Bitmain and the Sia Network

January has been a busy month for the ASIC industry. Bitmain announced the Antminer A3, their Blake2b ASIC for Sia, and Bitmain units are already being delivered months in advance of Obelisk’s planned delivery date for their SC1 preorders. While it remains to be seen how many units Bitmain introduced to the ecosystem, it is an unfortunate situation for those who preordered the SC1; Bitmain has a tendency to significantly oversell units, and the lightning fast delivery means that there will be no hope for a fast ROI before Bitmain units hit the network. Difficulty adjustments will already be applied long before SC1 units ship.

While Sia is, of course, an entirely separate network than Decred, this highlights the great risk involved with ASIC preorders even when the project can successfully deliver the unit. Bitmain’s entry to Sia happened quickly and came without warning, and we believe Decred stands as an attractive next target given the developing ASIC market. We stand by our decision to postpone public sales until we have a unit we feel awesome about, both from a technical and economical perspective, and one we can ship on a short timeline.

Our Status

We’ve had many people ask if we will be ready to ship soon, or if they should purchase a competing unit. We would love to have executed on our original plan for presales. But as we have articulated, we don’t believe that it is fair to the customer at this time. As you can imagine, creating an ASIC mining enterprise is challenging, and we are working other business avenues to bring our work to fruition. Therefore we have no plans for offering our miner for sale at this time and hope to bring a product to you at some future point. If you would like to pre-order an ASIC, despite the risks, to be one of the first ASIC miners on the Decred network you should consider a competing unit.

We look forward to updating you on our progress along the way.

Thank you,

dcrASIC