a PM regarding some FPGA 'tinkering' that I've been doing on my 'lame' AVNET Spartan 6 FPGA LX9 Microboard for scrypt mining.

See this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=220621.0

Basically, scrypt mining is very RAM intensive and you can currently get the best performance in windows utilizing the available host system RAM as the FPGA equivalent of CPU / GPU 'Hyper-Threading' / 'Hyper-Memory'.

I'm trying to find a perfect balance between hardware and software with my 'home brew' project, so that I can perhaps look to scale it up on bigger and better FPGA boards.

Operatr's response thus far has been 'nothing'. A simple not interested would suffice. However, I'm sure he is busy and this might just be an oversight.

Although, I hope this isn't going to be another BFL type project i.e. 'style over substance' ?

I think I'll stick with my 'home brew' project / boards for now and might look to sell them via ebay if they are worthwhile, cost efficient and stable enough.

Good luck anyway. It's an interesting project and I might consider purchasing one in the future.

Cheers

Operatr's response thus far has been 'nothing'. A simple not interested would suffice. However, I'm sure he is busy and this might just be an oversight.

Hehe, in the early days he at least Emailed me a "not interested" response (and I *do* have working scrypt FPGA hardware, as evidenced by my scrypt+chacha implementation that mined huge amounts of YACoin while N=32, but have made no claims that they perform anywhere close to the price/performance ratio of GPU's for scrypt+salsa(1024,1,1)).

Guess things have evolved from there to no response at all!  

I PMed you early this morning BitcoinFX (Unless I forgot to hit send?...if you got nothing I apologize I did try earlier this morning  ) I spent a while today getting caught up with the many messages in my various inboxes.


It is really with no offense personally that I must tip-toe around these kinds of questions. I hope it is understood we have our own IP and as such I cannot divulge certain details. That is not to say however I consider it a closed book.

As much as I appreciate offers to help us develop this product, there is a fine line in terms of having too many cooks in the kitchen so to speak. I already encountered that issue sifting through the many developers that applied in the beginning, unfortunately many more got turned down than got "in". I had no idea around 20 of you would want to be a part of it, which totally blew me away. Decisions just had to be made.

What I gathered from this is there are many very talented and passionate engineers around the boards with great ideas. I absolutely encourage anyone with ideas and implementations that can't be a part of BlockBurner at the core (at least not right now anyway) to develop their own efforts. All of it helps create a stronger network which is the more important part. I am doing this personally because I want to see cryptocurrency succeed.

Who knows what comes next. SHA already moved to ASIC, Scrypt is now entering the FPGA phase with a wide market to tap, maybe a third coin with a different hashing algorithm will come about that needs a special device of its own. This is a wild west industry, it is anyone's game  

[WindMaster]

It is really with no offense personally that I must tip-toe around these kinds of questions. I hope it is understood we have our own IP and as such I cannot divulge certain details. That is not to say however I consider it a closed book.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you guys haven't actually developed any IP yet.  Just a hunch.  I think one of the reasons for (more than one claimed FPGA scrypt development teams) not releasing any technical details is to avoid getting ripped apart by anyone with a better understanding of scrypt if you reveal any errors that shows you don't have anything.

A couple weeks ago, someone posted a solicitation for investors on his FPGA scrypt development project, which at face value looked legitimate.  People were waving money like crazy trying to get in on the ground floor.  But then he made the mistake of revealing just a little too much, at which point we laid in and ripped apart his technical understanding of scrypt, ultimately resulting in him reluctantly admitting he actually had nothing but a vague idea that maybe FPGA's might work for scrypt, and didn't even have an understanding of how scrypt worked.  It headed downhill fast when he started posting code from mtrlt's Reaper OpenCL kernel while trying to debate mtrlt himself about what the code even did.  It was a most joyous and fun thread, but at least it probably saved a lot of people with little understanding from losing money on it.

As much as I appreciate offers to help us develop this product, there is a fine line in terms of having too many cooks in the kitchen so to speak.

To do this will require a crowd-sourced effort, which would be conducted through various forums as well as things like Kickstarter campaigns and the like.

LOL, 2 developers on a closed project isn't quite a crowd-sourced effort.  

I already encountered that issue sifting through the many developers that applied in the beginning, unfortunately many more got turned down than got "in". I had no idea around 20 of you would want to be a part of it, which totally blew me away. Decisions just had to be made.

