Hello everyone, I am Mr. K. Today we are going to talk about: "The Rise of the Mining Circle (Part 1) - The Birth of ASIC Mining Machines".

As we said in the last class, when blockchain technology entered China in 2011, the industry that was first exposed and had the most far-reaching impact was the mining industry. But let’s talk about how the mining circle first started? I have to mention two teenagers, one is Zhang Nangeng and the other is Jiang Xinyu. They will jointly create a 100 billion empire belonging to the mining industry in the next time.

The story begins in 2011. Zhang Nangeng was still in Beihang University for his academic career from postgraduate to Ph.D. He had a hobby, that is, he liked watching anime very much. According to what he said, he could watch nearly 500 episodes of anime a year. , and people who like to watch anime are more passionate and secondary, and these labels also laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial journey later.

By a certain coincidence, Zhang Nangeng came into contact with Bitcoin. It just so happened that in June of this year, the world's first FPGA mining machine was born. Before that, mining was carried out through computer CPUs and GPUs on the market. Although there is a slight difference in computing power, there is no modern difference. Until the emergence of the FPGA mining machine this time, the computing power of the FPGA mining machine has increased by tens or hundreds of times on the basis of the original mining, which can be said to have subverted the original mining mode.

Under such circumstances, on the one hand, because Zhang Nangeng was originally from a technical background, before returning to Beihang University for further studies, he worked in the Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation for three years as a technical engineer; on the other hand, in order to solve the problem of living expenses, Zhang Nangeng chose to enter this Industry, began to develop the FPGA mining machine in the laboratory of Beihang University.

And in order to promote the new mining machine developed, Zhang Nangeng often appeared on the bitcoin forum bitcointalk with the ID "ngzhang". Slowly, Pumpkin Zhang became famous in the circle. According to the normal growth path, Zhang Nangeng's future path should be graduation and work. But one incident prompted Zhang Nangeng to embark on another path—starting a business.

In 2012, an American organization called Butterfly Labs announced on the Bitcoin Forum that they would develop a centralized circuit ASIC mining machine with more powerful computing power than FPGA mining machines, and they would not sell it to the public. This means that once Butterfly Labs is really successful, they will control most of Bitcoin's computing power and completely monopolize the entire network.

Seeing that the Butterfly Lab was about to destroy the original ideal of the Bitcoin world, Zhang Nangeng’s passion and second-class potential suddenly burst out. After learning of this news, Zhang Nangeng decided to develop his own ASIC mining machine to prevent the Bitcoin world from being possible. monopoly emerges. He immediately applied to the professor for a suspension of study, but unfortunately the school did not agree, so Zhang Nangeng resolutely decided to drop out of school and start a business the next day. Afterwards, Zhang Nangeng once recalled: "The reason why I devoted myself to making mining machines at the beginning was that Butterfly Labs was cheating. If I didn't stand up, the entire mining machine industry would be over."

I don't know whether it's luck or talent, but in this life-and-death contest related to the Bitcoin network, Zhang Nangeng won. "Pumpkin Zhang" made the world's first ASIC mining machine before Butterfly Lab, and named it "Avalon", and "Avalon" means the strongest defensive weapon in the animation "Fate". Then in April 2013, Zhang Nangeng and his friend Li Jiaxuan established Canaan Yunzhi Company, and the first batch of Avalon mining machines produced were sold out.

So far, Zhang Nangeng has become the first person to slay a dragon in the history of the mining circle, officially advancing a mining game into a feast of capital and computing power. However, while Zhang Nangeng was successful, his old enemy, Roasted Cat, Jiang Xinyu, was not idle, and Roasted Cat would single-handedly start the golden age of the mining industry. As for the story of roasted cats, please let Mr. K keep it a secret, we will talk about it in the next class.