BLOKFORGE- Official Canaan Distributor

[timk225]

People bidding on that ebay auction are losing it, they have such a hard-on to get a miner, that they lose sight of the math.  There is no way a 741 is worth $2000, much less $4000.  Let some sucker have it.  That bidder has got to be some idiot husband who works in an office and got permission from his wife to try "this bitcoin thing", having no idea of what is involved.

 

[Toughit]

Sitting on the computer 10 minutes prior the selling and still no buy. the site was dead at one point. Poor work there Blokforge.  

Wish there is something we could say here that we did wrong, but over 2000 people trying to purchase less than 100 units at the exact same minute, not all orders can get processed.

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)
4) Limit to 1 per user
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet

[leowonderful]

People bidding on that ebay auction are losing it, they have such a hard-on to get a miner, that they lose sight of the math.  There is no way a 741 is worth $2000, much less $4000.  Let some sucker have it.  That bidder has got to be some idiot husband who works in an office and got permission from his wife to try "this bitcoin thing", having no idea of what is involved.

 

Things always sell for much much more on eBay. It's been like that for as long as I can remember, since I got into Bitcoin a few years ago. There's also people that mine temporarily and return the miners or something of the sort. eBay sellers actually take quite a bit of risk even selling as I think you already know.

[Blokforge]

Sitting on the computer 10 minutes prior the selling and still no buy. the site was dead at one point. Poor work there Blokforge.  

Wish there is something we could say here that we did wrong, but over 2000 people trying to purchase less than 100 units at the exact same minute, not all orders can get processed.

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)
4) Limit to 1 per user
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units We did do this in the newsletter, not sure how this helps or not though, still would have the same amount of traffic.
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in If only we knew
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)  We are going to get with developers on this part, problem is when units are in limbo from credit card payments that have not yet been approved the screen still shows in stock, even though quantity on the backend is depleted, just a function of the cart we will fine tune[/color]
4) Limit to 1 per user We can consider this, even though we had hundreds of hate mail for limiting at all
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet  This is actually an idea we can toss around, not sure how would function in practicality but is interesting

[livfreely]

Sitting on the computer 10 minutes prior the selling and still no buy. the site was dead at one point. Poor work there Blokforge.  

Wish there is something we could say here that we did wrong, but over 2000 people trying to purchase less than 100 units at the exact same minute, not all orders can get processed.

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)
4) Limit to 1 per user
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units We did do this in the newsletter, not sure how this helps or not though, still would have the same amount of traffic.
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in If only we knew
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)  We are going to get with developers on this part, problem is when units are in limbo from credit card payments that have not yet been approved the screen still shows in stock, even though quantity on the backend is depleted, just a function of the cart we will fine tune[/color]
4) Limit to 1 per user We can consider this, even though we had hundreds of hate mail for limiting at all
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet  This is actually an idea we can toss around, not sure how would function in practicality but is interesting

I have an easy solution to this.  All members who posted in this thread get in on the lottery

[Servfox]

Sitting on the computer 10 minutes prior the selling and still no buy. the site was dead at one point. Poor work there Blokforge.  

Wish there is something we could say here that we did wrong, but over 2000 people trying to purchase less than 100 units at the exact same minute, not all orders can get processed.

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)
4) Limit to 1 per user
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units We did do this in the newsletter, not sure how this helps or not though, still would have the same amount of traffic.
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in If only we knew
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)  We are going to get with developers on this part, problem is when units are in limbo from credit card payments that have not yet been approved the screen still shows in stock, even though quantity on the backend is depleted, just a function of the cart we will fine tune[/color]
4) Limit to 1 per user We can consider this, even though we had hundreds of hate mail for limiting at all
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet  This is actually an idea we can toss around, not sure how would function in practicality but is interesting

I am subscribed to your newsletter I have been waiting patiently for an announcement like you instructed. My newsletter announcement never came. I ain't mad at ya (in my Tupac voice). But I can say that this left a bad taste in my mouth. I hope things are handled better with the 821's.

[livfreely]

Blokforge I commend you on your pricing.  You could have sold these for $2k, and still would have sold out in minutes.  You kept true to your pricing.  You did however cancel my Amazon backorder   j/k

I will definitely try, and get in on your A8 run.  Just have extra servers ready to handle the traffic for the run to the checkout.

[Blokforge]

Sitting on the computer 10 minutes prior the selling and still no buy. the site was dead at one point. Poor work there Blokforge.  