I actually didn't care one way or the other, as it quickly became clear you weren't pursuing any sort of open development effort and were actually just trying to base a business on the creative output of others without really having the technical skillset to contribute directly to development yourself.  But just as a point of curiosity, how many of the 20 interested developers had (or claimed to have) existing working scrypt FPGA implementations?  Or had ever taped-out a custom ASIC design?

[WindMaster]

If anyone wants an entertaining example of how *not* to scam people out of investments in an FPGA scrypt development effort, while also gaining some insight on why other groups are real tight-lipped about revealing any technical details, try this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=215487.0

I jumped in at the top of page 3 and was the first one to call BS on whether the OP was legit, and it just got more and more entertaining from there as the OP dug himself deeper and deeper into his hole.

[brioche]

Who knows what comes next. SHA already moved to ASIC, Scrypt is now entering the FPGA phase with a wide market to tap, maybe a third coin with a different hashing algorithm will come about that needs a special device of its own. This is a wild west industry, it is anyone's game

Looks like eMunie qualifies as the 3rd coin.

As for a FPGA for LTC I'm wondering how much one might cost?

[Operatr]

If anyone wants an entertaining example of how *not* to scam people out of investments in an FPGA scrypt development effort, while also gaining some insight on why other groups are real tight-lipped about revealing any technical details, try this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=215487.0

I jumped in at the top of page 3 and was the first one to call BS on whether the OP was legit, and it just got more and more entertaining from there as the OP dug himself deeper and deeper into his hole.

  Well, you are welcome to your opinions, which is all they are as you are no more informed than anyone else. I find most of what you posted out of context or just wrong and needlessly hostile, as such I will not entertain it further unless you want to speak on something specific that you feel we have done wrong. Everything you noted is already public record, so...

Or did I do something to offend you personally?

Who knows what comes next. SHA already moved to ASIC, Scrypt is now entering the FPGA phase with a wide market to tap, maybe a third coin with a different hashing algorithm will come about that needs a special device of its own. This is a wild west industry, it is anyone's game

Looks like eMunie qualifies as the 3rd coin.

As for a FPGA for LTC I'm wondering how much one might cost?

I had not heard of eMunie yet, I will check that out 

We don't have a confirmed price of any kind just yet, but definitely are shooting for devices that are no more spendy than their GPU counterparts for similar or superior performance. In terms of raw power usage they will be much better and much more friendly to scale up, so your ROI will be higher using FPGAs over GPUs either way

[WindMaster]

Well, you are welcome to your opinions, which is all they are as you are no more informed than anyone else.

It's possible your dev team is somewhat less secretive about the project than you might be imagining.

Or did I do something to offend you personally?

I find the concept of crowdsourcing a closed project for your own commercial gain to be offensive.  While there's a couple different definitions of crowdsourcing, this section of the Wikipedia article on the topic regarding Hank van Ess's definition is apt:

Henk van Ess emphasizes the need to "give back" the crowdsourced results to the public on ethical grounds. His non-scientific, non-commercial definition is widely cited in the popular press:

"Crowdsourcing is channeling the experts’ desire to solve a problem and then freely sharing the answer with everyone"

[Operatr]

It's possible your dev team is somewhat less secretive about the project than you might be imagining.

I highly doubt that, please don't spread unsubstantiated rumors unless you wish to present some kind of evidence of this claim.

I find the concept of crowdsourcing a closed project for your own commercial gain to be offensive.  While there's a couple different definitions of crowdsourcing, this section of the Wikipedia article on the topic regarding Hank van Ess's definition is apt:

Henk van Ess emphasizes the need to "give back" the crowdsourced results to the public on ethical grounds. His non-scientific, non-commercial definition is widely cited in the popular press:

"Crowdsourcing is channeling the experts’ desire to solve a problem and then freely sharing the answer with everyone"

We have "crowd sourced" nothing as far as our design goes, so this doesn't apply. In a sense I suppose I did "crowd source" a team, but I could have done that on Craigslist as a job post. You seem to be implying we are stealing an open source design and selling it as our own without giving back, which just isn't true. It is a unique design from the ground up and not based on open sources. We are just selling specialty FPGAs of our own design optimized for Scrypt hashing, and thats it. We're not using open sources to solve major problems in the world the way van Ess describes.

If the tech came from open source originally, then yes I agree it should (and must) be "returned to earth" so to speak back to the community, as is the entire idea behind open source. Had we taken an existing design from open sources, changed it, and didn't return it and then profited from it, that would be wrong.

