What is Bitaxe?

Table of Contents

• What is Bitaxe
• Origin and Motivation
• Hardware Architecture
• ESP-Miner Firmware and AxeOS
• Open-Source Licenses
• Model History
• Mining with Bitaxe
• Open Source Miners United
• ASIC Chip Supply Chain
• Significance for Bitcoin
• License Violations and Closed-Source Derivatives
• Documented Block Wins
• Ecosystem and Related Projects
• Where to Buy Bitaxe

What is Bitaxe

Bitaxe is an open-source Bitcoin mining device built around Bitmain ASIC chips. It is a compact, low-power, Wi-Fi-connected circuit board that runs fully open-source firmware called AxeOS (ESP-Miner), requires no external computer to operate, and allows anyone to freely participate in Bitcoin mining from home.

Bitaxe is not a company or a commercial product line. It is a community-driven open-source project with no official manufacturer or seller. Anyone can build, modify, and sell Bitaxe hardware, provided they comply with the project’s open-source licenses. The hardware designs are published at bitaxe.org, and the firmware source code is maintained at github.com/bitaxeorg/ESP-Miner.

The project was created by Skot, an independent hardware engineer who spent years reverse-engineering commercial Bitmain mining hardware before publishing a fully open replacement design. His goal was to make Bitcoin mining accessible to individuals again after years of consolidation into corporate-scale warehouse operations. By releasing every schematic, PCB layout, and line of firmware code to the public, Skot ensured that no single entity could control how the hardware evolves.

Since its first revision, Bitaxe has grown into a global ecosystem of builders, sellers, and contributors. The bitaxe.org/buy page lists known vendors. The Bitaxe name and logo are trademarked by bitaxeorg and are free to use for open-source Bitcoin mining worldwide.

Origin and Motivation

Bitcoin mining was originally accessible to anyone with a personal computer. In the network’s early years, individual users ran mining software on standard CPUs, contributed hashrate from their homes, and earned block rewards directly. This accessibility was a core feature of Bitcoin’s design.

That dynamic changed as the network grew. Graphics processing units (GPUs) replaced CPUs. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) replaced GPUs. Eventually, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), chips engineered exclusively for SHA-256 hashing, rendered all previous hardware obsolete. Companies like Bitmain, MicroBT, and Canaan invested hundreds of millions of dollars into proprietary chip fabrication, data center infrastructure, and vertically integrated supply chains. Mining consolidated into industrial operations that individual participants could not compete with on cost, scale, or efficiency.

By 2023, the vast majority of Bitcoin’s hashrate was produced by a small number of publicly traded companies and mining pools operating in regions with cheap electricity. This concentration introduced risks that Bitcoin’s architecture was designed to avoid: regulatory pressure on a handful of operators could compromise the network’s censorship resistance, and geographic clustering made hashrate vulnerable to regional disruptions.

Skot began the Bitaxe project to address this imbalance. Rather than building another proprietary miner, he chose to reverse-engineer Bitmain’s ASIC chips and publish a complete open-source reference design that anyone could replicate. The first prototype used salvaged BM1397 chips from decommissioned Antminer S17 units. By making every design file public, the project eliminated the knowledge barrier that had kept ASIC miner development confined to a few corporations.

Hardware Architecture

Every Bitaxe is built around three core components: a Bitmain SHA-256 ASIC chip, an Espressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller, and a voltage regulation system. All hardware designs are created with the open-source KiCad PCB design tool, and every schematic, PCB layout, and bill of materials is published under the project’s GitHub repositories within the bitaxeorg organization.

ASIC Chip

The ASIC chip is the computational core of the device. It performs the SHA-256 double-hash operations required by Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm. Bitaxe uses Bitmain-manufactured ASICs, the same chips found inside industrial Antminer hardware, but integrated onto a single small-form-factor PCB rather than arrayed across hundreds of slots in a rack-mounted chassis.

Each Bitaxe hardware revision corresponds to a specific Bitmain ASIC generation. The original Bitaxe Max used the BM1397 from the Antminer S17 series. The Ultra adopted the BM1366 from the S19XP. The Supra moved to the BM1368 from the S21. The current Gamma and GT models use the BM1370 from the Antminer S21 Pro, which Bitmain rates at 15 J/TH efficiency.

