Topic: [Guide] Dogie's Comprehensive Manufacturer Trustworthiness Guide [1st Feb 2016] - page 47. (Read 131506 times)

AMT ethics?  5/10 ... utterly ridiculous... should be 0/10.

They have no proof that they delivered a working model to anyone.

They sent a bounced check to their original manufacturer.

They shipped broken equipment to their users.

They never accepted RMA from anyone.

They don't even have a legit office!

Why do you ridicule yourself by claiming there are no proof, when you clearly haven't done your homework?

we have no evidence asicminer ordered 60 PH of chips.  thats a huge amount, and they don't seem to be in evidence anywhere.  And anyway, where'd they get the cash to buy such a large order?  that would cost tens of millions of dollars.   Also, their chip isn't the world beater they thought it was going to be and ended up pretty uncompetitive... if they had any sense they'd not order too many as it'd be unprofitable to run it this late in the game.  when they were originally planning to make such big orders it was going to be the best chip by a huge margin and much lower power consumption than it ended up.  Its a common problem that has befallen almost every asic company - of the chips not performing quite as good as they expected (yes, even bitfury whose chips were rated at 5 GH and ended up at 2.5 GH... same with Cointerra shipping a 1.6 TH instead of a 2 TH system, initially).

HashFast should have gone with ranking to 0 because they have failed to deliver 95% of equipment and what they delivered was with 6 months delay. Also they are crrently going through bankruptcy court hearings so they literally ceased to exist.

Black Arrow communication ranking shoudl go to zero. They have completely stopped any customer service 2 months ago. They have never answered any phone calls and they have been ignoring any customer's e-mails for last 2 months. They also, every day, on their forum thread they keep cenosring-removing any posts related to seeking any legal action against them.

Are you forgetting that asicminer had 60PH worth of wafers to sell as of ~2 months ago? That's probably more than bitfury has ever produced.

Anyways it's pointless to speculate because nobody knows the exact (or even approximate) size of every company.

Maybe use age instead of size?

Dogie -

i do appreciate you doing your ratings system, and its explained quite well...  

your ratings methodology is very good.  but the way you've applied it seems 'hit and miss' and open to interpretation and emotional bias.

here's a few anomalies for you to consider...


bitfury - mostly makes chips, not systems.   Yes, they make systems for their own private mine but they have hardly sold any of those to the public.  probably 90%+ of the systems that have been 'sold' containing bitfury chips were made by unconnected third parties utilising bitfury's chips.  yet you have them classified as a manufacturer of systems and have given them the benefit of not pre-selling, whereas the third parties who make the systems using bitfury chips, often do pre-orders right up until the chips arrive in stock.  i myself bought bitburner boards from cryptx via pre-order., months in advance of their delivery. Most people bought bitfury boards from someone else and not direct from bitfury.  now, of course, these companies are selling from stock because they've got plenty of chips, but in advance of the chips arriving in volume they were taking pre-orders.   And what about your ethics score?  You've got BitFury marked as an 'F' for a private mine, yet you've got KnCMiner scored as Ethics FF, which means 'HUGE private Mine' .  Thats a purely emotional response, and isn't borne by the facts.    Do you really think KnCMiner's private mine is bigger than BitFury's private mine?

cointerra - doesn't seem well classified according to your rating methodologies.  for instance, you scored them 1/10 for 'uses pre-orders' whereas they've been selling from stock ever since their systems arrived (months ago).  you can buy one from stock today, or any time in the last few months.  yet again, thats an emotional bias and isn't factual.   they did do pre-orders (like most companies out there) before their stock arrived.  You also rated them 1/10 for 'on time'.  Why, if you're scoring out of 10, do you only have 3 options, Yes, No and Mixed.  Why not have a linear (or log) score out of 10 for how 'on time' each company is?   This particular company delivered their systems in batches according to month and the customers orders were delivered in that specific month.   They shipped thousands of systems, and the vast majority were delivered in the month they were due (or a week or two late)  the earlier batches were a few weeks late but not 'months late'.  apart from the 1st batch (december), which was delayed a whole month and the customers who bought that batch were given compensation in the form of double the number systems.   there's no way this company could be judged 1/10 for 'on time' if you're trying to compare relative timeliness to the others.  Many of the asic companies on your list are ones that have never shipped (hashfast, blackarrow, bfl, vmc etc ) are are those infinitely late.   Your ratings are scored out of 10, so you could easily differentiate those that shipped a little late versus those that shipped very very very late (or, Never) using the entire scoring range.

