By
Mayowa Adebajo
April 15th, 2024
Russia-based startup Mining Solutions offers a number of promising projects, which are expected to become the solution to most problems faced in our self-digitizing society.
Mining Solutions, a company based in Novosibirsk, Russia, developed software for the most popular types of mining video cards, which reduces energy consumption and working temperature of Nvidia and AMD video cards, as well as increases computing speed.
Now, with their driver software for token holders and other future promising projects, as well as their vision of how distributed computing can be used after “the death of cryptomining”, Mining solutions has turned to Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
Maintaining That Rig is No Picnic
Blockchain market is at its active growth phase. However, despite total capitalization of over $100 billion, cryptocurrency market is still emerging. According to Joe Peddie Research analytical data, at least 5 million GPU will be bought just for the mining purposes and overall video card sales rate will increase by 31-34% by the end of 2017. Many of those, who bought a video card for mining, did it for the first time in their lives, were swept by the wave of popular appeal. But is it actually a good thing?
Blockchain is built on miners, whose hardware is a guarantee of smooth operation of distributed systems, integrity and safety of transactions. In other words, more miners – more network safety. This is, obviously, a positive aspect of the current surge in newcomers.
Yet, it is not so easy to get onboard the mining hype train. Novice miners face plenty of problems. Choosing hardware components, purchasing them and putting them together with power consumption, operating rate and price needs to be taken into consideration. Large mining farms also have to invest in cooling, power supply and fire suppression systems.
Then, there’s hardware setup, a complicated process often done with rough estimations and precarious interference with BIOS. And, finally, miners have to buy and install specific mining software, or maybe download what is available online. Anyway this should be suitable for a currency, as each demands different software applications and settings. The hardware needs to be maintained – this includes adjustment of settings, regular updates, detection and elimination of malfunctions, etc.
Your Video Cards are Bad and You Should Feel Bad!
These are exact problems solved by Mining Solutions. Having established their own data-center (with over 1000 specialized mining video cards), the team, just like everybody else, began looking for the best possible settings. NVidia P106-100 and AMD 400/500 series video cards were announced this June. They don’t even have a video output capability and were designed for a single purpose – efficient mining.
Then, they didn’t have official drivers (Nvidia still doesn’t), so Mining Solutions made a decision to perform a detailed algorithm revision with work optimization in mind. The experiments did not come cheap and some of the video cards simply did not survive, but the result was quite impressive.
A custom driver, decreased work temperature by 15-20 °C, increased computing speed by 20% and decreased power consumption by 30% (compared to standard rates).
Using same principles, Mining Solutions has developed driver software for the most popular models of video cards used for mining – NVidia GTX 1060, 1070 and AMD RX 470, 570 and 580. Depending on the manufacturer, various software patches for Samsung, Hynix, Elpida and Micron DDR5 RAM were required.
These drivers were initially intended to work on Windows 10, but following the suggestion of Irkutsk-based partners, Linux builds were developed as well. Currently, there are over 40 versions total and new ones are being developed, in accordance with vendor, model and memory type variations. 1080Ti video cards are currently tested.
It is important to keep in mind that GPU developers just recently began to adapt their products for miners and most video cards were developed with gamers as intended consumers. Many video card components, both hardware and software, don’t contribute to mining, but still consume energy. This makes specialized custom drivers better, then their official versions.
The entire testing end experimentation process was conducted with scientific methods: on display, with prototypes and using systematic approach. The research team included four co-founders of the company (all NSU graduates), where one has PhD in Physical and Mathematical Sciences, other two have MBA degrees.
Estimated data for 300 Nvidia P106-100 video cards:
- With basic default options, overall hashrate = 300х20 = 6 GH/s. With that, about 1 ETH is earned per day. With 1 ETH = $471 and initial investment of $125 000, the payback period is, at best, 125 000/471 = 265 days.
- With MSP drivers, overall hashrate = 300×24 = 7.2 GH/s. With that, 1.2 ETH earned per day. With 1 ETH = $300 and initial investment of $125 000, the payback period is about 125 000/(1.2*471) = 221 days.
