Tartanleaf

Tag: NerdQAxe

  • Bitaxe Community Update: WallAxe, Firmware and BM1373 – Mid-August 2026

    Bitaxe Community Update: WallAxe, Firmware and BM1373 – Mid-August 2026

    Bitaxe Townhall #62 put WallAxe at the centre of the latest OSMU discussion. Gio joined the town hall to explain a project that combines a Bitaxe and its power supply in a compact enclosure that plugs directly into a wall outlet.

    The idea is easy to understand. A normal Bitaxe installation has a board, a separate power supply, a cable and some way to keep the assembly stable and clear of obstructions. WallAxe aims to turn those pieces into something closer to a small appliance.

    That sounds like a packaging change, but it raises useful questions about where the Bitaxe ecosystem is going.

    WallAxe and the next stage of home mining

    WallAxe is best understood as a conversion and packaging project, not a new mining ASIC. It builds around existing Bitaxe hardware and tries to remove several points of friction for a new owner – choosing a suitable supply, managing the cable and mounting the equipment neatly.

    For an experienced builder, those jobs are manageable. For someone buying a first small miner, they are among the least polished parts of the experience. A well-designed integrated unit could make a Bitaxe easier to place and easier to explain without changing what the board does.

    The trade-off is safety. Once a product connects directly to household mains power, enclosure design, insulation, heat, clearances, strain relief and safe servicing matter more than appearance. A compact enclosure also has less room to move heat away from the miner and its power electronics.

    The practical test for WallAxe will therefore be whether it can preserve the openness and repairability that make Bitaxe interesting while meeting the expectations people reasonably have for a mains-connected appliance. Until the design is mature and independently evaluated, it should be treated as a developing open-hardware project rather than a finished consumer product.

    ESP-Miner 2.14.2 remains the current verified release

    The latest verified ESP-Miner release remains version 2.14.2, released on July 8. Its published changes include a fix for a use-after-free race condition and a correction to frequency fallback during self-test.

    That does not mean every owner should update immediately. Firmware work is a maintenance decision, not a reflex.

    Before changing firmware, record:

    • the Bitaxe model and hardware revision;
    • the current firmware version;
    • pool and network settings;
    • normal temperature, fan speed and hash rate;
    • any recurring errors or recovery behaviour.

    Then read the release notes, confirm that the image matches the hardware, keep a recovery path available and change one thing at a time. A baseline makes it possible to tell whether an update improved reliability or merely changed the symptoms.

    BM1373 parts are becoming easier to obtain

    BM1373 has also moved a little closer to practical experimentation. TinyChipHub is advertising individual BM1373 chips at US$69.99. The seller describes about 2.5 TH/s as a reference point for sustained operation and much higher figures as overclocking tests with sharply increased power use.

    Those are vendor claims, not independent finished-device benchmarks. The parts are also described as coming mainly from dismantled Antminer S23 Hydro equipment, which adds another variable for designers and buyers.

    The important development is not the headline hash rate. It is that independent builders can now obtain parts for prototypes in small quantities. Turning a bare ASIC into a dependable miner still requires board design, voltage regulation, cooling, firmware support and a supply chain that can deliver chips of consistent quality.

    BM1373 may support a higher-performance generation of open miners, but a seller’s chip-level number should not be treated as the expected performance of a future Bitaxe or NerdQAxe product.

    A broader range of open miners

    The official Bitaxe organization now includes projects such as the dual-chip Gamma Turbo and the multi-chip Gamma Hex alongside the established single-chip boards. WallAxe explores a different direction – not simply more hash rate, but a cleaner physical installation.

    That variety is a sign of a maturing ecosystem. Open home mining is separating into several practical categories:

    • low-power single-chip boards for learning and experimentation;
    • multi-chip designs for more hash rate on a desk or shelf;
    • display and interface projects that make monitoring easier;
    • packaging and power projects intended to simplify installation;
    • next-generation ASIC experiments whose real performance is still being established.

    For an owner, the useful question is not which design has the largest number in a listing. It is which design fits the available power, cooling, noise tolerance, network and maintenance skills.

    What to watch next

    Three things are worth following over the next few weeks:

    1. Whether WallAxe publishes enough design and safety detail for meaningful community review.
    2. Whether ESP-Miner reliability reports settle around 2.14.2 or lead to another maintenance release.
    3. Whether BM1373 prototypes produce repeatable efficiency and thermal results outside vendor demonstrations.

    The direction remains encouraging. Bitaxe is becoming more than a single board. It is an open ecosystem of hardware, firmware, enclosures, power systems, monitoring tools and operating practices. The next step is proving that added convenience and performance can arrive without giving up safety, transparency or repairability.

    For a practical owner workflow, see Bitcoin Mining with Bitaxe and the free Bitaxe Owner’s Maintenance and Troubleshooting Pack.

