Hi all. Slightly unusual message. I run a little project called Vintage Hash (livestreaming vintage Bitcoin miners for fun, 2013-era kit, still hashing). This week I built a current node from the tradecraft repo, synced the full chain, and pointed some old ASICs at the built-in stratum, mostly out of curiosity.
I was surprised to find the chain is not dead at all. Blocks landing every few minutes, with ~5.36 PH/s of hashpower behind it. Every public tracker lists FRC as a dead PoW coin, yet here it is ticking along quite happily.
It’s pretty clearly a Bitcoin-scale operation merge-mining FRC as a free side-catch (the coinbases are untagged, so no obvious pool). Recent blocks have been dominated by one payout address, with a few others rotating over the past year or two.
Genuinely just curious, not complaining: does anyone know who’s keeping this alive, or is merge-mining it themselves? And is anyone else out there pointing hobby hardware at it for the fun of it? I’m doing it purely for the mischief of reviving old silicon on a coin the world forgot. Would be lovely to know I’m not the only one. 👋
— Vintage Hash
https://files.catbox.moe/93z14t.png
