It should be noted that an ASIC miner manufacturer called Innosilicon was already in the news at the end of July 2022. At that time, the company's developers released new firmware just for ETC mining.

There are plenty of reasons to do so. First, Ethereum is approaching the so-called merger and final switch to Proof-of-Stake or Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, after which you can no longer mine ETH using video cards and ASICs. Second, Ethereum Classic is the most obvious replacement for Ethereum miners due to similar algorithms and decent mining yields.

In addition, ETC has shown excellent price movement this summer. Even despite the current market downturn, Ethereum Classic is up 61 percent over the past month. Today, the coin is valued at $40.59, though three months ago ETC was priced at $20.84.

Ethereum Classic exchange rate chart for three months

Why Innosilicon ASICs are not mining Ethereum ETH

The reason for Innosilicon ASICs having trouble mining ETH is simple: it’s all due to the growth of the DAG file for Etherium above 5GB. This is the very file that is needed to start mining the cryptocurrency on a certain network and continue mining the coin.


The DAG is constantly increasing - but by a small amount. And when it reaches the memory capacity of a computing device, mining becomes impossible.

For example, in December 2018 an Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB video card stopped mining ETH and ETC, and in February 2020 an Antminer E3 faced a similar problem.

Here is confirmation of Etherium’s DAG file growth above 5GB.

Data on the size of DAG files on different cryptocurrency networks


Check out our Yandex Zen. There are articles there that aren't on the site.

In general, Innosilicon ASIC owners have two options:

  • Obtain a Callisto CLO and wait for the Innosilicon developers to fix the problem;
  • To flash the ASIC with the new firmware for ETC mining and start mining Ethereum Classic. In that case, it is recommended to make a backup copy of the old firmware in order to return to it if necessary.

The preferable of these options is the second one. Still, the profitability of mining ETC today is at least twice as much as Callisto. Here are the yields from the 2CryptoCalc calculator for eight Nvidia RTX 2080Ti video cards.

Mining yields on eight Nvidia RTX 2080Ti video cards

The ETC result beats CLO by a factor of 2.13.


It should be noted that the firmware for mining Ethereum Classic on Innosilicon A11 is not ready yet, which means that its release will have to wait. However, A11 has no problems with ETH mining.

Firmware for ASIC-miner by Innosilicon

ETC mining settings for ASIC remain the same:


URL: stratum+tcp://etc.2miners.com:1010
Worker: YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.ASIC_ID
Password: x



In addition Callisto is a less popular asset for trading. According to Coingecko, the last day’s trading volume with CLO was $86,000 – which is very low. Consequently, the coin is very susceptible to volatility, meaning that a certain amount of selling can noticeably bring down the cryptocurrency’s exchange rate.

Again, CLO can be sold on a limited number of exchanges. Here is a corresponding table.

Cryptocurrency exchanges with Callisto CLO support

ETC is also a longer-term solution for miners, as Etherium is actively approaching the transition to PoS. The update should be expected around 15 September 2022.

The readiness of ETH developers for the update was confirmed last night by company spokesperson Tim Beiko. He stated that all items for the PoS transition are ready.


The bottom line is that Innosilicon device owners should flash and switch to mining Ethereum Classic, as it is one of the most profitable alternatives for mining. Ethereum miners with video cards still have time, but in September they will also have to look for other coins. Most likely they will be the PoW fork of Etherium in case of a blockchain branch and the already mentioned Ethereum Classic. In general, a list of coins to mine after ETH moves to PoS is in this article. And as a bonus, it's worth mentioning that ETC miners on 2Miners get paid without commissions.