    – Greg Weir, Tartanleaf

  • Bitaxe Community Update: A Gamma Finds Block 957,382

    Bitaxe Community Update: A Gamma Finds Block 957,382

    A palm-sized Gamma found a full Bitcoin block, ESP-Miner moved into the 2.14 series, and multi-chip open-hardware miners continued to stretch what a desktop rig can do. Here is what matters—and what still belongs in the “wait and see” column.

    A Bitaxe Gamma finds block 957,382

    On July 9, a miner using a single Bitaxe Gamma through Public Pool found Bitcoin block 957,382. The block paid 3.1382 BTC, including the 3.125 BTC subsidy and transaction fees. The block itself can be checked independently on mempool.space, while coverage of the miner and hardware identified the device as a Gamma running at roughly 995 GH/s to 1 TH/s. The reward was worth about US$200,000 at the time.

    The detail that caught most headlines was the contrast: a miner costing roughly US$150 found a full block after about eight hours online. It is a wonderful result, but it needs the right interpretation. Eight hours was the winner’s actual runtime, not the expected time to find a block. At that hashrate, a solo block remains an extraordinarily rare event.

    I still think “lottery miner” is a useful shorthand, provided we do not let the metaphor turn into a promise. A Bitaxe does real work and submits real shares to the Bitcoin network. It also gives its owner a very small chance of finding a block. The July win is proof that the chance is not zero; it is not evidence of predictable income.

    What makes the story worthwhile is not simply the payout. A small open-source miner became part of Bitcoin’s permanent history. That is a remarkable outcome for hardware that can sit on a desk.

    ESP-Miner is now in the 2.14 series

    The firmware picture also changed this summer. The current production release listed by the project is ESP-Miner 2.14.2, issued in July. It follows the much larger 2.14.0 release, which added a customizable AxeOS dashboard, better mobile presentation, downloadable logs, pause and resume controls, a WebSocket API, and Stratum V2 support. The 2.14.2 maintenance release fixes a race condition and improves frequency fallback during self-test.

    This is not an emergency update story. It is a reminder to check the release notes, confirm that the image matches your board, and use the project’s documented update path. If a miner is stable, there is no prize for being the first person to install every release. Back up or record your settings, avoid interrupting power during an update, and leave experimental builds to situations where you are prepared to troubleshoot them.

    BM1373: interesting, but not yet a Bitaxe product

    There is growing community interest in Bitmain’s newer BM1373 ASIC, with discussion centred on higher per-chip hashrate and the possibility of a future generation of compact miners. For now, I would resist attaching firm specifications or shipping dates to a future Bitaxe. The official Bitaxe organization’s published hardware list still identifies the Gamma and Gamma Turbo as BM1370 designs; it does not list a generally available BM1373 Bitaxe.

    That does not mean nothing is happening. Chips are appearing in the broader home-mining conversation, and open-hardware developers are clearly exploring what comes next. But chip availability, board design, power delivery, cooling, firmware support, and manufacturability all have to come together before an interesting ASIC becomes a dependable product.

    The practical consequence may arrive before the new hardware does: anticipation of a next generation can soften prices on current Gamma boards. A discounted BM1370 miner does not suddenly become obsolete. For learning, experimenting, running a node-adjacent appliance, or taking a very long solo chance, the current hardware still does exactly what it did before.

    NerdQAxe++ shows what more chips—and more power—can do

    The NerdQAxe++ is not a Bitaxe, but it belongs in the same open-hardware home-mining conversation. A four-chip BM1370 model gives builders another way to balance hashrate, heat, noise, and power on a desktop.

    Vendor figures vary by revision and cooling configuration. TinyChipHub describes its NerdQAxe++ Remastered at about 5.2 TH/s and 80 W in its normal configuration, with its own internal testing reaching about 6 TH/s at 100–110 W. Solo Satoshi reports that Revision 7 runs at roughly 4.8 TH/s and 69.5 W at stock settings, with substantially more overclocking headroom after a redesign of the power-delivery system.

    Those are vendor measurements rather than universal guarantees. They are also a useful illustration of the engineering trade-off. More frequency and more chips can produce more hashrate, but they also require better power delivery and cooling. The impressive number is not always the setting you would choose for quiet, efficient, continuous operation.

    Multi-device setups add another possibility. Several small miners can point at the same pool or be managed as a small home fleet. That makes the Bitaxe useful not only as a standalone solo miner, but also as a modular building block. It does not improve the economics by magic; it simply lets the owner add hashrate in manageable steps.

    The larger lesson

    The Gamma block win will understandably receive most of the attention. My larger takeaway is that open-source home mining continues to mature around it. Firmware is becoming more capable, multi-chip designs are becoming more refined, and the next ASIC generation is close enough to provoke serious discussion.

    None of that changes the basic advice: buy a small miner because you want to learn, experiment, support open hardware, or participate directly in proof-of-work—not because a headline makes the payout look repeatable.

    Sometimes, however, the long shot lands. In July 2026, one Bitaxe Gamma proved it.