Hetzner has banned crypto mining and Chia farming

https://twitter.com/Hetzner_Online/status/1394957824749457409

by CharlesW • 5 years ago

114 105 5 years ago

twitter.com

wearywanderer• 5 years ago

You can pry my terracotta Elmer Fudd with lush green hair from my cold dead fingers.

_Microft• 5 years ago

Translation:

"Yes, it's true, we expanded the ToS and banned crypto mining. We received many orders for servers with large disks. Large storage boxes (?) are also increasingly often rented. With storage boxes 1/2"

"this leads to bandwidth problems on the host systems. With Chia mining, there is the additional problem that the many read and write accesses put a lot of strain on the drives which will lead to failure. 2/2"

Dylan16807• 5 years ago

I'm curious what they mean by "bandwidth problems".

At most, wouldn't you upload enough data to the servers to fill the drives once and then use a trickle afterwards? That seems like the best case for a storage box's bandwidth.

Glench• 5 years ago

This is something people don't seem to understand about Chia. Mining ("farming") Chia is a very low-resource activity that can be done easily on Raspberry Pis — it's mostly just doing a few disk seeks every 30 seconds.

peterkelly• 5 years ago

It's possibly a reference to internal I/O bandwidth on shared machines hosting VPSs, i.e. plotting is very I/O intensive so other virtual machines running on the same host will suffer.

breakingcups• 5 years ago

I've been suddenly unable to order any storage servers from Hetzner. I already suspected it was Chia even though they only cited "exceptional circumstances with hardware deliveries". Nice to see it confirmed.

penagwin• 5 years ago

I'm in the market for a storage server so hopefully this brings us some stock!

MauranKilom• 5 years ago

Not sure if this is of use (since submissions should link to english content in the first place), but here is a rough translation:

Joshua:

@Hetzner_online has silently changed their T&C and banned entire IP ranges this morning around 9:20 am. [I] cancelled and moved 50 AX41 in the past 36h. Deeply disappointed, even though the change does not affect me.

Hetzner Online GmbH:

Yes it's true, we have amended the T&C and forbidden crypto mining. We received many orders for servers with large hard drives. But increasingly large storage boxes are also being rented for this. For storage boxes this leads to problems with the bandwidth of the host systems. For Chia mining, the disks are additionally extremely taxed due to the amount of read and write operations, causing them to break quickly.

Joshua:

I understand that. But when I rent a server, I want to be able to use the hardware. That is, if I want to roast the CPU or write to the disks 24/7, I should be able to do that, because I rented the full server.

elliekelly• 5 years ago

I understand that. But when I rent a server, I want to be able to use the hardware. That is, if I want to roast the CPU or write to the disks 24/7, I should be able to do that, because I rented the full server.

I wonder if the legal concept of “wasting” has been (or could be) applied to rented servers.

Edit: Wikipedia[1] for anyone curious but the article seems a bit incomplete/inaccurate to me because it insinuates the concept applies only to "real property" but it can apply to trust assets, including personal property, as well. I suppose the difference is a trustee owes an equal fiduciary duty to all beneficiaries, including future beneficiaries, while a server user has no such duty to the server owner or future potential server users. I don't see why an anti-wasting provision couldn't be included in the rental agreement, though.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_(law)

gruez9• 5 years ago

Such concept exists? If I want to rent a car to go on relaxing drives up and down the interstate, what business do they have to stop me (assuming the car rental comes with unlimited miles)?

rajin444• 5 years ago

Sounds like they should have communicated these changes to their customers. If the customer is not breaking the TOS and you cut them off with no notice because you want to change your TOS going forward that's a bad look.

phone8675309• 5 years ago

Most TOSes contain both a provision that they can be changed at any time and that you can be cut off for any reason (so long as it's not an illegal one) and for no reason at all.

Not saying that it's right that they do, just saying that they do.

tw044• 5 years ago

I understand that. But when I rent a server, I want to be able to use the hardware. That is, if I want to roast the CPU or write to the disks 24/7, I should be able to do that, because I rented the full server.

No, when you BUY a server you should be able to do what you want with it, including burning up the CPU in a week. When you RENT a server, you get to do exactly what the owner says you can do.

gruez9• 5 years ago

No, when you BUY a server you should be able to do what you want with it, including burning up the CPU in a week.

Meanwhile in a top voted comment from yesterday's thread: "I'm thrilled by [Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining]": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27200700

mirekrusin2• 5 years ago

Where is the line between allowed and banned? Mining crypto you created and researching on? Mining crypto where mining doesn't use ie. drive, ie. maybe is latency based or something else? Doing research project with your own blockchain on git or whatever?

seligman99• 5 years ago

Where's the line? I rented a EC2 node to calculate a fractal. It involved running a 36 physical cores machine at 100% CPU for a few days.

