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Ethereum’s mining difficulty — an indicator of competition among Ethereum miners, and hashrate — its computing power, have both reached new all-time highs.

These indicators suggest that more people want to mine ETH, as its price continues to surge, at around $600 a unit.

Ethereum’s mining difficulty has touched a new all-time high of 3,615 terahashes (TH), according to Etherscan, while its hashrate has touched 285 TH per second, according to data from Ycharts.

The key reason behind the surge in Ethereum’s mining difficulty and hashrate is increasing miner revenue, Thomas Heller, chief operating officer at crypto mining firm HASHR8, told The Block. “Ethereum mining revenue in MH/s [megahashes per second] has been increasing recently due to the bullish ETH price and also slightly higher ETH transaction fees,” said Heller.

Furthermore, Chinese industrial miners are driving the Ethereum mining activity, according to Dmitrii Ushakov, chief commercial officer at crypto mining farm BitRiver. “They have been accumulating GPU-based mining rigs since this year’s DeFi [decentralized finance] hype and ETH’s price appreciation — both of which have resulted in higher rewards for ETH miners,” said Ushakov.

Besides GPU, ASIC miners are also in demand, said Heller. “Innosilicon has been shipping the A10 Pro, which is an ASIC miner that can mine ETH. Until now, the A10 Pro 500 MH/s version has been purchased. In December, there will be an A10 Pro 720 MH/s with higher hashrate,” said Heller.

As more mining machines (both GPU and ASIC) get switched on, and if the ETH price continues its upward trajectory, the Ethereum hashrate and mining difficulty could increase further, said Heller.

Ushakov also expects these indicators to go further go up in the coming months.

It is worth noting that Ethereum mining is set to cease in the medium term as the network is moving toward a proof-of-stake model with developments around the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.

The Eth2 upgrade is divided into multiple phases — the beacon chain, shard chains, and the docking — which are expected to run at least until 2022. After the final Eth2 launch, Ethereum mining will be sunsetted.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Quick Take

• Serum, built on a high throughput blockchain Solana, is an orderbook-based non-custodial exchange
• In October, Serum generated $44.6 million in volume and then $111 million in September
• On an average day, Serum already has nearly 10 times higher volume than Binance DEX but 15 times lower than Gemini
• Knowing that Serum burns 80% of all fees, we can deduce that Serum has generated roughly $800,000 of revenue since launching in late August

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Hangzhou-based bitcoin miner maker Canaan has reported a net loss of $12.7 million in Q3 despite bitcoin’s price jump during the same period.

The company released an unaudited financial report on November 30. Canaan made $24 million in net revenues in Q3 this year, which represents a 75.7% decline compared to $100 million in the same period last year.

As a result of the sharp revenue drop, the firm has incurred a net loss of $12.7 million, compared to a net income of $14 million year-on-year and a narrowed net loss of $2.3 million in Q2 2020.

The increased net loss quarter-over-quarter came despite that bitcoin’s price had jumped by as much as 30% during Q3.

In addition, the firm said it sold 2.9 million terahashes per second (TH/s) of computing power from July to September – a 20% drop year-over-year (3.7 million TH/s).

That indicates Canaan has been taking significant price cuts to its bitcoin mining equipment in order to salvage its hashing power market share eroded by dominant players like Bitmain and MicroBT.

With a $24 million Q3 revenue on 2.9 million TH/s of computing power sold, Canaan’s average price was about $8.27 per TH/s, which represents a 70% drop compared to an average price of $27.5 per TH/s in the same period 2019.

Canaan said as of September 30, it had cash and cash equivalents of $26.1 million since it had invested $30 million in short-term financial investments that it said it can withdraw at any time.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The Eth2 staking deposit contract continues to attract deposits, even after the milestone for the Phase 0 launch was reached last week.

The contract now has more than $500 million worth of ETH locked, or 852,960 ETH, 62% more than what is needed for Eth2’s Phase 0 launch tomorrow.

“It is a fantastic display of confidence by the Ethereum community,” Justin Drake, Eth2 researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, told The Block. “I’m proud thousands of Ethereans felt compelled to lock their funds for many months to secure Eth2.”

Indeed, the deposits are locked and can be withdrawn only when Phase 1.5 of Eth2 goes live, sometime in 2022.

The Eth2 journey will begin with Phase 0 tomorrow, December 1, at 12 UTC. It would see the beacon chain — a kind of backbone for Eth2 — go live.

“This is a huge milestone in 80 years of computer science and proves confidence in the progress Ethereum and blockchain technology has made in the decade to date. I’m looking forward to the next ten years,” Afri Schoedon, pioneer of Eth2 multi-client testnets, told The Block.

Once the beacon chain gets activated, the Eth2 transition process will move on to the next stage of its multi-phase approach, to complete the full upgrade. There are four more phases left for Eth2. The estimated timelines say the full upgrade would take at least until 2022. However, in reality, it will likely take more time, since the development journey won’t be without its challenges, as The Block reported in detail last week.

“Longer term, we will need at least 10x the amount staked for robust security,” said Drake.

The development of Eth2 has been in the works for years. Once fully completed, Ethereum will move from its current proof-of-work model to function as a proof-of-stake network.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.