Author: Arain, ChainCatcher
Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher
Ore resumed mining on August 6, becoming a high-profile project on Solana this week, and its popularity on the Web3 data asset platform RootData soared.
On July 29, Ore founder Hardhat Chad released the ORE v2 version update. According to Coingecko data, the price of Ore hit a new high of $1,409 per coin at noon on July 30, an increase of nearly 40% in 24 hours.
Based on Ore V1’s performance in April this year - the mining enthusiasm brought by the project at the time caused Solana’s network to be blocked, forcing Solana to upgrade its technology, as well as the market turmoil before V2 mining, many miners turned their attention to the project and started mining after V2 was launched.
Perhaps affected by the widespread market crash, contrary to expectations, the price of Ore has been plummeting since mining resumed on August 6. As of press time, its price has fallen by nearly 90% from its highest point, and miners have complained in the community that Ore is at a shutdown price.
Ore V2 Current mining revenue is not optimistic
Hardhat Chad, the anonymous founder of Ore, said that Ore will become the "native currency of the Internet." Similar to Bitcoin, Ore adopts the Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm, and the total supply is also set at 21 million. Unlike Bitcoin, Ore is a "non-exclusive mining reward mechanism." In layman's terms, each miner solves his own "problem," and the "problem" in the hands of each miner may be different, and miners are not in competition with each other.
Conceptually, Ore does not require miners to have hardware facilities or computer knowledge. Its official website claims that "any laptop, mobile phone or home computer can mine ORE. There is no need to buy advanced hardware, even software novices can start mining."
However, this is not the case. According to an interview with ChainCatcher, new miners who planned to mine Ore encountered some problems in deployment.
Miner Xiao C only studied mining after Ore V2 started mining. He said that because the tutorials on the Internet were too fragmented, he tried to deploy them personally but was not very successful. He has now handed over the tutorial documents to the team's technical staff for research.
Wang Xiaolou is a Chinese-speaking KOL in the crypto industry on Twitter. He is also a founding member of KillerWhalesDAO. After successfully mining Ore using a personal computer, he shared his mining tutorial.
He told Chaincatcher that he started mining at 8:00 a.m. on August 6, but did not keep mining. “I don’t remember how long it took in total. Now the Stake balance shows 0.00458741627 ORE.”
Wang Xiaolou pointed out that Ore has been upgraded to V2, and it is not feasible to mine Ore by renting a server. It can be tried successfully using a personal computer. However, his personal "M3" is a bit overwhelmed at present. M3 is the world's first computer chip based on 3 nanometer technology launched by Apple in October 2023.
"It's quite difficult to dig now, but you can try it," said Wang Xiaolou.
Xiao C said that Wang Xiaolou's Ore mining experience made him reconsider whether to deploy Ore mining. "This is the shutdown price. My friend just said that he only mined 0.0004, which is enough for electricity. The income is so small, I may not consider mining for the time being."
But Wang Xiaolou said he would continue digging, "This is my pursuit of technology."
Chaincather also found that the Ore community was flooded with complaints about the low returns from Ore mining. There were many miners like Wang Xiaolou who were "painful and happy" and joked about mining at a loss.
Why is ore attracting attention again?
"Ore2.0 is here. The initial mining extravaganza caused the entire sol chain to idle, and the price of the coin even rose to tens of thousands of U. Now 2.0 can be mined directly on the web. Open the web page, link the wallet, and you'll need some gas. Hurry up and take action." KOLs on Twitter called out when Ore V2 arrived.
As users continue to flock to the high-performance, low-cost Solana public chain, a novel mining protocol "Ore" designed for fair token distribution has emerged. This is like a kind of Bitcoin on Solana, which once sparked a mining craze on Solana.
On April 2, ORE V1 was deployed to Solana, providing mining opportunities for those who deposit SOL into smart contracts, thereby sharing the protocol rewards of 1 ORE per minute.
Ore has no venture capital backing. Hardhat Chad said it was launched as an experimental hackathon project, and the project won a $50,000 prize in a hackathon supported by the Solana Foundation in early May, which identified Ore as one of the next wave of projects that could have an impact on Solana.
Ore did affect Solana. In mid-April, this conclusion had been verified by the market. Many people became interested in "Bitcoin" on Solana, and with the high output of 1 ORE per minute, Ore mining was once the most used activity on Solana. Because the Ore V1 algorithm is easier to game, a large amount of spam appeared and blocked the Solana network, causing many transactions initiated by mining activities to fail - only those who submitted successfully can successfully mine Ore.
On April 16, Hardhat Chad announced that it would suspend mining, improve Ore, and launch Ore V2. As a result, Ore temporarily became quiet in the market.
At the end of July, Ore was re-launched in the form of Ore V2, a completely different version from V1. This version is divided into three stages: upgrading v1 token metadata, activating v1 to v2 upgrade, and activating mining.
Ore v2 version updates include:
Cancel the administrator variable: The new version uses open source algorithm management and cancels the administrator variable, which will improve the decentralization of the system;
Supply limit: Ore v2 sets a total supply limit of 21 million pieces, which is expected to be mined by 2064;
Introducing a staking mechanism: miners can obtain up to 2 times the mining rewards through staking;
CPU-friendly hash function: The use of a hash function that is more CPU-friendly reduces the requirements for equipment during the mining process and improves the accessibility of mining;
Optimize anti-sybil attack strategy: By optimizing the strategy, the risk of sybil attacks is reduced;
Client upgrade: more devices will be supported in the future;
Smart contracts are upgradeable: Smart contracts can be upgraded in the early stage, but will be permanently frozen in the later stage;
Token exchange: v1 tokens can be exchanged 1:1 for the new version of Ore within 3 months, providing old version token holders with an opportunity for a smooth transition.
It is important to note that there are two major changes in version V2: the introduction of a new, more ungameable mining algorithm, DrillX, is intended to ensure that simple mobile phone and laptop miners are never unable to mine due to high prices; the introduction of staking to increase mining rewards, prompting a decrease in demand for creation, incentivizing miners to hold rather than claim and sell to maintain price stability.
But judging from the current discussions in the Ore mining community, the returns of Ore V2 are not as attractive as those of V1, and the introduction of staking has not generated the returns that miners want.
In the Ore Discord, @Bb849 miner was puzzled by the V2 price plunge. He wrote, “I don’t understand why the price plummeted. There is actually not enough Ore to dump. We (miners) may have created about 4,000 Ore, but all of these 4,000 are staked.”
@Junlerotg.xbt replied to Bb840 that many uninformed buyers overbought Ore before V2 was launched, and started selling it because they suffered losses in the current market. This conclusion was supported by many other miners in the V2 discussion area. Other miners pointed out that V1 holders may also upgrade to V2 and sell it during this process, after all, the mining cost of V1 is lower - but this part is not much.