I paid AWS for that, but I surely impacted the lifespan of that box compared to someone else that would use it for something more traditional. AWS seems happy to let people use EC2 for whatever they'll pay for, for the most part, but does this mean that Hetzner doesn't want me to calculate the next version of my fractal on their machines?

Or has Hetzner just decided they don't want Cryptocurrencies, and that's exactly the line?

throw5away• 5 years ago

since submissions should link to english content in the first place

I don't think this is the case. I certainly don't see anything like that in the [guidelines](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

fxtentacle2• 5 years ago

Just FYI they already disallowed crypto mining a long time ago. I believe it was because it tends to attract people using stolen credit cards to rent servers.

EDIT: found it.

"there is just generally a lot of bad actors out there, even people not directly doing mining -- people who don't pay their invoices, commit fraud" https://www.reddit.com/r/hetzner/comments/jijeby/why_is_hetz...

arp242• 5 years ago

I understand that. But when I rent a server, I want to be able to use the hardware. That is, if I want to roast the CPU or write to the disks 24/7, I should be able to do that, because I rented the full server.

If you have a single server and you're maxing out the CPU and drive: this probably isn't that much of an issue; most people don't and having the occasional user who does is okay.

An entire community of people doing this en-masse: well, that's a bit more problematic.

_the_inflator• 5 years ago

I understand that. But when I rent a server, I want to be able to use the hardware. That is, if I want to roast the CPU or write to the disks 24/7, I should be able to do that, because I rented the full server.

Since this is Germany, we had similar discussions in the early 00 years with the term "flatrate" for internet access as well as downloads. In the beginning many internet access providers advertised using the term "flatrate" but what they meant was "fair use". Reminds me of that.

rambojazz• 5 years ago

Oh boy! Wait till he finds out about "unlimited" traffic.

karmakaze• 5 years ago

I don't know what the German tweets are saying, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

If all the major cloud vendors were to make it so regular consumers are unable to spin up a server and participate in mining, then what makes it 'distributed' and fair?

I don't even know to what extent mining is prevalent on Hetzner. Is this more of a statement or are they having shortages for non-crypto applications?

A similar case could occur with GPUs where the ones effective for mining are not generally accessible to the public and only those who can get them, a small subset of people in some position of power, isn't that different than a non-crypto-distributed currency. The 51% is really being tested by China. How many countries have governments/citizens with the capacity to be represented at that scale?

Spartan-S63• 5 years ago

If all major cloud vendors altered their TOS to forbid mining, only those who can sustain it themselves would mine and we'd be forced to internalize the externality that cryptomining is not a sustainable way to produce currency and record transactions.

If anything, a ban such as that would be good at finally putting the nails into the crypto-coffin. Currencies and transactions are really one of the worst blockchain applications that could have been chosen for the first large-scale use of the blockchain.

pjc50• 5 years ago

Currencies and transactions are really one of the worst blockchain applications that could have been chosen for the first large-scale use of the blockchain.

But that's the only reason it exists? All the other uses so far have flopped.

It is a disaster that somebody made a system by which wasted electricity could be turned directly into financial speculation, though - a subsidy for raising the temperature of the earth.

majewsky• 5 years ago

If all the major cloud vendors were to make it so regular consumers are unable to spin up a server and participate in mining, then what makes it 'distributed' and fair?

Not everything is cloud. You can still have regular colocation where you bring your own hardware and pay for rack space, network and power consumption. Then you can trash your CPU and disks as much as you desire.

the_mitsuhiko• 5 years ago

For Hetzner's business model chia is a big issue. The run an auction system to resell machines others no longer want. If you mine your SSDs to death for chia and then cycle them to newer ones, someone unhappy is going to bid on that machine.

ddorian43• 5 years ago

You can just request your ssd to be replaced if it fails/breaks/burns.

jfim• 5 years ago

But then Hetzner has to pay to replace it and the customer isn't happy. Not exactly a good situation to be in.

trulyme• 5 years ago

I can understand the reasons, but it would probably make more sense to transfer the costs to the customers (for example for excessive IO, energy consumption,...) and let them be if they are willing to pay them. It's not illegal after all.

pfp2• 5 years ago

Indeed. It should be common knowledge that shared platforms work because the company can make assumptions about load patterns and provision resources accordingly. Some might call that fair use, others overprovisioning.

Mining crypto under such a cost structure would force other users subsidize your buttcoins. Personally I wouldn't feel too happy about such an income transfer.

transfer the costs to the customers (for example for excessive IO, energy consumption,...)

That would be fair, but enabling it might have costs beyond the plain consumed resources: io/cpu/etc schedulers that take the exceptional loads into account and mitigate performance impacts, metering and other business overhead, productisation, investments into all that, etc.

gruez9• 5 years ago

Mining crypto under such a cost structure would force other users subsidize your buttcoins. Personally I wouldn't feel too happy about such an income transfer.

