Ep69 - Bitcoin2019 with Jan Čapek, Cofounder and Co-CEO at Braiins

Jan Čapek, Cofounder and Co-CEO at Braiins

On episode 69 of LAB Radio, Braiins Cofounder and Co-CEO,
Jan Čapek chats with your host Chris Groshong from Bitcoin2019.
We finally got a chance to sit down and talk mining after meeting
in January 2019 in Las Vegas.  


We first get a run down from Jan about the history of mining and
what's wrong with the state of things currently. There's no
surprise when it comes to understanding the mysteries behind ASIC
Boost were just the tip of the iceberg. The problem is now mining
has become so commercialized companies go to great lengths to
keep firmware proprietary and access to making modifications
difficult.


Braiins has decided to take a different approach. An open source
approach. They feel if you can't audit or make changes to the
miners at the root level then you really don't own them. This is
why they have released Braiins OS.  
  "Not your firmware, not your miner." -Jan Čapek 

 


The Braiins team motivation comes from their desire to have
standards around mining. They spent a lot of time reengineering
the software because they were tired inferior products being put
onto the market. They even named their replacement of 'CGminer'
with a symbolic cultural name, 'RURminer'. RUR comes from a
1920's sci-fi play from fellow countryman Karel Čapek about a
future with robots. 


 


 


By launching BraiinsOS, the goal is to maintain a repository that
stays up to date and helps maintain stable version controls. This
allows anyone to download a copy and get started building their
own mining rigs.


It became obvious to Jan and his team that the level of
customization and quality of products being offered were not
ready for Enterprise scale. However, the businesses that were
trying to operate at Enterprise levels were being thwarted by
lack of control and data insights at every turn. This is why
Braiins exists and has taken over as the parent company that
oversees the development of the open source BraiinsOS and Slush
Pool. 


 


In this episode Jan Čapek shares with us:  


What is the current state of the Bitcoin mining scene?

Why they choose the name 'RURminer' for their firmware. 

Why they choose to write their codebase in Rust.

The ASIC chip makers and the Foundry chokepoint

How attacks on mining pools are much easier to mitigate 



 


 


Further Reading and Resources:


  


  Jan Čapek, Co-CEO at
Braiins | LinkedIn | Twitter 


 


 


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Linkedin | GitHub | Medium | Telegram | SlushPool