Bitmain Launches new ZCash Miner with 3X Hashing Capability

By Prashant Jha

Bitmain, the biggest mining rig manufacturers have come up with a new version of ZCash mining rig, which they claim is 3X more powerful in term of hashing output than the predecessors. The new mining rig is based on ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chip and claims it would be suitable for cryptocurrencies that make use of Equihash algorithms, such as zcash.

The new machine is called Antminer Z11, and it would have an output power of 135K sol/s (solutions per second) of hash rate. The company claims that the new machine is three times more powerful in terms of hashing output when compared to the Antminer Z9, the previous version of the machine.

The Antminer Z11 comes equipped with a 12-nanometer chip which the company claims to be more energy efficient due to its internal structure. Bitmain says the new Antminer Z11 would help the users save up to 60% in electricity costs when compared to Antminer z9.

ASIC is the New Mining Trend

The ZCash community has been divided over the use of ASIC based mining rigs like many other cryptocurrency blockchains, who have been quite skeptical over the use of ASIC chip for mining. ASIC based rigs are comparatively more powerful and capable of generating a much higher hashing input when compared to the GPU-based mining rigs.

However, in June last year, the ZCash community voted not to prioritize their effort in making their network ASIC resistant. The Bitmain has also ensured that they would provide all the shipping details to the ZCash community to ensure the Zcash community’s values around security, reliability, and accessibility.

last month, Bitmain also released a new 7-nanometer chip equipped mining processor called BM1397 designed for cryptocurrencies which uses proof of work consensuses like Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

Final Thoughts

The mining ecosystem has changed quite drastically from its initial days when a simple CPU PC at home was good enough to earn crypto rewards for transaction verification. The mining community moved from CPU based rigs to GPU rigs and at present, the GPU rigs are also getting out of fashion. The current trend in mining ecosystem is about ASIC based machines which are comparatively much faster and efficient both in terms of hashing input and energy efficiency.