In fact the software we're developing to drive the FPGA is based on CGminer, and has a Java UI. As it is based on an open source software it will be released as such to the community as our own version of GUIMiner essentially (dubbed Igniter UI). There will be a customized variant with the device drivers included that will ship with them, but the core of it will always be open.




 

[c0inbuster]

Hello,

I'm very interested by a FPGA scrypt miner.
 because mining alt-coins with GPU is a pain for environnement.

Kind regards

[3ham3]

Hey WindMaster, Dial it back a wee bit mate.

[anderl]

WindMaster is probably the only forum member who has provided more technical understanding about FPGAs/ASICs and scrypt.  I would have expected the people that are developing the scrypt FPGA/ASICs would have a similar technical depth.

[Operatr]

Hello,

I'm very interested by a FPGA scrypt miner.
 because mining alt-coins with GPU is a pain for environnement.

Kind regards

Thank you for your support c0inbuster! It is very true that GPU mining is not very ideal in terms of the wellness of of the planet at large, power efficient hardware is becoming a requirement to allow the mining network to remain scalable long term without a terrible impact.

WindMaster is probably the only forum member who has provided more technical understanding about FPGAs/ASICs and scrypt.  I would have expected the people that are developing the scrypt FPGA/ASICs would have a similar technical depth.

Team members Cheshyr and Zalfrin are both seasoned professionals in FPGA design and integrated systems, both members of this board as well.

The fact I don't have enough technical training to develop this hardware from scratch on my own is not to say I have no understanding of FPGA's or Scrypt. My technical background is of a different nature by training and experience, but I think our combined skills compliment each other well. They have no interest in managing core business aspects directly, which is my role and responsibility to manage.

[anderl]

so one guy programming and the rest managing the project.  doing some due diligence this doesn't sound like a seasoned team of developers here. maybe just one.  not sure what to expect anymore.

[digitalindustry]

 ok ahh - to Operatr and Janslee -

I just want to bring up something i  posted earlier  : -

I’ll summarize it :

" FPGA Devs and large potential buyers and others should be careful because C++ (and other codes) can evolve faster than hardware,  and markets generally find a balance that tends toward distribution in this evolutionary information environment"


and now eMuni is in its second Beta - so was I correct  ?

i guess we will find out , but if i was correct , it was record time , i'm usually not correct like this for years , but we do live in exponential  times ! : D

Operatr - i know by reading back to the thread that you were busy and missed my point and thought i was talking about a 51% attack when i said that so i thought i'd carify it and tell you i was talking about market forces and confidence.

[jasinlee]

ok ahh - to Operatr and Janslee -

I just want to bring up something i  posted earlier  : -

I’ll summarize it :

" FPGA Devs and large potential buyers and others should be careful because C++ (and other codes) can evolve faster than hardware,  and markets generally find a balance that tends toward distribution in this evolutionary information environment"


and now eMuni is in its second Beta - so was I correct  ?

i guess we will find out , but if i was correct , it was record time , i'm usually not correct like this for years , but we do live in exponential  times ! : D

Operatr - i know by reading back to the thread that you were busy and missed my point and thought i was talking about a 51% attack when i said that so i thought i'd carify it and tell you i was talking about market forces and confidence.

Its Jasinlee not Janslee

eMuni hasn't been proven yet. Lets see it out in the wild being bashed by everyone then we may see whether it can compete or not. The thread has the OP saying something to the effect of "it does not have a magical algo" well I didn't read the whole thread, but I didn't see anything saying how the hashing/processing functions on the network. As for evolving faster than hardware.....how would we know if we haven't had a chance to toy with it? And who is to say the fpga we produce wouldn't hash faster on the network than any gpu could achieve? And to that point, who says I couldn't have my EE produce a kernel for EMU inside of a day to hash on a gpu or an fpga.

[Operatr]

so one guy programming and the rest managing the project.  doing some due diligence this doesn't sound like a seasoned team of developers here. maybe just one.  not sure what to expect anymore.

http://blockburner.net/info/

I don't understand statements like these when the information is readily available about the team (aside Zalfrin, still getting his bio, but he is the designer of the Scrypt implementation and FPGA core).

