Skywire is the flagship application of the Skycoin ecosystem, and is a new decentralized internet allowing users to provide bandwidth peer-to-peer and receive payment in Skycoin. The hardware backbone of Skywire is the Skyminer which consists of 8 independent, low-cost computing boards that perform the rapid computations needed to process and forward encrypted traffic on the network. When users provide bandwidth to their peers using the Skyminer, they receive coins. When users consume bandwidth, for example by routing encrypted traffic through a Skywire node, they pay coins.

Milestone Achieved: First Skywire Testnet Distribution Sent

Skywire recently reached an important milestone with the first distribution of mining rewards for participation in the testnet. Community members are being paid on a monthly basis for running nodes with at least 75% uptime. In mid-July, whitelisted official Skyminers received 96 SKY and DIY miners received 48 SKY, the equivalent of US $350 and US $700 respectively. Skyfleet members have calculated the electricity costs of running the official Skyminer. It is estimated that an official 8 board miner uses an average of 23 watts. Assuming an average price of 12 US cents per kilowatt-hour, it will cost US $24.19 to run the Skyminer for the entire year. Even if the Skyminer is running at maximum current of its power supply, the cost of running will only be US $105.19 in a year.

Another estimate calculated by our Aussie Skyfleet member!

In total, the Skycoin project distributed US $250,000 in Skycoins to the Skyfleet community for supporting the network.

Once mainnet launches, users will receive Skycoin Coin Hours directly metered for the amount of bandwidth they contribute. Beyond the initial configuration and setup, there is no ongoing work required to receive payment. Ensuring the nodes are powered, active and online are all that is necessary to earn the network reward.

The official Skyminer features 8 Orange Pi computing boards and earns 96 SKY per month by providing bandwidth to the new decentralized internet, Skywire.

DIY Miners Galore!

As one of the only blockchain projects currently producing hardware, approximately 600 official Skyminer units have been produced and shipped by the Skycoin team. Current limits in manufacturing capacity for the official Skyminers have led many to build their own DIY Skyminers in order participate in the network. Skyfleet members were aided by the committed and highly knowledgeable admins and community members of the Skywire telegram and Skywug forum who provided equipment lists, setup scripts, and troubleshooting. Many participants built their DIY miner with no previous hardware or software coding experience. Here is a sample of DIY Skyminers that showcase our community’s engineering talent and serve as a guide for those looking to build their own:

Pine64 Miner

Valued community contributor Christian Ott created Pine64 miner using SoPine processor and the Pine64 clusterboard. This unique build features 7 nodes, yet boasts equivalent computing power to the 8 node official Skyminer. A slick case can also be manufactured by those familiar with 3D printing.