The "buttcoins" part or the "income transfer" part? I guess if you have a grudge against crypto users there isn't anything worth arguing. On the other hand in a multitenant situation there's always going to be users using more resources than others, which means the "income transfer" part will always exist.

JumpCrisscross2• 5 years ago

transfer the costs to the customers

Have friends in the hotel business. There is a particular type of rich customer who serially trashes every room they stay in.

Some hotels indulge them. These customers pay for their damages and then some, after all. Others turn them away. The extra cash doesn’t make up for the toll taken on employees and other guests. These are both sensible business decisions, and they each have consequences.

Miners are the loud, trashy guest who can pay. Hetzner is saying they don’t want them because they’re ruining the experience for their other customers.

throwaway81523• 5 years ago

Miners are the loud, trashy guest who can pay.

I upvoted your comment, but I think it is worse than that. If miners were willing to pay for their own damn hardware it would be closer to ok. They instead want to externalize the costs they create, by trashing the hardware without paying for the repairs. Remember that Hetzner rents servers for a fixed monthly fee and the miners weren't getting charged more than anyone else, or getting stuck with the repair bills.

SSD's are rated for a given number of DWPD and if you exceed it, the warranty is invalid (the drive firmware monitors the usage). So Hetzner has to pay for the drive replacement that the miner trashed. Even if warranties covered the replacement, that just shifts the costs to other SSD buyers instead of to Hetzner. It's not an attractive proposition either way.

srmarm• 5 years ago

Seems fair enough - just like you can't take your rental car racing because it causes more risk + wear on components than day to day driving. These guys are wise to ban this activity if it causes more wear on their SSD drives and attracts more risky customers.

I do wonder how they'll monitor it though?

bitexploder2• 5 years ago

I don't think this meaningfully reduces the life of a CPU. It is more about sucking up shared resources and making the customer experience all around worse for everyone else not mining crypto.

MereInterest3• 5 years ago

This is also exactly analogous to why cryptocurrencies should be banned entirely. They are sucking up shared resources and making the things around them (e.g. electricity use, turning on of fossil fuel power plants, mucking up the GPU markets for productive or entertainment purposes) all around worse for everyone else not taking part.

danielh• 5 years ago

The CPU is not an issue, it’s the SSDs. Chia mining (or more precisely the creation of plots to farm Chia) is a write-heavy process that will literally wear out SSDs. See https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/wiki/SSD-End...

It might be worth noting that Hetzner is known to use consumer hardware for some of their lower tier offerings and consumer SSDs usually have a relatively low TBW (Terabyte written) rating.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK2• 5 years ago

AX41 is not a shared resource, it's a dedicated server based on Ryzen 5.

hs862• 5 years ago

If crypto mining on their systems becomes profitable for us, why would they continue renting out their servers? Instead, they could cease their operations and become full-time miners themselves.

Their pricing seems to rely on customers that don't maximize power consumption and hardware wear all the time, and I can fully understand if they ban specific use-cases like this from their hardware.

vageli• 5 years ago

If crypto mining on their systems becomes profitable for us, why would they continue renting out their servers? Instead, they could cease their operations and become full-time miners themselves.

This does not logically follow. Why does Nvidia bother to sell hardware then when they can just keep the most powerful cards for themselves and use them for mining?

hs862• 5 years ago

Operating a datacenter for crypto mining is a bit more than just having suitable GPUs for it.

If you rent out your servers at a fixed price and they can mine crypto on them for a profit, then there is a high chance that your flat-rate pricing is not high enough. They would need to consider their missed earnings from not mining themselves as an opportunity cost of renting out servers instead.

Method-X• 5 years ago

If crypto mining on their systems becomes profitable for us, why would they continue renting out their servers? Instead, they could cease their operations and become full-time miners themselves.

Long term vs. short term thinking. It's more beneficial for them to maintain long term customers than mine a volatile cryptocurrency in the short term.

slownews45• 5 years ago

I've never had AWS block me from S3 - they just charge more for more tx.

I've never had AWS block me from compute - they just charge more if I want more.

I used to chase the "unlimited" services various of the cheaper providers offered - partly because HN always suggests that. But there are often weird limits. Ie, unlimited but... at some point its not worth dealing with. Either peering and latency is garbage, there is some fine print, or they just can't actually deliver the traffic volume. AWS same availability zone latency / bandwidth is really pretty OK between most nodes I've found.

john_alan• 5 years ago

Precisely. That’s why I just use AWS. Costs more but they just do what they say on the tin.

cblconfederate• 5 years ago

hetzner never blocked me for traffic or compute. The only time i had a problem when i tested an ipfs node which triggered their DDos detection, but that's fixed with a command line option.

lostmsu• 5 years ago

AFAIK AWS prohibits GPU mining as well.

mikl• 5 years ago

AWS generally charges based on actual usage, where Hetzner is largely a flat-fee model with acceptable use policies.

