Bitmain releases firmware update to prolong life of Ethereum ASIC miners

Last week, Bitmain released a firmware update for its E3 ASIC miner to address the growth of Ethereum’s directed acyclic graph (DAG) file, the dataset Ethereum and Ethereum Classic miners use to discover new blocks. Bitmain’s specialized mining hardware previously had a memory capacity of 4GB, which the DAG file was on pace to surpass on Apr. 9 at Ethereum block 9,840,000. A breach of this memory threshold would result in a degradation in mining performance at best, and the inability to search for new blocks altogether at worst. If not addressed, Ethereum could have lost a significant amount of hash rate (20-40% according to some estimates) due to ASIC miners dropping off of the network.

The timely update increased the memory capacity of Bitmain miners to prolong their lifecycle, alleviating concerns over a potential security dilemma for Ethereum in the process. But the fix is only temporary, as the mining hardware manufacturer warned the DAG file could once again grow beyond the new memory limit by Oct. 2020.

Why it matters:

• Some Ethereum members are against the presence of ASIC miners as chains dominated by ASICs often make it unprofitable for GPU miners to coexist and lead to mining power consolidation. But ASICs invariably contribute more hash power to a given network, thus providing higher levels of security. Despite the controversy, a happy and able group of ASIC miners would be beneficial for Ethereum until its eventual transition to Proof of Stake (PoS).
• The remaining issue is the fact that ASICs will run into this capacity ceiling once again in about six months. An obvious solution is to have Bitmain keep rolling out emergency firmware updates until Proof of Work mining is obsolete on Ethereum. But if this doesn’t happen a second time, how should the Ethereum community react? One option is to embrace ASICs and adjust the DAG file size to accommodate miners with limited memory space. Another is to cut out ASICs while their share of the hash power is low, which minimizes the chance of a chain split, and hand mining responsibilities back to GPU miners alone. But the right option might be to maintain the status quo and, as Eric Conner puts it, “let the current mechanisms in place do their thing.” Why? If ASICs do end up dropping off of the network, the chance of an attack is still low and cost-prohibitive, and there’s a strong possibility now-profitable GPU miners step in to prevent significant losses in hash rate.