Antminer E3 Stops the Ethereum Classic Mining, Preparing To Stop ETH Too

The Antminer E3 stops the Ethereum Classic (ETC) mining and will cease mining Ethereum (ETH) by next month, reports show. In less than a month, the hash rate of Ethereum Classic has almost halved and many miners are dropping out of the network, especially the ones who run the Antminer E3.

For those of you who don’t follow the Ethereum Classic news, the Antminer E3 mining rig is basically the first and only mining device which is built on the Ethash algorithm ASIC. First released in the summer of 2018, the miner has been popular for some time despite the accusations that it is a bit expensive.

Last week, a lot of Antminer E3 users reported difficulties mining with the device which may mark its end soon. Even though the factory claim is that the hashrate for each miner is 180 MH/s, a lot of users have been reporting 30 MH/s which is why there are worries about a potential stoppage of this mining service.

As the altcoin news and rumors also show, the issue apparently lies in one big file which the miner has to load, called DAG, at the start of every mining process. The DAG file grows with each epoch (30,000 blocks) and has grown too large. The end result is that the Antminer E3 simply cannot mine any more Ethereum Classic.

An official response from the Bitmain Helpdesk shows that due to DAG, “E3 only can mine to January 2020, then will not mine again.” [2miners]. That said, the estimation seems to be a little off since some miners reported difficulties in mid-February, but still confirms the suspicion that the Antminer E3 has become unsuitable to mine Ethereum Classic.

As it stands, Ethereum is only 10 epochs away from Ethereum Classic. This means that very soon, the Antminer E3 series will be unable to mine Ethereum as well. ETH has around 45 days before it reaches the same epoch that Ethereum Classic is currently on. According to 2miners, this means that the Antminer E3 will stop mining Ethereum on April 8.

However, all of this does not mean that the device will become useless. One can still mine other Ethash coins, but none are nearly as profitable as mining ETH or ETC. The only option for miners which remains is to simply buy a newer model – the Antminer S17 is a good example of a new model released last year.