Cryptocurrency mining hardware is on the rise. Bitmain Technologies, a Chinese firm, released its latest miner called the Antminer E3 on the 3^rd of April 2018. The miner processes the Ethhash algorithm, which is used by the Ethereum network.

Bitmain has released other miners, including the Antminer X3 that mines Cryptonight algorithms for Monero. The company is known for manufacturing cryptocurrency mining hardware and providing other related services. Bitmain has been producing Bitcoin mining hardware for quite some time. The firm is also offering Litecoin and Dash miners.

Bitmain recently launched 2 more miners and one of these is the Antminer E3. The miner boasts a processing time of 180MH/s. Bitmain has begun shipping the first batch of Antminer E3. The launch announcement of the miner had, however, riled up a lot of Ethereum community members who were not happy that an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) device of this scale has been made available to the public.

ETH community members are already demanding a quicker hard fork to prevent of these kinds of ASIC miners. According to some members of the ETH community, the construction of such devices supported the idea of having a regularly scheduled PoW change. The ETH community is not the only one that is facing the same concern. Bitmain has launched its other miner called Antminer X3 that mines the Cryptonight algorithm. Cryptonight-based coins like Monero and Bytecoin can be mined using the device at a speed of 220KH/s.

Canaan Creative also released its eight generation SHA-256 miner. The mass-produced miner called Avalon 841 has a hash rate of 13TH/s and consumes .099 Joules/Gigahash. The Avalon 841 is powered by A3210HP 16nm ASICs. Canaan Creative’s Avalon series mining hardware has been enjoying a good reputation for quite some time. The company announced that is working on the next gen of the Avalon series miners.

Development teams from GMO Group, DMM and other firms are also developing their own mining hardware. GMO Group, a Japanese company, claimed that it will be producing miners that are equipped with 7-nanometer technology. Individuals started getting their Dragonmint 16T1 SHA-256 miner from Halong Mining this week. According to Halong Mining, the miners are an extremely efficient cryptocurrency ASIC processor that can produce 16TH/s. The devices use overt ASIC Boost technology.

Although many members of the cryptocurrency community were doubtful of the legitimacy of the company’s machines, machines were shipped to customers this week. Multiple videos of customers opening boxes of their Dragonmint machines and comparing the machine to Bitmain chips have popped up. At the moment, it’s hard to say if the machines from Halong Mining will work as well as the firm’s claimed specifications. Reviews of the machines will come before long.

Mining devices have become more efficient over the years. Semiconductors are also getting faster and smaller. With these new developments, competition in the mining industry and progressive innovation will definitely increase over the next years. Cryptocurrency members can only wait for these developments and see what it can bring.