The ASIC chips themselves are not open source. Bitmain does not publish datasheets, register maps, or initialization sequences for any of its mining ASICs. The Bitaxe community reverse-engineered the communication protocols, voltage requirements, and job distribution mechanisms for each chip generation through direct hardware analysis. This reverse-engineering work, primarily led by Skot, is preserved in the ESP-Miner firmware’s ASIC driver layer.

ESP32-S3 Microcontroller

The ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 (N16R8 variant, with 16 MB flash and 8 MB octal SPI PSRAM) serves as the system controller. It runs the ESP-Miner firmware, manages Wi-Fi connectivity over 2.4 GHz, handles Stratum V1 pool communication, sends work to the ASIC chip, validates returned nonces, and serves the AxeOS web interface. The ESP32 communicates with the ASIC through level shifters that adapt voltage levels between the two devices.

All ESP32 programming is performed through a USB-C connector on the board. No external programmer or JTAG interface is required.

Power Regulation

Bitaxe models through the Supra series used a combination of a TI TPS40305 buck regulator (stepping down the 5V input to the ASIC core voltage) and a Maxim DS4432U+ current DAC for fine-grained voltage adjustment. Beginning with the Gamma 600 series, the voltage regulation system was consolidated into a TI TPS546D24A integrated buck converter with digital control, eliminating the separate DAC. The TPS546D24A provides both voltage regulation and power telemetry, reporting input voltage, current draw, and internal temperature directly to the ESP32 via I2C.

The VRM’s overheat protection threshold is set at 105°C (TPS546_THROTTLE_TEMP in the firmware source). The absolute maximum rating is 145°C. The firmware monitors VRM temperature continuously and triggers an emergency shutdown sequence if either the ASIC (75°C) or VRM (105°C) threshold is exceeded.

Thermal Management and Fan Control

Active cooling is mandatory on all Bitaxe models. The board includes a connector for a 5V fan (40×40 mm on single-chip models, 60 mm on the GT). A Microchip EMC2101 (or EMC2103/EMC2302 on newer variants) PWM fan controller manages fan speed and monitors tachometer output. In automatic mode, the firmware runs a temperature-based control loop in a dedicated FreeRTOS task that adjusts fan speed proportionally to ASIC temperature. Manual fan speed override is also available through AxeOS.

A heatsink mounted directly to the ASIC package with thermal compound provides the primary heat dissipation path. The quality of the thermal interface material and heatsink contact pressure significantly affect maximum stable hashrate, particularly when overclocking.

Display

Most Bitaxe models include an onboard display for at-a-glance monitoring. Single-chip models typically use a 0.91-inch SSD1306-based I2C OLED module. The Bitaxe Touch and Turbo Touch variants feature larger color LCD touchscreens (3.5-inch and 4.3-inch respectively) driven by the BAP (Bitaxe Accessory Protocol) developed by WantClue. The OLED display system in the firmware was written by mutatrum using the LVGL graphics library.

ESP-Miner Firmware and AxeOS

Every Bitaxe runs the ESP-Miner firmware, an open-source codebase written primarily in C for the Espressif ESP-IDF framework. The firmware is hosted at github.com/bitaxeorg/ESP-Miner and licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0).

AxeOS is the name for the firmware’s user-facing operating system, specifically the browser-based web interface served by the ESP32’s built-in HTTP server on port 80. The terms “ESP-Miner” and “AxeOS” refer to the same codebase: ESP-Miner is the firmware project, and AxeOS is its front-end dashboard.

As of March 2026, the ESP-Miner repository has accumulated over 1,180 commits from 65 contributors. The latest stable release is v2.12.2 (January 2026), with an early access canary build in testing. Key contributors include Skot (original author, wrote nearly all ASIC drivers), WantClue (lead developer, primary release manager, creator of the BAP protocol and BAP-GT-TOUCH firmware), benjamin-wilson, mutatrum (OLED/LVGL display system), johnny9, and eandersson.

Mining Pipeline

The firmware’s mining pipeline operates as follows. The ESP32 connects to a configured Stratum V1 mining pool over TCP. The pool sends a mining job containing block header data and a target difficulty. The firmware prepares this data and sends it to the ASIC chip, which performs SHA-256 double-hash computations at high speed. When the ASIC finds a nonce that produces a hash below the target, it returns the result to the ESP32. The firmware validates the nonce and submits it to the pool as a share. If the hash also meets the full Bitcoin network difficulty, the pool broadcasts it as a valid block.