Wish there is something we could say here that we did wrong, but over 2000 people trying to purchase less than 100 units at the exact same minute, not all orders can get processed.

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)
4) Limit to 1 per user
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units We did do this in the newsletter, not sure how this helps or not though, still would have the same amount of traffic.
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in If only we knew
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)  We are going to get with developers on this part, problem is when units are in limbo from credit card payments that have not yet been approved the screen still shows in stock, even though quantity on the backend is depleted, just a function of the cart we will fine tune[/color]
4) Limit to 1 per user We can consider this, even though we had hundreds of hate mail for limiting at all
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet  This is actually an idea we can toss around, not sure how would function in practicality but is interesting

I have an easy solution to this.  All members who posted in this thread get in on the lottery

Pm me....

[Elix9]

1) Announce BEFORE the sale that you have 100 units We did do this in the newsletter, not sure how this helps or not though, still would have the same amount of traffic.
2) Announce BEFORE the sale that you expect 2000 maniacs to try to log in If only we knew
3) Do not allow us to add to cart if there are none left (had us dancing when we saw them in the cart)  We are going to get with developers on this part, problem is when units are in limbo from credit card payments that have not yet been approved the screen still shows in stock, even though quantity on the backend is depleted, just a function of the cart we will fine tune[/color]
4) Limit to 1 per user We can consider this, even though we had hundreds of hate mail for limiting at all
5) Design some kind of lottery system for us poor country folk with dial up internet  This is actually an idea we can toss around, not sure how would function in practicality but is interesting

Has the window passed for any non-payed coin orders to be relisted? Was refreshing at the 200 min mark but didn't see anything pop up.

[timk225]

How hard would a lottery system be?  People email to be included in the week prior to the drawing, they get assigned a number, then winners are drawn?

I guess it would be a pain to contact the "winners" afterwards only to find that half no longer have the $ available or never had it, then you have to draw more winners.

I don't know.

Blokforge, put me #1 on the list for any miners whose payments don't clear to be relisted, I have $$$ waiting for you!  And bitcoins!

[Elix9]

I'm actually not a big fan of the lottery system. I'd rather just rely on hardwired speed and being prepared.

The best thing I've seen a company do is announce the day and timeframe (but not an exact time), then tweet out a special link once it's available for sale. That way less people are stressing the site with traffic and bots can't just monitor the listing page waiting for stock.

Either way, people still get upset if they don't get what they're trying to buy, so it's kinda catch 22.

I really just support whichever method gives the people who are plugged in and following the company a better shot at success.

[dlezama]

Lottery sounds like an interesting idea, but what about a queue? You guys know you are going to have a nightmare fulfilling 821 orders, why not letting us to get in line sooner? Please come up with something better than an F5 fight for the 821 sale...

[Didley1JT]

BlokForge did this the right way and I don't feel they have anything to apologize for. I'm not saying this because I was one of the lucky ones. I'm saying it because it was the most fair way to do it and all the suggestions being bounced around would have caused things to go the same or worse.

(Warn people that you expect high traffic when the sale starts) - Assuming BF knew that their website would be suddenly slammed with thousands of would-be buyers, what purpose does warning everyone about it serve? The end result is the same and we all knew that everyone was going to be on there trying to order anyways.

(Advise How Many Units are available) - What is gained by knowing how many units they have available? If you knew there were less than 100, what would you have done differently? Scarcity breeds more interest, not less.

(Limit to 1 per person) - I like that they set a limit. I can't say I like it being as low as one miner, though. A more appropriate method of limiting order sizes would be to related it to the total number of miners available. If there are few to go around, then make an appropriate limit. Consider also that BF creates more work for themselves because the smaller limit increases the number of orders to ship, payments to handle/receive, and increases the number of potential shipping issues.

THANK YOU FOR THE LIMIT, BLOKFORGE! Seriously. That really helps those of us that do not have tens of thousands of dollars to throw around or the ability to write a script to automatically order dozens of units as soon as they're available).

(Don't let miners be added to the cart if there are none left) - I believe the issue here was that people were in the process of buying the same miners you were able to add to your cart. There is no way around this except that you can remove any units in someone's cart from the available inventory. That is a bad idea because of the high-traffic issues and people constantly hitting F5, which can increase the number units they end up adding to their cart. That is alleviated somewhat with the order limit, but I've only ever had negative experiences with websites that do this.

