Reasons and how to deal with the drop in miner hash rate

For miners, the hash rate of miners is directly related to their current income. But recently, many miners said that their hash rate has begun to decline, and the speed of mining has slowed down, resulting in their digital currency income. Then what caused the miner's hash rate to drop? What should we do if the miner's hash rate drops?

What is the reason for the drop in miners' hash rate?

1. In the mining process, many ASIC chips are usually connected in parallel for data processing.

2. The working environment in which the chip is located will be very harsh. 

In many places, the ambient temperature in mining farms can reach 50 Degrees Celsius, so the operating temperature of ASIC chips is also getting higher and higher.

3. Prolonged high-load operation can severely damage the power module of the ASIC chip.

Generally speaking, after ASIC miners have been running for extended periods of time, their electronic components age faster than usual due to prolonged near-full power consumption, resulting in actual performance far below theoretical performance.

How to deal with the miner hash rate drop?

1. Power failure

Mining pays excellent attention to cost control. For example, miners' most significant daily expenditure is electricity bills, so where the electricity bills are low, miners will move there.

Although electricity prices are low during wet periods, hydropower is not as stable compared to thermal power, and unexpected situations may cause power outages in mining farms from time to time. These emergencies mainly include:

1) Flood discharge and sand discharge of the power station

The rainfall is heavy during the wet season, and continuous rainstorms are prone to flooding disasters. To alleviate the losses caused by floods, many hydroelectric power stations need to coordinate with the dispatch of relevant departments to promptly discharge floods and sand. Once the hydroelectric power station is opened for flood discharge and sand discharge, the power supply of the mining farm cannot be guaranteed. The time of flood discharge depends on the actual local conditions, and it usually takes 12 hours to 2 days to discharge sand.

2) Power resources are dispatched

At present, most of the mining farms are still directly powered by mining farms. The electricity generated by the power station is directly transmitted to the mining farms without passing through the national grid.

3) Power station maintenance

The hydropower station will regularly overhaul the power facilities of the power station. If there is an overhaul, the mining farm will be shut down for a while.

4) Damage to the power facilities of the mining farm

The most common is that the voltage transformer of the mining farm exploded, causing power outages and shutting down the miners.

Under normal circumstances, the electricity delivered by a hydropower station to a mining farm has not been transformed. It usually needs to be transformed by a transformer before it can be used and used commonly. Many newly-built mining farms are equipped with 1 to 3 transformers in one plant. The transformers are independent of each other. Therefore, one of the explosions will only affect the power supply of the miners on the specific shelf, and the other miners will not be affected.

2. The network is down

Mining places high demands on the network. For the mining pool, if the mined block is not broadcasted in time, it is likely to become an orphan block; for the mining farm, if there is a network delay, the submitted proof of work is rejected by the mining pool, or If the network is disconnected and communication with the mining pool cannot be established, then the miners will be in vain.

The following conditions may cause the mine to be disconnected from the network:

1) Geological disasters such as landslides cause network interruption

Heavy rains have caused landslides, mudslides, and other geological disasters in some areas, interrupting the communication network and causing the hash rate of many Bitcoin mining pools to decline to varying degrees.

2) The switch equipment of the mining farm fails

If the switch of the mining farm fails, the miner will be disconnected, it's unable to accept tasks from the mining pool, and the proof of work cannot be uploaded; if the switch’s performance is insufficient or network delays, it may cause the proof of work submitted by the miner to be rejected by the mining pool, and the rejection rate increased.

To cope with the above situation, mining farms generally use dedicated line networks with equal upload and download bandwidth and configure a dedicated network line provided by different service providers as an emergency. For example, with two dedicated network lines, when one of the dedicated network lines fails, immediately switch to the other dedicated network line to reduce losses.

3. The miner shuts down or drops the hash rate

The losses caused to miners by the miners shutting down or dropping the hash rate cannot be ignored. For example, the Antminer S19-95T has a net profit of approximately US$13.5 per miner per day. A mining farm has thousands of miners, shuts down for a day, and loses tens of thousands of dollars or more.

In addition to the shutdown of the miner due to a power failure in the mining farm, the miner's failure, temperature, and firmware virus may all cause the miner to shut down or drop the hash rate.

1. The fault of the miner itself

There are many types of faults for miners. The most common ones are a hash board failure, a broken fan, and a broken power cable. For troubleshooting, it is recommended to refer to the "ASIC Miner Troubleshoot" section of the website's Support page.

2. Temperature

Temperature and humidity also have a more significant impact on miners. If the temperature is too high or too low, it will also cause the miner's hash rate to drop. At present, mining farms mainly use negative pressure fans and water curtains to control the temperature inside the mining farms.

3. Firmware virus

In addition, the miner's hardware failure will cause the miner to shut down or drop the hash rate if the miner's firmware has a virus. It will also affect the miner's hash rate. It is recommended to use the official firmware version to refresh the firmware.

According to the article's introduction, everyone has a specific understanding of the decline of miners' hash rate, and Zeus mining will continue to update more miners' maintenance knowledge by then.