The firmware supports automatic pool failover. If the primary pool becomes unreachable after three consecutive connection failures, the system switches to a configured fallback pool. Beginning with v2.13.0, pool setting changes take effect immediately without requiring a reboot.

AxeOS Dashboard

The AxeOS web interface is accessible from any device on the same local network by navigating to the Bitaxe’s IP address in a browser. The dashboard displays real-time metrics including hashrate (TH/s), ASIC temperature, VRM temperature, power consumption (watts), efficiency (J/TH), shares accepted and rejected, best difficulty achieved, and uptime.

The settings panel allows the user to configure Wi-Fi credentials, Stratum pool URL and port, Bitcoin wallet address (Stratum user field), fallback pool, fan mode (automatic or manual), and ASIC frequency and core voltage. Overclocking controls are available by appending ?oc to the settings URL, which unlocks manual frequency and voltage input fields beyond the default dropdown ranges.

REST API

AxeOS exposes a REST API for programmatic access to system data and controls. Documented endpoints include GET /api/system/info for system information, GET /api/system/asic for ASIC settings, GET /api/system/statistics for logging data, POST /api/system/OTA for firmware updates, and PATCH /api/system for settings changes. Full API documentation is maintained in the repository’s main/http_server/openapi.yaml file.

Firmware Updates

Users can update the firmware through the AxeOS web interface by navigating to the settings panel and checking for new releases, which downloads and applies the update over-the-air (OTA). Alternatively, firmware can be flashed via USB-C using the bitaxetool command-line utility, a Python package available via pip. A browser-based web flasher is also available for factory resets without command-line tools.

Open-Source Licenses

Bitaxe is governed by two open-source licenses that together ensure the hardware and software remain permanently open.

The hardware designs (schematics, PCB layouts, bill of materials, and mechanical files) are released under the CERN Open Hardware Licence Version 2, Strongly Reciprocal (CERN-OHL-S). This license was created by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and is approved by the Open Source Initiative. CERN-OHL-S requires that anyone who modifies and distributes the hardware designs must publish their complete modified source under the same license. Any commercial product derived from Bitaxe hardware must make its full design files publicly available.

The firmware (ESP-Miner / AxeOS) is released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0). This license requires that any distributed modifications to the software also be released as open source under the same terms. The GPL-3.0 additionally includes provisions against tivoization, meaning manufacturers cannot use hardware restrictions to prevent users from running modified firmware on Bitaxe devices they own.

Together, the CERN-OHL-S and GPL-3.0 create a strongly reciprocal open-source framework. No entity can legally produce a Bitaxe-derived product with closed-source hardware modifications or proprietary firmware. This licensing structure is what fundamentally distinguishes Bitaxe from every proprietary Bitcoin miner on the market. Manufacturers that produce derivative hardware without publishing their modifications are in violation of these licenses, a recurring issue the community actively monitors.

Model History

The Bitaxe project has progressed through multiple hardware revisions since its first prototype. Each generation adopted a newer, more efficient Bitmain ASIC chip, increasing hashrate while reducing energy consumption per terahash. The project uses a numerical series system to identify hardware generations, visible in the config file names within the ESP-Miner repository (e.g., config-602.cvs for the Gamma 602).

Bitaxe Max (100 Series)

The original Bitaxe. It used the BM1397 ASIC from the Antminer S17 series, producing approximately 400 GH/s at roughly 15 watts (~38 J/TH). The Max established the fundamental Bitaxe architecture: single ASIC chip, ESP32-S3 controller, Wi-Fi connectivity, 5V barrel jack power input, and open-source design files. It was the first fully open-source Bitcoin ASIC miner, proving that an individual could build a functioning SHA-256 miner from publicly available components and documentation. The Max is discontinued.

Bitaxe Ultra (200 Series)

The second major revision adopted the BM1366 ASIC from the Antminer S19XP. Hashrate increased to approximately 500 GH/s at 15 watts (~30 J/TH). The Ultra introduced USB-C for ESP32 programming (replacing the earlier UART header), added support for the SSD1306 OLED display, and switched to a TI INA260 power meter for monitoring input voltage and current. A Microchip EMC2101 handled fan PWM and temperature monitoring. The Ultra’s firmware architecture became the foundation for all subsequent models. The Ultra is discontinued.

