Crowdfunding ASIC/FPGA chip development to make new DASH miners for all

[Rily]

With DASH up a hop, skip, and a jump today, I thought it would be nice to share an idea and possible solution I have for the community.

It's hard to acquire DASH mining rigs these days, especially the Baikal miners. Even more so to acquire them in bulk, so you can stack more profit.

There are a lot of people who want to start mining DASH, but can't because the access to the best hardware is hard to come by or expensive/sketchy on secondary marketplaces.

Recently I looked into cloning the baikal mini miner cube and was startled at the nonrecurring engineer cost to design and manufacture an ASIC chip. The mask sets, the R&D, design verification, EDA tools...plus manufactures place a prerequisite amount of chips you have to print...and the math documentation complexity for the g11 algorithm on the coding side all equals a lot money.

Making a new chip from start to finish is not easy or cheap.

I submit to you, what if we crowdfunded as a community the necessary funds to cover the high costs to make a new chip that mines DASH?

That way no one manufacturer has to take on all the start up ri$k, and the lack of good hardware available could be solved by making a new product.

If you were to give money to a crowd source campaign , you would expect something in return, right?

I've thought of three ideas that are worthy of a donation/investment.

1. a USB miner that mines dash
Pros:
cheaper alternative in comparison to the $799 baikal mini cube miner or the more expensive options

Helps decentralization of mining hash power, no big farms

Very popular and lower cost, large market in the 16-24 male age group who are money hungry and looking for passive income

First product to ever mine dash as a USB option. New market!

Cons:
Smaller hash rate per second equals less DASH mined a day.

Might lack Feasibility due to small USB design and overheating problems.

2. A creation of a product similar to the Baikal mini cube

Pros: a competitive alternative to the big players on the market these days.

Large MH/s with low power usage

Ability to stack them for more hash-power per second

Great for home mining and people looking to make a long term investment

Cons: large necessary chip amount order, more complexity for the chips, might mess up the balance of the total mining power of dash (increased difficulty mining dash) hard to design, big competition, more costs, we will be copying Baikal pretty hardcore...

3. Use the chips to make miners and then utilize these in-house manufactured miners in a big mining farm in Iceland or Republic of Georgia.

Cons: big cost, maintainence, employees, international finances/accounting, Taxes and liabilities, security, property ownership, big electricity costs, project set-up, centralization, no control over your mining like in a home mining set-up

Pros:

Biggest chance for upside on a crowdsourced investment

Each investor could receive a percentage of the profits mined based on the amount invested. (Amount invested divided by total investment x total profits in a quarter)

No worries about electricity, day to day mining, maintenance. Hands off investing

Great source of passive income--monthly/quarterly paid income

Similar to genisis mining but without the cloud contracts, you would be a private investor paid directly.

So, what does the community think? What are the risks you see, the potientals issues that I've forgot to mention, the viability of making a new chip, new ideas you have, what you would like to see...

Let's start a discussion!

--Rily

 

[LostInSpace]

Like the idea and enthusiasm, but it will not likely become a reality.

ASIC Pinidea X11 USB DU-1 was actually a USB Miner with 9mh/s from a year ago.

Your idea is nice, but it is only an idea. I have FPGA equipment as well (and I don't even know if you have experience in that area) and can do little circuits with those little toy-things as well, but in no way could I re-create the complete 11 algorithms required for X11 mining with that hardware, it is just not complex enough. Even creating the simplest algorithm would take months and probably not be worth it (FPGA could do much more and it would be a waste of the hardware capabilities, pretty much all miners use specialized ASIC hardware that can only do a single thing, that's it). Also power consumption would be way too high. FPGA is great for prototyping and getting things up and running without having to have a hardware manufacturer, but once it gets to production you will need a big investment to get things going and produce thousands or millions of chips.

I don't think the Baikal miners use FPGA (and even if, they would only use it for a smaller part, maybe controlling the algorithms or reprogramming them on the fly, who knows). It also does not matter because I don't see anyone re-creating X11 miners without serious investment beyond what crowdfunding could provide. If any big hardware manufacturer (Intel, AMD, etc.) would get into mining they could easily destroy the whole market and sell ASIC hardware for cheap and still make a big profit, but it is just not worth it for them, the whole mining market is too small and the investments would be too high. This is why only relative small companies can do this and they are mostly Chinese as they can produce electronics very cheaply. Plus if someone develops something new quicker, you are pretty much out of the market and all your investments will be for nothing (e.g. if the rumors about that 10.8gh/s miner were true or someone else comes along).