Size of companies.  how do you rate that?  it seems like pure fiction.   You have AsicMiner, BitMain and BitFury rated as 'Huge' (i agree with the latter two but i think asicminer is probably not so huge any longer).  You have Spondoolies and RockMiner as 'Large', but how do you even classify those?  RockMiner as small and i think even Spondoolies would admit they're not 'large'.  How are you going to measure it?  Is this just pure guesswork?   Why not based it on a measurable or determinable statistic like Revenue, or Petahashes shipped?

Bitmine - You have them rated as Large...  How was that measured?   you ALSO have them listed as having made their own chip.  Did they really make their own chip or do they just buy it from innosilicon like so many chinese companies?    Innosilicon says they made the chip and that bitmine is 'a reseller', like everyone else.

In order of size of company, i suspect a more realistic list would be:   BitFury is 1st, KnCMiner 2nd, Bitmain 3rd, Cointerra 4th, etc..    this size rating probably works regardless of whether you measure by petahash or revenue.  I doubt asicminer is even relevant at this time.  They're no longer Huge.  They were HUGE when the network was less than 1 Petahash - now they're a minnow - and got left behind when the others designed better chips.

Source? I haven't seen any serious complaints. Also why 4/10 for size? They have probably manufactured several PH by now. Probably tied with rockminer or lightningasic.

Although I have to agree with notlambchop that size is not a good variable. Not only does size not indicate how reputable a company is, it's nearly impossible to accurately judge.


Same with asicminer and bitfury. At least with those two they didn't sell used HW.


That's absurd. If you buy something and it doesn't specifically say "used" then it is assumed to be new.

We both know that used electronics are worth less than new ones and there is no excuse for bitmain to secretly sell heavily used hardware. And a 90 day warranty doesn't make it any more excusable.

This new guide looks really good.  I love the composite scores.  that makes it really easy for people.

Black Arrow

Communication 4/10
Ethics 5/10



censoring information, which they do here and on their forum, should take that communications rating down.  they go through their self-moderated thread and delete information that may reflect poorly on them all the time and have been doing it for as long as I can remember.

Ethics?  from what I can see they have none.  an endless series of missed delivery dates, half truths if not outright lies, screwing people they refunded in bitcoin by refunding bitcoin originally sent after price had severely tumbled, a broken promise on price matching the competition at time of shipping(which is huge), a lack of fiat refunds- and more.  

I am unfortunately one of their pre-order customers and I've been watching this all along.  what is most glaringly missing from their operation, aside from the ability to effectively develop mining equipment, IMO, is ethics.  they're attempting to hide behind a TOS that seemingly conflicts with Hong Kong law, their answers, when/if you can get them, on support and via e-mail are not answers at all in many cases but further excuses, and we are seeing cases now where people have requested refunds and their miners are being shipped out anyhow.  their resellers are also looking to me to be getting desperate as they claim they are not getting refunds from BA either and are therefore being forced to refund out of pocket, which is leading to their attempting to deny refunds and ship to people that have requested refunds also, which will undoubtedly lead to lawsuits and further actions against them also.

these people have created a total nightmare for just about everyone that has chosen to do business with them on this latest round of product.

edit:  I'm not seeking in any way to debate with you Dogie.  this guide is a great thing for people done, from what I can tell, on your own time to attempt to help others.  please make your own decision on whether or not these things are relevant to your rating system.  you know more about what you're trying to do in the aggregate than I do, I think.