Bitaxe Supra (400 Series)

The third major revision moved to the BM1368 ASIC from the Antminer S21. Efficiency improved to approximately 19 J/TH, with hashrate reaching around 650 GH/s at roughly 12.5 watts. The Supra maintained the same form factor and 5V power input but delivered S21-class efficiency in a home miner for the first time.

Bitaxe Gamma (600 Series)

The Gamma is the fifth major revision (the fourth was an internal iteration) and uses the BM1370 ASIC from the Antminer S21 Pro. According to the bitaxeGamma repository, it produces approximately 1.2 TH/s at 18 watts (~15 J/TH). The Gamma replaced the TPS40305/DS4432U+ voltage regulation system with a TPS546D24A integrated buck converter, consolidating power regulation and telemetry into a single component. The BM1370 has a different footprint and pinout from all previous Bitaxe ASICs, requiring a complete PCB redesign. The Gamma 602 is the current production revision. All PCB design files are published in KiCad format.

Bitaxe Duo (650 Series)

The Duo places two BM1370 ASIC chips on a single board, producing approximately 1.63 TH/s at 25.8 watts (~15 J/TH). It uses the same 5V USB-C power input as the Gamma but requires a higher-current power supply to accommodate the increased draw. The Duo provides 48% more hashrate than the single-chip Gamma while maintaining the same efficiency.

Bitaxe Hex (700 Series)

The Hex, also known as the UltraHex, placed six BM1366 ASIC chips on a single board, producing approximately 3 TH/s at 60 watts (~20 J/TH). It was the first multi-chip Bitaxe design and required 12V DC input via screw terminals rather than the 5V barrel jack or USB-C used by single-chip models. The Hex hardware repository on GitHub notes that the design was never fully finalized, with known issues in the Vcore regulator output capacitance on later revisions. The Hex is discontinued, though its design files remain available for reference.

Bitaxe GT (800 Series)

The Bitaxe Gamma Turbo (GT) is the first dual-chip Bitaxe designed from the ground up for higher performance. According to the BitaxeGT repository, version 801 is the current release, featuring component and layout changes over the initial 800 prototype. The GT produces approximately 2.15 TH/s at 43 watts (~18 J/TH) using two BM1370 ASICs. Unlike single-chip models that run on 5V USB-C, the GT requires 12V DC power through an XT30 connector. The GT is the highest-hashrate Bitaxe variant available.

Bitaxe Turbo Touch (800 Series)

The Bitaxe Turbo Touch shares the GT’s dual-chip 800 series hardware platform but adds a 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen and runs the BAP-GT-TOUCH firmware developed by WantClue. The touchscreen provides eight on-device display screens including live hashrate, Bitcoin price, block height, latest mined blocks, and full mining configuration, all without opening a browser. The Turbo Touch produces the same 2.15 TH/s at 43 watts as the standard GT 801.

Bitaxe Bonanza (Development Stage)

The Bitaxe Bonanza is a development-stage hardware design based on the Intel BZM2 ASIC rather than a Bitmain chip. The Bonanza repository, published under the bitaxeorg GitHub organization with a CERN-OHL-S license and last updated in March 2026, currently contains the license file and initial project structure. No hardware specifications, PCB layouts, or firmware support have been published yet. The Bonanza represents the Bitaxe project’s first step toward chip supplier diversification. If completed, it would demonstrate that the open-source hardware platform can function with non-Bitmain silicon, reducing the project’s long-term dependency on a single ASIC manufacturer.

The complete model progression from the Max’s 38 J/TH to the Gamma’s 15 J/TH represents a 60% improvement in energy efficiency across four ASIC chip generations, achieved entirely within an open-source hardware framework.

All Bitaxe Models

The Bitaxe Turbo Touch and Bitaxe GT 801 share the same dual-chip 800 series hardware platform. The Turbo Touch adds a 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen and runs the BAP-GT-TOUCH firmware, providing on-device displays for mining stats, Bitcoin price, block height, and touch-based configuration without opening a browser.

