Chinese cryptocurrency expert and journalist Colin Wu announced that the most popular Ethereum (ETH) ASIC miners are on the verge of reaching the maximum size of a DAG file. Why is this important?
Lost in conversion
According to Mr. Wu, the size of a Directed Acyclic Graph file, or DAG file, on the Ethereum (ETH) network surpassed 4 GB on Dec. 25. Thus, all application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) with 4 GB cards should have stopped mining.
However, that did not happen: most likely, the correct decimal conversion of the "point of no return" is slightly higher (4.29 GB).
That is why the majority of mass-adopted Ethereum ASICs (such as Bitmain's Antminer E3/E7) and Innosilicon A10 will be able to confirm Ether transactions for 4-5 months. In Q2, 2021, their owners should either migrate to other mining rigs or switch to other Ethash coins.
Mr. Wu added that, right now, many new Ethereum (ETH) mining machines are in production in China. For instance, Innosilicon A10 Pro has 6 GB of memory and, therefore, will be able to mine Ether in 2021.
Concerns over DAG
Also, according to the journalist, the representatives of SparkPool mining entity highlighted that a DAG file can also be stored in a CPU cache. This measure may increase the lifespan of a miner for two weeks.
The year of 2020 was marked by multiple problems with DAG files for Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) miners. On Feb. 24, Antminer E3 stopped Ethereum Classic (ETC) mining. That caused an immediate sixfold drop in the ETC hashrate.
However, as covered by CryptoComes previously, the Thanos upgrade of the ETC protocol reduced DAG file volume from 3.94 GB to 2.47 GB, so all 4 GB miners can participate in ETC mining for three more years.