- HIVE Digital Technologies, a leading crypto miner, is utilizing old Ethereum rigs to produce generative AI art on Bitcoin’s blockchain via a protocol named Ordinals.
- This innovative project, following Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake, not only showcases HIVE’s technical prowess but also presents a novel approach to Bitcoin transactions through the integration of unique data inscriptions.
HIVE Takes Crypto Mining to the Artistic Arena
In a striking fusion of art and technology, Canadian crypto miner HIVE Digital Technologies has unveiled its plan to breathe new life into old Ethereum mining rigs. In an ambitious endeavor, HIVE aims to create generative AI art and inscribe these creations onto Bitcoin’s blockchain, courtesy of the recently launched protocol, Ordinals.
Aydin Kilic, CEO of HIVE, frames this project as an assertion of the company’s technical acumen in the ever-evolving cryptocurrency landscape. In the post-Ethereum ‘merge’ era, where the Ethereum network transitioned to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism rendering miners obsolete, HIVE’s data-center-grade Nvidia GPUs have been refocused. The alternative use of these GPUs has been in the mining of altcoins, but the introduction of Ordinals has presented an enticing new avenue.
The Ordinals protocol, launched earlier this year, allows for the inscription of data on individual satoshis – fractions of a Bitcoin. This breakthrough has sparked a surge of innovation in the cryptocurrency sphere, akin to the creation of NFT-like assets on Bitcoin’s blockchain. Furthermore, the Ordinals initiative has bolstered the transaction fee revenues for Bitcoin miners.
For HIVE, the focus remains on exploring these promising opportunities. Kilic compares their endeavor to the spectacular formation flights of jet fighter squadrons, showcasing the multifaceted nature of their operations. This project effectively taps into HIVE’s cloud computing platforms and custom AI models, such as Stable Diffusion.
More than merely crafting a digital art pipeline, HIVE is also collaborating with its custody providers to transact ‘uncommon sats’ discovered via Ordinals. These premium valued ‘sats’, or satoshis, are the first ones in each Bitcoin block. HIVE reportedly has 272 of these.
When Ethereum transitioned to proof-of-stake last year, it drastically reduced the network’s energy consumption. As a response to this shift, HIVE sought to explore alternatives to Ethereum mining, which led them to the development of a generative art pipeline, a strategy that aligns with the company’s resource optimization goals.
HIVE, listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the HIVE.V symbol since 2017, and on Nasdaq as HIVE since 2021, has been bold in its innovative strategies. Echoing the sentiment of MicroStrategy’s executive chairman Michael Saylor, Kilic believes the Ordinals protocol enables ventures like HIVE to interact with Bitcoin in unprecedented ways. He said,
“I think that it’s unleashing a whole new era. We’re all super supportive of it.”
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