The “money printing machine” looks to capitalize on Grin’s memory bound algorithms.
At-home graphic card (GPU) mining hasn't exactly been a profitable[1] move for those who want to mine and own cryptocurrency. Whether it's ASUS' passive mining[2], or Coinmine's mining-made-easy[3] approach, GPU mining has promised a lot, but has yet to make at-home mining a truly practical option.
This is where SAPPHIRE Technology hopes to step in with the recent announcement[4] of its new blockchain GPU to mine cryptocurrency. SAPPHIRE highlights GPU's ability to mine Grin, which, along with Beam[5], is one of two major implementations on the Mimblewimble privacy protocol.
Grin launched with two proof-of-work algorithms – Cuckaroo29 and Cuckatoo32+ – which users can choose between, depending on available GPU memory. Adrian Thompson, SAPPHIRE Technology's vice president of global marketing, wrote in a post on Medium[6] that the company's new GPU will be able to mine from both algorithms in a process called "dual mining."
Thompson explains that Cuckaroo is ASIC-resistant and will fork every six months "to thwart ASIC domination." Cuckatoo, on the other hand, is an ASIC-friendly algorithm that won't fork. Instead, Cuckatoo's mining rewards will decrease 3.75 percent per month until there are practically zero returns after two years.
Most importantly for SAPPHIRE's GPU miner, both Grin algorithms are memory bound. This means that Cuckaroo and Cuckatoo require larger amounts of memory in order to mine from each algorithm, in contrast to something like Bitcoin's proof-of-work algorithm, which requires a large amount of processing power to mine the coin.
According to Thompson, right now, 90 percent of GPU miners will be limited to Cuckaroo's ASIC-resistant algorithm due to limits in standard GPU memory size.
