Bitmain's S19 Bitcoin Miners Account for Bulk of Network Hashrate, Says New Research

Three models of Bitmain mining rigs account for 76% of computing power on the bitcoin network, according to new research published by Coinmetrics on Tuesday.

The Antminer S19j Pro accounts for 34.3% of the network hashrate and the S19 for 28.1%, and they have been the most used machines on the network since March 2021, Coinmetrics found. The Antminer S19 XP accounts for another 13.7% of the network hashrate, said the report. Meanwhile, MicroBT's M50 is below the threshold of detectability, the researchers said.

The study used a novel methodology to determine which mining machines are used in the bitcoin network by tracking different machines' fingerprints. Different models consume differing amount of electricity to produce a given amount of computing power.

With newer, more efficient machines being plugged in, the energy efficiency of the network has also dramatically improved by about 60% since July 1, 2018, said the report.

The bitcoin network on average consumes 33.6 joules per terahash (J/TH) of computing power today, compared to 89.3 J/TH on July 1, 2018, the team found. However, "the rate of change was more agressive in the past," said Karim Helmy, one of the authors of the report.

The report also found that the bitcoin network consumes 13.4 gigawatts (GW) of power, 13% less than the commonly used index published by the Cambridge University's Centre for Alternative Finance.