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
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.
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!
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.
I voted to allow 8GB cards to be used for mining as some of the most efficient cards for mining have 8GB ( 170HX for example ).
I’m not an expert on blockchain logistics or tokenomics, however I’d argue that there’s alot of successful crypto currencies that have stable markets, secure network and use way less DAG.
I do, however, understand that reducing the dag might pose a security threat, but if you reduce the DAG, consequently, alot more independent miners will flow into the network which will help mitigate that issue.
Besides I wanna mine firo but I can’t because I have 7.7GB and it requires 7.8 and that sucks xD
I am new to these forums, but have been a residential miner for years. Following from your statement that “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.”
I would suggest continuing to let the DAG increase in size. Currently miner companies can buy dirt cheap octominers with 12 x RX470 8GB GPUs in them for less than $300 USD.
Letting the DAG increase will force the use of 10GB and higher GPUs, which will result in a much more decentralized miner community. The project isn’t big enough, nor profitable enough for large mining farms acquire these newer GPUs to point at Firo, however a large farm with excess cheap power could easily buy many hundreds of the RX470 8GB that come preinstalled in working Octominers. Prior to the RTX 30 series all the > 8GB GPUs were high end, but with the RTX 30 series and RX 6000 series, VRAM of 10GB or higher was common on most of the GPUs in each line.
