The solution NVIDIA LHR was introduced in the RTX 30 Series to prevent them from being used in Ethereum mining. A solution developed after complaints from users who claimed that game graphics were being used for other purposes.
It looks like NVIDIA managed to patch LHR in their latest drivers
It was at the end of last week when NiceHash updated sound Ethereum mining software. The update adds a system that skips almost all of NVIDIA LHR v3. This mechanism is found in the 8GB RTX 3050 and the 12GB RTX 3080. As mentioned, they had managed to get the graphics card to give 90% of the possible hash rate for Ethereum mining.
The last NVIDIA driverthe GeForce 512.95 WHQL what it does is restore a limit to mining. It seems to “reset” LHR and go back to 50-70% clipped hash rate on all graphics cards.
While this is positive, the truth is that it will not keep those dedicated to Ethereum mining awake at night. as simple as don’t update the drivers and that’s it.
Who detected that LHR has been restored is the youtuber Juliano Caju. He reported on his YouTube channel that the new NVIDIA GeForce 512.95 driver reduces mining power. With the RTX 3060 I got a throughput of 46 MH/s, which is not bad at all. Later, after updating the controller, the power increases to just over 25 MH/s with the nbminer software.
While this is a solution, it’s clearly not a great solution either. Simply by not updating the drivers, miners can proceed with their tasks without issue. This affects more the occasional miner who, in addition to mining, uses his equipment to play.
The only real solution is Ethereum 2.0, and there’s nothing left
NVIDIA can try to put as many gates in the field as they want, as there is no 100% sure way to limit Ethereum mining. The only solution is not in the hands of NVIDIA, but in the hands of the Ethereum Foundation.
For years we have been working on migrate Ethereum since proof-of-work (PoW) consensus to that of proof of stake (PoS). This means that much less hardware is needed for block generation and, therefore, less power consumption.
But all is not so beautiful Ethereum 2.0. Access to be a validating node will require some hardware and at least 32 ETH. It is claimed that this can generate a lot of centralization, which many do not like. The second issue is security, which is significantly reduced by switching to a system that makes “cheating” less costly.
Additionally, yet another delay for the software rollout for Ethereum 2.0 was recently reported. It seems that there are still many problems when segmenting the blockchain. Non-communicating nodes, duplicate information, and various stability and security issues forced another delay in its launch.