You seem to be assuming we're just taking an existing FPGA board and programming it, which is inaccurate. We are designing a fully custom FPGA and Scrypt implementation in the form of a complete device and not just a bare board.  And I say we, as we all have design input (you will see my mark as an IT systems guy on it, I am keeping large scale hashfarmers in mind with features not uncommon on a regular production server environment).

ok ahh - to Operatr and Janslee -

I just want to bring up something i  posted earlier  : -

I’ll summarize it :

" FPGA Devs and large potential buyers and others should be careful because C++ (and other codes) can evolve faster than hardware,  and markets generally find a balance that tends toward distribution in this evolutionary information environment"


and now eMuni is in its second Beta - so was I correct  ?

i guess we will find out , but if i was correct , it was record time , i'm usually not correct like this for years , but we do live in exponential  times ! : D

Operatr - i know by reading back to the thread that you were busy and missed my point and thought i was talking about a 51% attack when i said that so i thought i'd carify it and tell you i was talking about market forces and confidence.

I apologize if I didn't answer your previous post on that    I am scanning back through this for your original post (if you want to help me find it please do )

It has been my experience that hardware generally outpaces software by a large degree, but these are definitely not the usual desktop PCs and applications, so those rules are out the window. I think it is very difficult to say with any accuracy where this will all go in the near future

I'm not a c++ programmer so I won't assume too much on that front however.

Yeah Jasinlee I didn't see anything about the hash algorithm it will use or the mining (called hatching nodes I guess?) either, which I thought was odd.  We'll see what it does.

__________________________

To get back on track, I am still interested in your input for what kinds of features you would like to see implemented.

Hoping to update this week with more on the open source Igniter UI miner software package  

[digitalindustry]

so one guy programming and the rest managing the project.  doing some due diligence this doesn't sound like a seasoned team of developers here. maybe just one.  not sure what to expect anymore.

http://blockburner.net/info/

I don't understand statements like these when the information is readily available about the team (aside Zalfrin, still getting his bio, but he is the designer of the Scrypt implementation and FPGA core).

You seem to be assuming we're just taking an existing FPGA board and programming it, which is inaccurate. We are designing a fully custom FPGA and Scrypt implementation in the form of a complete device and not just a bare board.  And I say we, as we all have design input (you will see my mark as an IT systems guy on it, I am keeping large scale hashfarmers in mind with features not uncommon on a regular production server environment).

ok ahh - to Operatr and Janslee -

I just want to bring up something i  posted earlier  : -

I’ll summarize it :

" FPGA Devs and large potential buyers and others should be careful because C++ (and other codes) can evolve faster than hardware,  and markets generally find a balance that tends toward distribution in this evolutionary information environment"


and now eMuni is in its second Beta - so was I correct  ?

i guess we will find out , but if i was correct , it was record time , i'm usually not correct like this for years , but we do live in exponential  times ! : D

Operatr - i know by reading back to the thread that you were busy and missed my point and thought i was talking about a 51% attack when i said that so i thought i'd carify it and tell you i was talking about market forces and confidence.

I apologize if I didn't answer your previous post on that    I am scanning back through this for your original post (if you want to help me find it please do )

It has been my experience that hardware generally outpaces software by a large degree, but these are definitely not the usual desktop PCs and applications, so those rules are out the window. I think it is very difficult to say with any accuracy where this will all go in the near future

I'm not a c++ programmer so I won't assume too much on that front however.

Yeah Jasinlee I didn't see anything about the hash algorithm it will use or the mining (called hatching nodes I guess?) either, which I thought was odd.  We'll see what it does.

__________________________

To get back on track, I am still interested in your input for what kinds of features you would like to see implemented.

Hoping to update this week with more on the open source Igniter UI miner software package  

Yes ok guys , look I'm not trying to say I was correct or right , I know you may have invested time and effort into these things , I'm just saying that as a trend , this is way the evolution of an open market trends .

Scrypt itself was this evolution .

With regard to an fpga no it's pretty much impossible , eMuni , it's all IO , and mem speed , it's literally the stuff Joe average can buy at Wal-Mart.

And if the trust system works and a few quirks with DB , bots are out of the picture , so it could fly , it could crash we will see  but again you must understand , I'm not talking about just eMuni I'm talking about market evolution.

Having said that jasinlee < SORRY  , yeah if your costs are low and you achieved ROI why not do everything you can . Sure .

Operatr  you seem like one of the most up front and honest guys around here , if you get an operation going  , I really do believe you will have support .  As long as there is a market .  I think there still will be .