Tai Bui’s Pi Node farm in Hoai Nhon district, Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam currently has 250 PCs running continuously, generating over 3,000 Pi every day, according to the local newspaper Vnexpress.
The Pi Node farm was built since November 2020, initially with only four computers of Tai and his relatives, along with 10 computers operated and taken care of by friends. Currently, the total number of operating Nodes is over 250.
“People did not have sufficient qualifications and experience to operate, did not have time to take care, and the electricity and network sources were not stable, so they assigned me to take charge”, Tai said.
Pi Node is software that runs on a computer with the role of creating and storing Pi. Unlike smartphone applications that play the role of registering, logging in, recovering accounts, and “checking in” to receive Pi, Pi Node is responsible for verifying transactions in the Pi Network system.
On online forums, many people said they have invested thousands of dollars to run Pi network nodes, even though this cryptocurrency has no value and cryptocurrency transactions are not yet allowed in Vietnam.
The PC system operates on an individual basis, with each Pi account running on one node and using a dedicated network line. Tai Bui subscribed to an internet package with a minimum speed of 80 Mb/s and a minimum international bandwidth of 2 Mb/s. The cost for electricity each month is over $3,000, and the internet bill is $3,500.
Two technical employees take care of and maintain the equipment, and three online support staff are paid based on their working hours. The machines are kept in a cold room, with a temperature maintained between 20-23 degrees Celsius, so the failure rate is quite low.
The PCs are equipped with two powerful configurations. One version uses a Xeon E5 2686 v4 CPU with 18 cores and 36 threads, 32GB of RAM, a 500GB SSD, and a Gigabyte N210 graphics card. The higher-end version uses two Xeon E5 2686 v4 CPUs and 64GB of RAM. With an average price of 25 million Vietnamese dong per machine, this Pi Node farm is worth over $250,000.
The steel support system is designed to have extra capacity to accommodate new machines, supporting up to around 500 Nodes.
Mr. Tai said that with a locking mechanism of 90-100% over 3 years, the entire Node will generate about 3,000 Pi per day. He predicts that this number will decrease significantly if the Pi Network team makes adjustments in the near future.
Pi Network appeared in 2019 and gained popularity in Vietnam in early 2021. According to statistics from Pi-blockchain, Vietnam is one of the three countries with the largest number of Pi Nodes in the world, with over 14,000. South Korea is in the lead with 23,000, followed by China with 18,000. However, this cryptocurrency has been repeatedly warned by experts about the lack of transparency and the potential for user information collection. After nearly four years, Pi still has no value, and the status of the project is still “closed mainnet”. In addition, trading in this type of cryptocurrency is not allowed and is a violation of Vietnamese law.
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