Hetzner is also much cheaper than AWS.

Very different companies with very different business models. You can’t really compare the two.

that_guy_iain4• 5 years ago

My only issue with this is it seems like they've secretly changed the terms and conditions without telling anyone and that people haven't agreed to and then put them into force.

I got bit by this before with a hoster when I was much younger and starting out where I put a webproxy on a web host. The web host then changed their terms and conditions and blocked my account without informing me. Then to add insult to injury they said they would unblock it for 3 hours a certain day for me to remove. I'm still salty about that to this day.

caymanjim• 5 years ago

No one can anticipate every possible risk. That's why rules change over time. They should give advance warning, let people out of long-term contracts, or refund prorated monthly bills if they're changing the ToS mid-cycle, but there's nothing wrong with defending yourself against unforeseen abuses. The people mining crypto on shared resources know they're abusing the system; they're just trying to take advantage and spoil things for everyone around them.

that_guy_iain4• 5 years ago

I have issue with changing the ToS and not notifying people and giving them a chance to make a decision. Not just randomly find out the service they pay for is no longer the service they thought they were paying for.

Animats• 5 years ago

Because some crypto mining wears out the SSDs, or because it doesn't do enough network access to incur bandwidth charges?

yread• 5 years ago

Bandwidth is more or less free on Hetzner

drivingmenuts• 5 years ago

Soooo, Chia farming. If I read the article right, you're not actually storing anything useful, like copies of the Library of Congress or SciHub or, say, anything that might be useful to humanity in the long run.

You're just storing a pile of randomish numbers?

Bitcoin, et. al., sounds like a scam to me, but Chia farming sounds like next-level stupid.

supergirl• 5 years ago

correct, you're storing random bits. there is filecoin that actually stores things, but it has its own problems

skjoldr2• 5 years ago

Ethereum Swarm is the saner model where you rent out your disk space for other people and get paid for it in ETH. It's still in beta tho.

leppr• 5 years ago

Storing data has low cost versus continuous computing. This is what makes Chia mining have less external impact. Unused storage space can be used to make a little bit of money.

If the "useful" data you're talking about has nobody willing to pay for its storage, is it really that useful? That's where the economical argument is with Chia: rewards are already low, and will get lower with time. So if some data has any kind of value, then there's no incentive to mine Chia instead of storing this data. Just store the SciHub library and rake in donations.

Hetzner decided there's more value in reserving their hardware for other usages. If the incentive to mine starts getting very big, then they can just mine themselves. From a blockchain-security PoV this is the same as customers-managed mining. Crypto mining incentive mechanisms are working as intended here, so as a cryptocurrency enthusiast I don't consider this development negative.

It's easy to look at something new, the use of it you don't understand, and instantly conclude it's stupid. "Why make data use up x10 more space by encrypting it? You should just store it in a secure location to begin with! Disk encryption is a scam!". "Why waste resources to secure some distributed ledger when you could just use Visa and Mastercard? Cryptocurrencies are a scam!"

reincarnate0x142• 5 years ago

Chia is basically taking a cryptographic proof that would normally take a long time to run, and running them in advance and storing them in a sort of a backwards space/time tradeoff. The farmers keep collections of millions or billions of these in hope that they'll have a few winning lottery tickets over time.

If you accept the premise of cryptocurrencies at all, it's not as stupid as the pure proof-of-works, which essentially require endless scaling to eat any improved capability and efficiency. Big if there though.

mark_l_watson• 5 years ago

As a long term customer, I think banning mining is reasonable.

I base this on personal experience: a few years ago, I rented a server with a GPU to run my own deep learning experiments. If my DL queue emptied, a script would run to start etherium mining. I monitored the GPU temperature and configured the mining software to only utilize about 75% of the GPU. I bet lots of people wouldn’t bother to do this.

shaicoleman• 5 years ago

A better link for T&C in English:

"We strive to keep our networks operating at the highest possible level, so all of our clients benefit from it.

Therefore the following actions are prohibited:

* Operating applications that are used to mine crypto currencies"

https://www.hetzner.com/rechtliches/root-server/

hrbf• 5 years ago

This is a double-edged sword. Changing the TOS silently is a no-go but so is the absurd resource-burning just for crypto mining. Had they done this with a couple of days’ notice it would be a non-issue.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK2• 5 years ago

I rent an AX41 from hetzner and from outside my activity looks like mining - I run all 4 cores at 100% 24/7. However I don't mine, I use it for machine learning. Wonder if they will axe my setup too? what are the criteria?

Hetzner has banned crypto mining and Chia farming

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