The ___s are structural spacing, tables are spastic as hell on SMF without the formatting options enabled. The table tries to collapse in to minimise width at all times.

Company y rocks up and says "look we have miners", sells 5 online. According to the rating system, they would achieve almost a perfect score. That doesn't make any sense, hence there needs to be a size metric.

Hi, i just meant replacing the _______________ (_ _ _ _ _) with

---

(quote message to see).

Regarding company size, it's simply a suggestion on my part.  If you feel size translates into trustworthiness, i have no evidence that it doesn't, but to me it seems to penalize small chip integrators.  Again, I defer to your opinion, I'm really glad you're maintaining this thread.  If I haven't thanked you before, thanks

It has to be that way or a brand new company yet to make mistakes is rated higher than the huge companies - that doesn't make any sense. They could have put in virtually no money, get a really high trustworthiness rating and then use it to steal preorder money. There has to be a criteria that looks at size and newness.

What do you mean with the hr tags? Looks fine to me.

Hi dogie.  Looks awesome!  The only possible glitch i see is with how the variables are weighed.  For instance, a company being small detracts as many points as a company not shipping miners.  Oh, and the forum software grocks the...

...tags, if that's useful.

BTCGarden does have quality issues, but they also deny it (hence the unethical issues).

In bitmain's case its excluded because its never, ever impacted the customer deliveries as they only sell in batches, and deliver within their specified dates. They've also never ever specified the hardware is new, its hardware with a warranty. They aren't doing anything wrong there.

Its already separate, farm mining is highlighted with the legend.

Huge improvement.

Although I would have to disagree that btcgarden has ethics or quality issues. I've heard very little complaints and communication has been top notch.

Also I don't think bitmain should be 10/10 for ethics because they have their own megamine (same size as KNC) and some questionable ethics like selling heavily used hardware.

It might be a good idea to have two separate ratings for ethics and superfarming because some might not see self mining as being unethical (as long as they use their own time and money as well as stay far below 51%)

Relaunch is now live, see the OP.

New format is ready, ratings are done, just finishing off some formatting. It currently smashes the post character limit and there isn't a way I can reduce it while conforming to BBCode so I've asked Theymos to take a look.

In the meantime, are there any other companies people want to see? These are the active companies...

ASICMiner
Bitfury
Bitmain
SpondooliesTech
RockMiner
Yiazo
OneStringMiner
Technobit
BTCGarden
BitMine
Lightning ASIC
KNC Miner
CoinTerra
HashFast
Black Arrow
AMT
VMC
BFL

and inactive companies (either barebones or not at all):

ASIC Runner
Avalon
Big Picture Mining
Drillbit
NonceTech
Starfire X
Redhash

edit: [removed old code fragment]

There needs to be one or two that can be fudgefactor'ed to take into account new companies. Ie a new company could tick all the boxes (small batch on in hand stock, not screw anyone over, deliver what they promise) and gain the same numerical rating as a company 100x their size. Ethics allows us to take into account things like potential premining, or super farms, or split manufacturing lines or general foul play.

Each of those categories will get a scorecard similar to what the current style has now for A-BFL so its clear whats going on. Typically the ethics one if not a 10 will be explained in the comments. In AM's case, they can't have a perfect score because of their own super farms competing on the network. Not maliciously, and fully disclosed though I may add.

Another example of ethics is Avalon. On the other criteria even as much as people want/ed me to, I wouldn't reduce their rating by much because they didn't fail in those areas. The addition of an ethics score allows the community's views to directly be integrated. There shouldn't be a long line of pissed off customers if a company hasn't done anything wrong, right?

I agree it's a good idea to move towards a more mathematical system althpugh I'm not sure about size and ethics being variables.

What exactly is size and what kind of metric will you use for ethics?

Nice job, I like it. Easy to read and well laid out. Thanks for your continued work on this thread, many find it very useful.

nice format

rockminer and btcgarden should be on the list