(Make a Lottery/Queue System) - I think the lottery and the queue are both not-great ideas. There will be rumors that BlokForge is picking friends or family or that they're not randomizing the selection in the correct way. I've never known any other seller (in any private industry/business) to do something similar. And you're not thinking about just how many people would be in that lottery...

For the most part, all of us were on equal footing tonight. All of us were frantically trying to F5 our way to the "Submit Order" screen. And you were only competing with those that were actually online and trying to get the order. If there was a lottery/queue, then just think about how many people would just be adding themselves to the list. Now you're competing against 5,000 or 10,000... They already limited it to 2 per customer, which created a better chance than any of us has ever had trying to catch an order through Canaan.io directly.

I'm not trying to pander, but I honestly don't know how anyone could have expected BlokForge to handle that better. Honestly, I'm surprised their website didn't completely crash, since I doubt the servers were set-up for that much traffic. We are in a new world of BTC Mining. Even if you didn't get any tonight, you at least had a chance.

[Elix9]

(Make a Lottery/Queue System) And you're not thinking about just how many people would be in that lottery...

For the most part, all of us were on equal footing tonight. All of us were frantically trying to F5 our way to the "Submit Order" screen. And you were only competing with those that were actually online and trying to get the order. If there was a lottery/queue, then just think about how many people would just be adding themselves to the list. Now you're competing against 5,000 or 10,000... They already limited it to 2 per customer, which created a better chance than any of us has ever had trying to catch an order through Canaan.io directly.

^This, the lottery system would probably give us even less of a chance.

 And I agree, 1 per customer might be too much of a limit.

Edit: One suggestion I might make is that Blokforge streamline the checkout process for people who have signed up for an account. Not sure if it was a glitch because of the traffic, but I had to re-enter my billing address during checkout which slowed me down a bit.

[Didley1JT]

(Make a Lottery/Queue System) And you're not thinking about just how many people would be in that lottery...

For the most part, all of us were on equal footing tonight. All of us were frantically trying to F5 our way to the "Submit Order" screen. And you were only competing with those that were actually online and trying to get the order. If there was a lottery/queue, then just think about how many people would just be adding themselves to the list. Now you're competing against 5,000 or 10,000... They already limited it to 2 per customer, which created a better chance than any of us has ever had trying to catch an order through Canaan.io directly.

^This, the lottery system would probably give us even less of a chance.

 And I agree, 1 per customer might be too much of a limit.

Edit: One suggestion I might make is that Blokforge streamline the checkout process for people who have signed up for an account. Not sure if it was a glitch because of the traffic, but I had to re-enter my billing address during checkout which slowed me down a bit.

I think that was a glitch. My shipping and billing address were pre-populated when I got to that screen.

[Blokforge]

BlokForge did this the right way and I don't feel they have anything to apologize for. I'm not saying this because I was one of the lucky ones. I'm saying it because it was the most fair way to do it and all the suggestions being bounced around would have caused things to go the same or worse.

(Warn people that you expect high traffic when the sale starts) - Assuming BF knew that their website would be suddenly slammed with thousands of would-be buyers, what purpose does warning everyone about it serve? The end result is the same and we all knew that everyone was going to be on there trying to order anyways.

(Advise How Many Units are available) - What is gained by knowing how many units they have available? If you knew there were less than 100, what would you have done differently? Scarcity breeds more interest, not less.

(Limit to 1 per person) - I like that they set a limit. I can't say I like it being as low as one miner, though. A more appropriate method of limiting order sizes would be to related it to the total number of miners available. If there are few to go around, then make an appropriate limit. Consider also that BF creates more work for themselves because the smaller limit increases the number of orders to ship, payments to handle/receive, and increases the number of potential shipping issues.

THANK YOU FOR THE LIMIT, BLOKFORGE! Seriously. That really helps those of us that do not have tens of thousands of dollars to throw around or the ability to write a script to automatically order dozens of units as soon as they're available).

(Make a Lottery/Queue System) - I think the lottery and the queue are both not-great ideas. There will be rumors that BlokForge is picking friends or family or that they're not randomizing the selection in the correct way. I've never known any other seller (in any private industry/business) to do something similar. And you're not thinking about just how many people would be in that lottery...

For the most part, all of us were on equal footing tonight. All of us were frantically trying to F5 our way to the "Submit Order" screen. And you were only competing with those that were actually online and trying to get the order. If there was a lottery/queue, then just think about how many people would just be adding themselves to the list. Now you're competing against 5,000 or 10,000... They already limited it to 2 per customer, which created a better chance than any of us has ever had trying to catch an order through Canaan.io directly.

