New Ethereum ASIC could shake up the market if bold claims prove true

Chen Min, who led chip design at Canaan Creative, has a project in the works that could shake up the already volatile Ethereum world. Her new venture Linzhi plans to release ASIC-based Ethereum miners next year with some eye-popping specs.

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Ethereum was designed to prevent the race to develop better and better application-specific chips for mining it, but that hasn't stopped Bitmain from building its AntMiner to run 190 hashes per second. Still, that's nothing compared to what Chen has planned for Project Lavasnow, which she says will deliver 1,400 hashes per second. That's a more than sevenfold increase in performance and the economic implications for Ethereum are staggering. The Bitmain miner produces about $3 worth of return per day in Ethereum, Linzhi's would do $20. 

Chen says the payback period would be around four months, though pricing and precise availability timing wasn't announced during her presentation at the Ethereum Classic Summit. (Source: CoinDesk)

About Author

John Biggs is an entrepreneur, consultant, writer, and maker. He spent fifteen years as an editor for Gizmodo, CrunchGear, and TechCrunch and has a deep background in hardware startups, 3D printing, and blockchain. His work has appeared in Men’s Health, Wired, and the New York Times. He runs the Technotopia podcast about a better future. He has written five books including the best book on blogging, Bloggers Boot Camp, and a book about the most expensive timepiece ever made, Marie Antoinette’s Watch. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Disclosure: Biggs owns and maintains cryptocurrencies in a private account and has been consulting with startups regarding blockchain-based products. He also edits and writes for startup clients.