On March 10, an anonymous technology account on Twitter posted a screenshot of the panel with the caption “Dammit Chinese mod.”
The tweet suggested that Chinese Ethereum miners successfully circumvented the restriction that Nvidia integrated into its RTX 3060 GPUs used to mine ETH. The image showed that the RTX 3060 GPUs were delivering a usual hash power of 45 MH / s, well above the supposed 50% hash rash limit announced by Nvidia last month.
The information quickly spread through game and cryptographic publications that ran headlines citing the Twitter account as the source that Chinese miners “allegedly” circumvented Nvidia’s hash rate limiter on Ethereum. The problem: it is not true.
None of the Chinese Ethereum miners or pool operators with whom The Block spoke said they saw a real solution that could bypass the RTX 3060 GPU limiter to deliver hash rate performance of more than 40MH / s.
It would have been a remarkable development, because when Nvidia introduced its latest RTX 3060 GPUs last month, the company said it was delivering a safe path to reduce 50% of the computing power of the GPU if used to mine ETH. Meanwhile, Nvidia is launching a new processor chip specifically dedicated to cryptocurrency mining.
The curb and the launch plan are part of the chip maker’s efforts to provide a balanced supply to meet the demands of cryptographers and miners.
But the fact that misinformation quickly raised eyebrows and generated headlines in hours offers a glimpse of the seemingly irreconcilable tension – at least for now – between players and mining operators.
This is because the increase in mining revenues has resulted in operators buying as much inventory as possible, raising market prices. Some are even turning to gaming laptops to get an extra hash fee.
In fact, according to industry experts, it is almost impossible to break Nvidia’s GPU hash rate limiter. Bryan Del Rizzo, Nvidia’s RTX product PR executive, said in a tweet last month that the restriction is not limited to a software update.
“It’s not just a driver thing. There is a secure handshake between the driver, the silicon RTX 3060 and the BIOS (firmware) that prevents the removal of the hash rate limiter,” tweeted Del Rizzo. He did not respond to The Block’s request for comment on this article.
Kristy-Leigh Minehan, a cryptography expert previously at Core Scientific and Genesis Mining, suggested that internal work would be needed to do the trick.
“To get around this, you need an NVIDIA private key to be able to sign a custom driver and VBIOS implementation [and] the tool used to make modifications from VBIOS ‘home phones’ to Nvidia, even with drivers (on their build servers), so that they have a record of it all, “she said in a direct message to The Block.
Simply put: “[The] the only way to get around this is to be an NV [Nvidia] employee with a signed VBIOS and a new driver version, “she added with a laughing emoji.
So, what caused all the fuss?
It turns out that the Twitter account that leaked the original image from the panel did not confirm until hours after the screenshot was misinterpreted.
The same account posted a follow-up tweet to clarify that the screenshot was not related to the performance of Ethereum’s hash power. Instead, it was related to Conflux, another workproof blockchain network that is not subject to Nvidia’s hash rate limiter.
The account tweeted another screenshot of the chart showing how the RTX 3060 GPUs were, in fact, delivering a reduced hash rate of 25MH / s.
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