Mining

Bismuth Mining

Bismuth Heavy3 Mining Algorithm

On October 8, 2018 - block height 854,660 - the new and novel Heavy3 mining algorithm was introduced on the Bismuth Mainnet.

Properties

  • custom sha224
  • tailored for GPU miners
  • more resistant to FPGAs and ASICs miners

The idea behind the “Heavy3” algorithm designed by EggdraSyl is both simple and effective: It requires a read from a random offset in a fixed lookup table, for each tested nonce.

This concept can be applied to any other mining algorithm as an additional layer to protect against a similar attack. If the matching algorithm uses hashcash or not - bismuth does not - is irrelevant. The final hash state that is tested is a vector of 32 bits words. Since it is a hash result, it can be considered as a random vector, it can contain anything, and you can not reverse the process – this is a hash core property – The lookup table also contains random data. For each nonce, the extra step is applying a XOR transform to the hash output, given a random vector from the lookup table, with the index begin determined by the hash itself, therefore at a random, non predictable, location. The result – xor’d hash state – is considered as the input vector to the difficulty matching function.

Open-Source Miner & Pool

  • kbkminer - kbkminer is a GPU CUDA Miner for Bismuth.
  • Optipoolware - Optipoolware is a Mining Pool application which supports kbkminer.

Legacy Mining Pools That Have Ceased Operations

Significant old legacy pools, listed by alphabetical order.

  • Bis-pool.net
  • Bismuth.Coinsaurus.com
  • EggPool.net
  • Noncepool.com

Blocks Distribution Chart

References