Think of it as the Carfax of bitcoin mining.
Announced Wednesday, Compass Mining and mining consultancy Navier are rolling out a new tool that lets buyers and sellers verify the advertised hashrate of their specialized bitcoin mining machines.
Like most third-party verifiers, the tool, HashTest, is working to answer a common question for buyers and sellers: How does something actually work versus how it’s advertised?
In the bitcoin mining context, it’s important because there are few ways to verify how a machine is actually performing when plugged in and running at a mining site. That data is usually kept private by mining companies.
“HashTest is a tool we have created for everyone to identify independent and unbiased information regarding an ASIC,” Compass Mining CTO Paul Gosker said in a statement, referring to the application-specific integrated circuit machines that power most bitcoin mining operations. “HashTest will allow sellers to demonstrate the performance of an ASIC to a buyer.”
Data for retail ASICs is still fairly splintered in terms of transparency. For example, the Compass mining marketplace lets crypto miners big and small purchase and deploy their rigs. A tool like HashTest would allow buyers of mining equipment to get better efficiency data on the machines they’re purchasing. Hashrate is a measure of the computational power working to add new blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain.
“HashTest is the first globally available independent hashrate testing service,” Navier CEO Josh Metnick said in a statement. “We are not a manufacturer, we are not a mine, we are not a pool, and we do not make firmware. Our only goal is to provide the most accurate and unbiased hashrate measurement. We believe these datasets will empower both small and large miners to make more informed decisions.”