I'm not trying to pander, but I honestly don't know how anyone could have expected BlokForge to handle that better. Honestly, I'm surprised their website didn't completely crash, since I doubt the servers were set-up for that much traffic. We are in a new world of BTC Mining. Even if you didn't get any tonight, you at least had a chance.

We agree, do not see the reason for any announcement of quantities, it was a small batch, we are not even sure on quantities until we get shipment notifications from Canaan, we have 10x more on order than what is produced, and there is 100x more demand than supply, nature of the industry.

Lottery is not really viable, if we had a one or two left we randomly might grab someone from the forum to offer it to that missed out, best we can do.

Our server is running 64vcpu with 128GB memory, not a shabby server by any means, just when you have 3000 people trying to checkout within minutes the prioritization is milliseconds, beyond any servers ability to handle with no hiccup.

Canaan's intention is to get as many miners spread across the globe as possible to build on the decentralization of the network, that is ours as well, we do not want to prioritize any "large buyer"  no matter what they try to offer us in terms of personal bribes.  We would rather see one of these in 100 peoples garages, than 100 in a data center somewhere or being resold on the market.

We will have a few tweaks to the checkout process for the next time around, but mainly issue was just sold out too fast, site said still in stock when they were not due to a few hung up orders that buyers were having payment issues, so technically it was sold out, just didnt relay that it was fast enough as people were still checking out.

We obviously could have raised the price much higher and slowed sales down, but in the end that is not the best for the community as a whole.

[QuintLeo]

Perhaps by late January or some time in February demand will catch supply and we can stock up on hardware...but maybe not.

 There will be no "supply catch up with demand" as long as the 14/16nm PRODUCTION LINES are totally swamped by BIG chip volume folks (like AMD, Nvidia, Apple, Samsung, and such) and the available capacity to the SMALL FRY like Bitmain, Caanan, BW.Com, Innosilicon, and such are having to do what they can with the available "SMALL PRODUCTION" slots.

 There is no "conspiracy" involved, it's lack of supply vs massive demand on TSMC and GF and Samsung (Intel isn't sharing, they need all of their OWN production at this point, and Samsung is pretty much booked out between their OWN demand and NVidia).

 Also, the manufacturers make more FASTER by selling the units then taking the proceedes to make MORE units (as much as they CAN do so) as opposed to taking the MONTHS to mine with them just to get back the sunk cost.
 They're NOT deliberately limiting sales - they just can't get enough chips TO sell as many miners as they want to sell.


 I don't see this changing for the forseeable future, unless Bitcoin pricing COLLAPSES to the low 4-digit range and causes demand to mostly dry up.

[Steamtyme]

Everyone's in the same boat. It sucks if you can't get through and process that order, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Smaller batches especially go within minutes, and it happens everywhere, the EU distributor went through the same thing a few days ago.

I'm just glad this batch was available and didn't go to a pallet customer to add another 450 TH/S to their farm.

Orders will improve slightly with the 8 series I'm sure mostly because each batch will have a larger number of units than this batch of 741's did ( this is the bottom of the bin EOL units). They will still sell out in 20 minutes I'm sure and the website will likely crash but that's just the way things go.  At least your odds of getting a unit are better than solo mining a block.

[Flying Hellfish]

Lottery sounds like an interesting idea, but what about a queue? You guys know you are going to have a nightmare fulfilling 821 orders, why not letting us to get in line sooner? Please come up with something better than an F5 fight for the 821 sale...

Lottery/Q will simply create a secondary market for selling Q spot or winning lottery ticket.  This will add to the price.  Speculators abound with NO intention of actually buying a unit will sign up for the Q or lottery in the hopes of winning and selling their "spot".  You think traffic was bad now, go ahead add a lottery or Q and watch what happens. 

If you really want a Q just wait for the 821 pre-order and you can pay and sit in the Q as long as you need to.

[Toughit]

BlokForge did this the right way and I don't feel they have anything to apologize for. I'm not saying this because I was one of the lucky ones. I'm saying it because it was the most fair way to do it and all the suggestions being bounced around would have caused things to go the same or worse.

(Warn people that you expect high traffic when the sale starts) - Assuming BF knew that their website would be suddenly slammed with thousands of would-be buyers, what purpose does warning everyone about it serve? The end result is the same and we all knew that everyone was going to be on there trying to order anyways.

