Jack Dorsey’s Block Inc. recently unveiled Proto Rig, a modular reinvention of Bitcoin mining hardware that has not been seen since the launch of the S1 ASIC Rig Bitmain in 2013 over 12 years ago. The announcement comes from a Core Scientific facility where Block partners to design, test and develop mining hardware protolines. Dorsey personally took part in the event in who is who in Bitcoin mining.
Proto Rig is a position that can disrupt and challenge Bitmain’s effective monopoly in hardware manufacturing, with about 80% of the market enjoying most of Bitcoin’s history. But the main innovation doesn’t come from more powerful or energy efficient chips anyway. Rather, it is designed to dramatically improve everything else around the chip, reducing repair frequency and maintenance costs. The modular design supports seamless upgrades and part replacements that can be replaced in seconds.
In an interview with Mining Pod, Block’s Blockchain Solutions Architect Perry Hoshi said that since 2022 the device is no more than a competition from the bitmainline of mining rigs. “When people hear about competitiveness, they automatically think it’s efficient, right? It changes the focus of conversation in mining from the specifications of ASIC chips to amateur design across the mining rig. This has yet to keep up with the best practices the data center industry has developed with decades of experience. “If you look at the world of data centers, they’ve been doing it for ten times longer (as a bitcoin miner). There’s a lot of innovations they’ve made for us,” Hoty said.
Erik Cativo, Bitcoin product developer and HRF grantor, repeated this sentiment to X, saying, “The Proto Rig looks beautiful. It reminds me of beautifully designed Swedish telecom hardware.”
In the interview, Hothi also discussed the vision and complexity of the US Proto Rig manufacturing, expressing the benefits of manufactured works at home. Hothi added, “There are certain components that are built and brought about faster in China, and there are certain components that are now better in America. Today, he added, “(ASIC) chips will be in Taiwan, but ultimately they are trying to make them here.”
Regarding Proto Rig’s ASIC chip, Proto’s Max Guise Product & ASIC Lead told Bitcoin Magazine: “Our system is vertically integrated end-to-end with its own chip. At the system level, we can offer different configurations that bring different efficiency according to the needs of mining operators. We keep the chip details close to the chest, highlighting the customizability and modularity of Proto Rig.
Modularity
To provide a more reliable hashrate for miners, Proto Rig is designed with modular pieces starting from the chassis. The chassis is 39cm x 29cm x 50cm and can host 9 board equivalent chips, six fans and three modular power units. The Proto Rig can also be liquid cooled, but modular fans are intended to modify or expand the hardware to modify or expand it to provide the enterprise miner or booming residential mining industry. Proto Rig is highly customizable and allows miners to select exactly how many chips they want to run, but if the fan is damaged or the power is overheated, the hardware and software error signals can be cleared.
The Proto Rig narrows down the equivalent of three mining units in the space of two traditional models, but competes with the best industrial miners like the Bitmain Antminer S21 XP and Microbt Whatsminer M66. However, Proto Rig offers up to 810 Th per unit in the same space as its competitors, taking into account the industrial mining real estate costs that have been filling out unit warehouses side by side for many years.
Proto Rig is not just built for large miners. There were several hints at the event. We also followed commentary that suggests that homeminers will also gain love from the Proto Hardware team. Jack Dorsey himself tweeted “a commitment to not only big names, but all the players in the mining industry.” He retweeted Bitconnor, who attended the event, and shared his excitement in several photos.
The mystical tweet has not been followed up with details, but there are rumours that there may be a Bitaxe-style collaboration with Proto, which is trying to serve the home mining market.
When asked by Home Mining Max Guise, Guise told Bitcoin Magazine: “Proto designs products for mining operators of all sizes. The first product, RIG, is a 12-kilowatt system, with higher power requirements than most home miners can handle, making it ideal for operators with a lot of infrastructure involved in their operations.
Stratumv2 on default: big for minor decentralization
Proto Design Director Brian Stegall announced “Proto Rigs will support the Stratum V2 out of the box,” adding “This is a more efficient protocol that provides native hashrate audits that will help detect and reduce issues such as minor suspects, unnecessary diversity and other fleet wide issues.”
Stratumv2 is an update to the mining pool of the popular Stratum V1 protocol that dominates recruitment among miners. This is one of the first software tools developed to extract hashrates from miners around the world, as they can act as one miner and share rewards. The old protocol, which is well understood by miners, has serious drawbacks, centralizes the construction of the blocks to mining pool operators. This is an issue that has recently been revealed to be worse than expected, as most mining pools appear to be copying block templates generated by Antpool. The risk could threaten the deeper layers of the Bitcoin network and expose the transaction to censorship if this trend does not reverse.
Stratumv2 is designed to block the production of templates in a hashrate provider’s hands, pushing processes up to the edge, increasing the diversity of blocks and transactions, and ultimately protecting Bitcoin’s censorship resistance properties.
However, mining pools are slowing down adoption of protocols probably due to software development lifts. With Proto Rig built into the machine’s software stack, we should expect much higher adoption rates as block mining rigs are deployed into production. This is a development that the larger Bitcoin community has been working on for many years.
Open Software Procurement
In addition to reinventing mining hardware, Proto has also announced Fleet, an open source release of mining management software.
Brian Stegall broke the news by sharing his experience investigating the state of software in Bitcoin mining.
The fleet integrates a patchwork of tools that miners use to boot and track machines and identify hardware and software failures. With a playful, mistrustful laugh, Stegall said, “We go to many facilities and there are plenty of places to scan the network with BTC.com tools. As an example of how badly you need a modern software suite, he explained the inexplicable process of big mining.
Stegall also argued that having a better designed, robust software tool for managing hardware allows employees to train more effectively and focus on more important issues than fighting a bad user interface.
On the topic of Security, Stegall states, “Proto Fleet is a secure boot technology that ensures that running firmware comes from Proto. This is an additional measure to prevent supply chain attacks, malware attacks, and theft of Bitcoin rewards.” He said, “If you want to do something yourself, you can easily disable secure boot technology.”
Finally, the topic of AI was teased as a modern approach to the user experience, but the hints were somewhat vague. “We wanted to create a clean, clear dashboard. If Fan3 is broken, we say fan3 is broken.
While details on the depth of AI integration into the fleet are still lacking, what Stegall shares reveals the vision of high-tech modern software that will help increase efficiency across Bitcoin miners.
The software is expected to become open source in the near future, but is not yet available to the public.
Pricing and Shipping
Overall, we’ve learned a lot about the Block and Proto Bitcoin Mining upgrade, but no details have been shared about the price of Proto Rigs. TopicMax Guise wrote on Bitcoin Magazine: “I want to hear from everyone interested in Proto Rig. There are many ways to configure a rig.
Rigs is beginning to hit the market as well as Core Scientific, which has a close partnership with Proto. MaxGuise told Bitcoin Magazine: “Proto Rigs is currently shipping to customers. Regarding availability, we recommend that customers check with their sales team for accurate availability based on configuration and volume.”
All in all, Proto Rig revealed that it left a strong impression on the mining industry and the Bitcoin community. It illustrates the proficiency in industrial design that the talents of top Westerners who have been dominated in the East for much of Bitcoin’s history can bring to the hardware industry.
Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-mining/block-inc-launches-proto-rig-modular-bitcoin-miner-challenging-bitmains-dominance
