[POLL] What should the VRAM requirement for mining FIRO be?

Polls
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Several dedicated miners of FIRO have recently expressed dismay that their 8GB GPUs cannot mine FIRO anymore. This is as intended as our mining algorithm FiroPOW has a steadily increasing DAG size which recently went past 7.7GB and continues to increase at a rate of 8MB every 1300 blocks (approximately 2.26 days).

For reference, FiroPOW went live in 2021 with a VRAM requirement of 4GB.

The rationale behind the steadily increasing DAG size was to ensure that only relatively modern GPUs could mine the coin keeping it out of reach from GPU farms that got a boatload of dirt cheap 2nd hand old GPUs (for example there was a period where there was a glut of RX580 4GB) which could affect the security of the PoW.

Despite the reduced role of miners, they still are an essential part of FIRO and remains a way to get into FIRO without exchanges or any pre-existing FIRO. They also contribute to the hybrid proof of consensus and also serve as a last line of defense should a vast majority of the masternodes get kicked offline.

Therefore it is important to ensure that there is a balance between keeping old GPUs off the network and keeping it accessible to the average GPU owner.

Having done a survey of mid-range GPUs over the years:
In 2015, the typical VRAM of a mid-range GPU was 2-4 GB
In 2016-2019, it went up to 4-8 GB
In 2020-2023, it was typically 6-8 GB
While the RTX 5060 isn’t announced yet, it’s rumored to have only 8 GB of RAM.

So it’s clear that VRAM isn’t increasing steadily in mid-range cards despite AI taking off since AI models require the high end cards.

My personal recommendation is to keep it in range of 8GB cards and leave it there and revisit if this changes in the future rather than creating a new. This would mean mid-range cards from 2021 should all be able to mine FIRO.

The other option is to set it to something slightly below 6 GB and have it slowly creep up, perhaps 8 MB every 2600 blocks instead.

What should the VRAM requirement be for FiroPOW?
  • Don’t change FiroPOW and continue as is with the increasing DAG size
  • Lock FiroPOW’s requirement to support 8 GB cards and revisit in the future
  • Bring down FiroPOW’s requirement to around 6 GB but have it increase slowly over the years
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I cant vote, since I am new to the forum.

But I would agree on the point that mining Firo should be kept accessible in countries that don’t have access to high end equipment. And also, even new GPUs are still 8GB for some reason…

I would vote for 5GB with a schedule of about 3 years for it to pass the 6GB limit. And then very slowly creep up to 8GB.

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I cant vote too… but i really want to…

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Voted! Had been not easy… i have some experience about mining but i’m out since long time and i’m not so aware about FIRO mining right now.
I think miner profit is fundamental and it’s also fundamental keeping online miners in less rich country around the world.
I’m happy to have partecipated with my vote and thank you all, as usual!

1 Like
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These are some good points raised. I would think setting it around 6 GB but have it increase slowly over the years would be the more decentralized option. Also while it might be good at trying to keep it out of reach of GPU farms with 2nd hand old GPU’s, it should be known that not everyone can afford “relatively modern GPUs”. So I see both points on this matter.

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