Bitmain’s Antminer E3 to Continue Mining Ether With New Update

Yu confirmed that Antminer E3 will stop mining Ethereum around October 2020, adding that Bitmain doesn’t plan to extend the device’s lifespan anymore. He said:

“As far as we know, mining will approximately end during October or sometime after this. This is the latest firmware update developed for the Antminer E3. Currently, we have not made any plans to develop future updates at the moment.”

Released by Bitmain in April 2018, Antminer E3 was touted as the “world's most powerful and efficient EtHash ASIC miner.” As reported by Cointelegraph, Ethash is the Proof-of-Work (PoW) hashing algorithm used by Ethereum and a variety of other altcoins such as ETC. Meanwhile, the Ethereum network is poised to gradually shift from PoW to Proof-of-Stake consensus.

Update April 1, 12:30 UTC: This article was updated to add additional information provided by Bitmain that the firm doesn’t plan to extend Antminer E3’s lifespan to operate after October 2020.