(Advise How Many Units are available) - What is gained by knowing how many units they have available? If you knew there were less than 100, what would you have done differently? Scarcity breeds more interest, not less.

(Limit to 1 per person) - I like that they set a limit. I can't say I like it being as low as one miner, though. A more appropriate method of limiting order sizes would be to related it to the total number of miners available. If there are few to go around, then make an appropriate limit. Consider also that BF creates more work for themselves because the smaller limit increases the number of orders to ship, payments to handle/receive, and increases the number of potential shipping issues.

THANK YOU FOR THE LIMIT, BLOKFORGE! Seriously. That really helps those of us that do not have tens of thousands of dollars to throw around or the ability to write a script to automatically order dozens of units as soon as they're available).

(Don't let miners be added to the cart if there are none left) - I believe the issue here was that people were in the process of buying the same miners you were able to add to your cart. There is no way around this except that you can remove any units in someone's cart from the available inventory. That is a bad idea because of the high-traffic issues and people constantly hitting F5, which can increase the number units they end up adding to their cart. That is alleviated somewhat with the order limit, but I've only ever had negative experiences with websites that do this.

(Make a Lottery/Queue System) - I think the lottery and the queue are both not-great ideas. There will be rumors that BlokForge is picking friends or family or that they're not randomizing the selection in the correct way. I've never known any other seller (in any private industry/business) to do something similar. And you're not thinking about just how many people would be in that lottery...

For the most part, all of us were on equal footing tonight. All of us were frantically trying to F5 our way to the "Submit Order" screen. And you were only competing with those that were actually online and trying to get the order. If there was a lottery/queue, then just think about how many people would just be adding themselves to the list. Now you're competing against 5,000 or 10,000... They already limited it to 2 per customer, which created a better chance than any of us has ever had trying to catch an order through Canaan.io directly.

I'm not trying to pander, but I honestly don't know how anyone could have expected BlokForge to handle that better. Honestly, I'm surprised their website didn't completely crash, since I doubt the servers were set-up for that much traffic. We are in a new world of BTC Mining. Even if you didn't get any tonight, you at least had a chance.

I think BlokForge has been the best distributor as far as communication of any I have seen.  They seem to enjoy their work and it shows.

But:

(Warn people that you expect high traffic when the sale starts)   Probably hard to do, who can see the future,.  I personally have internet service that measures about 80-150k, works just fine for mining, but works not at all when competing in milliseconds to grab a sale.  This one is on me, I should assume in this environment that everyone on the net is going to try to get in.

(Advise How Many Units are available) Sets anticipation, low units numbers clues me in that I would not expect to get one, maybe make extra arrangements (drive to town and use McDonald's wireless).  Some websites show quantity available, helps with planning.

(Limit to 1 per person)  Adds 60 happy customers to BlokForges list rather than 30, distributes to more locations.  gives more people the chance to join in.   Maybe 1 miner per person for the first week, or 1 day of 1 per person, second day 2 per person etc..  Be inventive and creative[/font]

(Don't let miners be added to the cart if there are none left) ...There is no way around this except that you can remove any units in someone's cart from the available inventory. That is a bad idea...   I disagree!  there are ways around it, including doing exactly as you say, once added to cart, drop the qty available.  What did happen sounds like this: it sounds like someone walking up to my cart at WalMart, taking something from that cart and running to the checkout faster than me.  Once it is in my cart, I expect I am taking it home with me

(Make a Lottery/Queue System) - I think the lottery and the queue are both not-great ideas. There will be rumors that BlokForge is picking friends or family or that they're not randomizing the selection in the correct way. I've never known any other seller (in any private industry/business) to do something similar. And you're not thinking about just how many people would be in that lottery... BlokForge just had a sale that consisted of 100 units, that would be 20 units short of two pallets.  I would expect, and hope, that BlokForge is striking a balance in taking care of their friends and best customers first before offering to us unwashed masses.

Until supply meets demand, I think a lottery would be a great system to distribute these, 1 per miner, collect emails the day before, then a random drawing.  Takes out website issues, speed issues, etc.  Does any retailer NEED to do this, no they don't, but I would respect them more if they did try to make the sale fair.   (restrict to registered users, minimum postings on reditt or bitcointalk to eliminate adding brothers, sisters, parents, etc.)

For the most part, all of us were on equal footing tonight. No we were not all on equal footing..  In the time I do one F5, you could literally probably do 20


So... like almost every sale in the last 3 months, I did not get an ASIC  I would just like to level the playing field as far as access and anticipation.