Why do cryptocurrency traders need ROM and RAM?

Hornbeam

7 min

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Only the lazy ones on habr have not heard about blockchain and miners. This caste of people has already taken away video cards from gamers, but soon, perhaps, they will covet hard drives and RAM. If anyone tells you they are not needed, send that crypto conspiracy mason to read our article.

Dive into Blockchain

If you understand nodes, mining and other nuances, then why are you reading this? Skip this modest block of text, as here we will dive into the basics of how the cryptocurrency system works. There won't be any deep complications.

The whole process is based on the Hash function. This is a thing that allows you to get a mess of numbers, letters and symbols of a certain length from a small or huge block of data. Let's get straight to the examples:

I love Kingston → fkgkd240ckro3
I love Habr → gkfs40sfvmggr
I love Kingston and Habr → fscm2clg5c0r5

Do you see? Well, why not? Mom said it right: “teaching is not your thing . ” No matter what we apply to the input, the output is a 13-character-long crap. If two symbols match, it means that they were obtained by hashing the same data. It is believed that it is impossible to understand from the krakozyabre what happened before hashing.

So it turns out that every transaction in the blockchain goes through a hash. For a new transaction, the hash value of the previous operation is taken and hashed in conjunction with the new one. And all this becomes part of the next transaction.

If you are a villain who wants to say that there was no second transaction, then you need to recalculate the hash from the 2nd transaction, which will change the result of the 3rd, which also needs to be recalculated, and so on. But this is not moving bags... You'll have to stock up on enormous computing power, and even that won't help you.

Blockchain is decentralized, meaning records of transactions are not stored in one place. No one can change something and impose on others that it was so. Similar logs with transactions are located in hundreds/tens/thousands. Do you feel it? It smelled like memory...

Mining Basics

Miners don’t just mine some candy wrappers, they engage in complex mathematical calculations that justify the operations carried out in cryptocurrency. Their responsibilities include creating new cryptocurrency blocks where transactions are recorded, as well as calculating hashes. Moreover, this is done as in mathematics lessons in the best school years - by searching through all possible answer options.

The fact is that each cryptocurrency is different from its counterparts. At the software level, miners put a spoke in their wheels, which complicates the process of calculating hashes and creating blocks. And the same guarantees that some smart guy with a megacomputer will not change the transaction log, since each block requires enormous power.

During the mining process, miners receive a commission for servicing operations, as well as for creating new coins. We don't need the rest of the details.

Mining and memory

It was said earlier that each cryptocurrency hides its own wonderful world with sticks and wheels. This explains the completely different approach to hardware. It is logical that the same video card mines different numbers of CoinHubs and CryptoKingstons in one period of time. In this case, the main resources are taken from the video card: GPU + video memory. But the law is the same everywhere: over time, hammering with a pick becomes more difficult.

But at the same time, it is worth taking into account the time it takes to raise the system in case of failure. In this case, it is beneficial to use an SSD, even a small one. It is also easy for them to compensate for a small amount of RAM, for example, 4 GB DDR4. This volume is enough to work with bitcoin on a machine running Windows. The main thing is to expand the swap file to at least 16 GB. However, let's take a closer look.

RAM dependency

It comes when you are dealing with a more complex cryptocurrency. Bitcoin only hashes information about the transaction, but in the case of Ethereum, the blockchain may contain firmware. And now, instead of 4 GB, RAM grows to 8 GB.

The second important point is mining using processors. The video card has video memory, but the processor does not. For him, RAM becomes his comrade in arms and the quality of its work directly affects mining performance, especially if you are overclocking. In this case, advanced Monero mining (late 2019) on a single Ryzen 7 3700X required 16 GB of RAM. And a banal increase in frequency from 2400 MHz to 3200 MHz leads to real results.

ROM dependency

It has already been printed above that SSD increases the speed of system reboot in case of an error. In addition, a solid-state drive requires less power, which lowers your electricity bill. But we’re on Habré, let’s count!

We believe that:

We live in Moscow and pay a single tariff of 5.56 rubles per kilowatt.
SSD consumes at least 2 Watts, and HDD consumes at least 6 Watts

Then for HDD: (((6 x 24) x 365 )/ 1000)) x 5.56 = 292.2 rubles per year
For SSD: (((2 x 24) x 365 )/ 1000)) x 5.56 = 97.4 rubles per year

Maybe a home miner will find the difference funny. But if you have a huge farm of several systems, then it’s easier to buy a bunch of 60/120 GB SSDs than 250 GB HDDs. You will receive not only a quick change in the overclocking profile, but also a high-speed resumption of work in case of critical errors.

Nodes are nowhere without an SSD!

Polundra, now the visibility of the threat to SSDs is higher than ever. After all, we got into the theoretical part about nodes, they are also called nodes. Remember, we previously looked at the log and talked about the fact that it is not stored on one device. So this is the beauty of blockchain. These same logs are scattered across many physical systems; with each transaction, the entries in them change, and the logs themselves are used for verification.

So, you have the opportunity to become a full node. To do this, you will have to download the entire history of cryptocurrency transactions to your disk. Bitcoin required 330 GB at the beginning of March 2021. Moreover, over time, this dump will grow, and your system will be able to verify operations.

Cryptocurrency traders often say that full node holders are noble people who help decentralize the network. In reality, this is related to anonymity, because when you transfer data to another full node, you cannot be sure that you will not be tracked. Since the request to make changes to the chain is sent publicly. And by hiding your secret transactions in your node (for Bitcoin this is Bitcoin Core), you disguise them. Additionally, it is worth noting the support for Tor.

And if we return to Ethereum, then, as with RAM, it will only get worse. Recommended system requirements for the node include 16 GB of RAM and a 500 GB SSD. If it seems to you that this is a reserve, then give up your hopes... For full synchronization, at least 5 TB is required. And the high load on the entire network does not allow the use of slow HDDs. For reference: over the past year the full archive has grown by 3 TB.

And there are many such daredevils; public full nodes can be tracked online on a special map . At the end of March, there were 6,666 of them, which is at least 34,719 Kingston A400 drives of 960 GB each, for a total amount of more than 310 million rubles.

Thus, only public Ethereum nodes can be estimated at 15,406 six-gigabyte GTX 1060 video cards, ordered at the average price on Ebay.

It’s no joke, but the developer of Bitcoin Core (software for full Bitcoin nodes) wrote a script and counted more than 30 thousand full nodes with updated data in January 2021, although Coin Dance showed only 11,619 full nodes. I wonder if Ethereum has the same picture with hidden nodes?

Shall we say goodbye?

Don't rush to the store to buy a solid-state drive. Sales of SSD drives are estimated at millions of units annually, so no shortage is expected in the next couple of years. Unless there will be another crypto boom.

But it is important to understand that such disks help save money on electricity and stabilize the operation of the farm. And for those who want to be completely anonymous, they need them to set up their full nodes. And there are more and more cryptocurrencies, the size of synchronization files is calculated... You also see a trend, right?

As for RAM, we see a clear need for it when mining on a CPU. Such farms do not mine popular currencies, but are concentrated on a narrow range of coins: Cranepay, Binarium, Yenten, Monero.

For more information about Kingston Technology products, please visit the company's official website .