In such a way, if your target payback period is 265 days, you will earn additional 44*1,2*471 = $24,869 in the meanwhile.
Getting Your Hands Dirty
The important advantage of Mining Solutions software over similar solutions, such as, for example, Afterburner, is automated installation. Of course, one can always simply program .bat files and then manually change them for every rig. And, for sure, this could work with one of two farms. But if there is a dozen – it will definitely get very hectic.
Specialized platforms, such as ethOS or SimpleMining do not offer any special settings or drivers. Just a “by the book” installation process, with NVidia and AMD firmware and no BIOS patches. Essentially, Mining Solutions is a platform with pre-installed drivers, simplified setup and usage.
The new products, such as, for example, EasyMine, can offer some new features in the future, but at the moment they are at the deep beta stage.
What’s Next?
The market analysis makes it clear: solutions for mining problems do exist, but they are disparate and far from ideal.
Mining Solutions launches ICO for distribution of already developed software among token holders, as the traditional trade is clearly not efficient – it is just a matter of time, before the software is cracked. The future project plans reflect the list of current mining problems and overall ICO’s goal is to build a foundation for the development of these future projects.
The earliest one, planned to be finished in March 2018, is a software program designed for quick and simple optimization of GPU capacity. MSP One-Click Installer can automatically identify system configurations and install required Mining Solutions drivers for each video card in a single click.
The next product is the MS-brand multiminer capable of quickly switching between different cryptocurrencies. Its main feature – paired with the Mining Solutions drivers, is that MSP Miner uses best possible settings for each cryptocurrency. Currently, the changes in settings take some time.
Also, in 2018, Mining Solutions is planning to release their mining pool to allow for a higher level of control over computing capacities. Similar already existing resources, such as, for example, NiceHash, are far from ideal: their rates and algorithms have certain bugs in them. In turn, “smart customization code” will be able to determine most lucrative currencies not just basing on the current exchange rate, but taking into consideration also immediate forecast.
10 000 000 tokens will be released to finance Mining Solutions projects. This amount is believed to be sufficient for unimpaired operation of the ecosystem – purchase of already existing products and participation in future projects. The tokens will be the only means of exchange for the products and services of the company. They will be Ethereum-based (ERC20) with a projected cost of 0.01 ETH. ISO will start in early December 2017.
What Comes After ‘Mining’s End’?
These projects make a foundation for development of MSP Next Generation – a long-term project. The existing consensus says that profitability of cryptocurrency mining will steadily decline simply due to increase of people and companies participating in the field, as well as optimization of mining computing. Besides that, Ethereum experts talk about possibility of moving on to different transaction confirmation methods, which makes mining unnecessary. Then, what is an adequate use of colossal computing power, concentrated in the hands of miners?
Mining Solutions suggests a way out of the problem: a software product designed to apply this power to solving long-term tasks born in self-digitizing society. The list of such tasks is enormous, from renting GPU to gamers to space exploration.
Stanislav Chulkov, Mining Solutions CEO, said:
“We need to unite two separate worlds: cryptocommunity and traditional business. At the moment, we are developing a solution which can allow its users to easily switch between different cryptocurrency tasks. It will serve as a base for our future project, MSP Next Generation: a way to utilize computation capacities not just for cryptocurrency mining, but for real life tasks as well. Plenty of such solutions exist already, but they require a functioning interface, which could allow the client to use the computing hardware, already busy with cryptocurrency computing. As an example, it would take a miner minutes or, worse case scenario, a couple of hours to render a video for a major customer. The customer himself, however, for the same task would have to buy overpriced specialized hardware. According to some calculation, renting the computation power could bring the miner 50% more profit and reduce the client’s expenses tenfold.”
An important point, often forgotten in the predictions for the mining’s future, is the miner’s psychological need to find the application for their knowledge, which is also useful for society, especially when it makes profit!
Working solutions and ideas that benefit everyone – this is how Mining Solutions see the idea behind their slogan “Enjoy the mining!”