Bitmain Releases The Antminer Z11

Bitmain has just announced the release of its new Equihash ASIC miner – the Antminer Z11. In an official statement, the company claimed that its newly designed internal circuit structure would allow the Z11 to reach three times the hash rate of its predecessor – up to 135 KSol/s.

The efficiency of the device has also seen a drastic improvement – its new 10.50 J/KSol rate should provide 60% savings in electricity costs, which means that as soon as shipments start, the Z9 will quickly become obsolete. Wrapping the list of benefits up, the new device is also lighter and easier to carry.

The chip is based on 12nm technology, far from the 7nm semiconductor manufacturing process used in Bitmain’s BM1397 SHA256 mining prototypes. Still, it is practically unrivalled in its category, and the product listing page on the official website of the Chinese giant already claims that all units have been sold out less than 24 hours after the announcement.

Despite the usual allegations that Bitmain is using the equipment to mine ZCash themselves, the network hash rate of the most popular Equihash-based cryptocurrency has been not grown significantly throughout the past three months, oscillating between 2.1 and 3.3 Ghash/s.

Perhaps, to answer the usual criticism, Bitmain has firmly stated that they have carefully worked to preserve the core values of the ZCash community – security, reliability, accessibility. The statement further added:

“Bitmain had previously Tweeted real-time updates to ensure more transparency and will continue to provide shipping updates of the first batch of the Antminer Z11. These commitments to transparency will continue to provide the Zcash foundation and community with the security, reliability and accessibility they desire of manufacturers.”