Mining with Bitaxe

Bitaxe connects to any Stratum V1-compatible Bitcoin mining pool. The user enters a pool URL, port number, and Bitcoin wallet address in the AxeOS settings panel. Once saved, the device begins hashing and submitting shares to the pool automatically.

Solo Mining and Lottery Mining

The most common use of Bitaxe is solo mining, frequently referred to as lottery mining. In this configuration, the miner connects to a solo mining pool such as Public Pool or Solo CKPool. These are not pools in the traditional reward-splitting sense. They provide Stratum infrastructure so individual miners can compete for the full block reward (currently 3.125 BTC plus transaction fees) without running their own Bitcoin node.

The probability of a single Bitaxe such as the Bitaxe Gamma (1.2 TH/s) finding a valid block is approximately 1 in 5,542,412 per day, 1 in 184,748 per month, and 1 in 15,175 per year at current Bitcoin network difficulty of 133.79 T, according to the Solo Satoshi mining profitability calculator. The estimated time to find a block at this hashrate is 15,174 years. Despite those odds the potential reward for a single block find is 3.125 BTC (approximately $212,546 at current prices). Multiple Bitaxe devices have found full Bitcoin blocks since 2024, with confirmed on-chain payouts exceeding $1 million in aggregate across the open-source mining community.

Node-Connected Solo Mining

For users who run their own Bitcoin full node, Bitaxe can be pointed at the node using Ocean’s DATUM protocol or self-hosted pool software. In this configuration, the miner’s own node constructs block templates and validates transactions independently, contributing directly to Bitcoin’s decentralization. This is the most sovereign form of Bitcoin mining: the user controls the hardware, the firmware, the node, and the block template.

Pool Mining

Bitaxe can also connect to traditional reward-sharing pools such as Ocean or Braiins. In pool mining, the device contributes hashrate alongside other miners and receives proportional payouts based on submitted shares. At 1.2 TH/s, a single Bitaxe Gamma earns approximately 0.00000054 BTC per day (roughly $0.04 USD) on a pool with a 1% fee, according to the Solo Satoshi mining pool stats calculator. Most pools enforce a minimum payout threshold, and every Bitcoin transaction carries a network fee. At this earning rate, it can take weeks or months before a miner accumulates enough to trigger a payout. Pool mining provides a consistent trickle of satoshis rather than the all-or-nothing outcome of solo mining, but the practical economics of minimum thresholds and transaction fees are important to understand before choosing this approach.

Energy Consumption

Bitaxe uses the latest generation of Bitmain ASIC chips, the same silicon found in industrial mining hardware, which means each device benefits from the same advances in power efficiency that drive commercial mining operations. The difference is scale. Where an industrial Antminer S21 Pro arrays 195 of these chips and draws 3,510 watts requiring dedicated 240-volt circuits and industrial ventilation, a Bitaxe runs one or two chips at household power levels.

As an example, the Bitaxe Gamma 602 operating at 1.2 TH/s with 15 J/TH efficiency draws 18 watts continuously. At a residential electricity rate of $0.12/kWh, that translates to $0.05 per day and $1.56 per month, according to the Solo Satoshi mining power consumption calculator. This is comparable to the power draw of a small LED desk lamp running 24 hours a day. Electricity cost scales linearly with the number of units. A six-unit Bitaxe Gamma cluster drawing 108 watts total costs roughly $9.36 per month, still below what a single incandescent light bulb would use.

Open Source Miners United

Bitaxe development is coordinated through Open Source Miners United (OSMU), a community of developers, hardware designers, and Bitcoin miners. OSMU is not a company or a foundation. It is a voluntary collaboration that serves as the decentralized coordination layer for the Bitaxe project and other open-source mining hardware initiatives.

The official OSMU website is osmu.xyz. Day-to-day collaboration, including firmware development, hardware revision proposals, performance benchmarking, troubleshooting, and release coordination, takes place on the OSMU Discord server. The community also maintains the OSMU Wiki as a technical reference.

OSMU is funded by Bitcoin donations and supported by organizations including OpenSats, the Human Rights Foundation, and the 256 Foundation. Lightning donations can be sent to [email protected].

ASIC Chip Supply Chain

The ASIC chips inside every current Bitaxe are manufactured by Bitmain, a privately held company headquartered in Beijing that dominates the Bitcoin mining hardware market. Bitmain does not sell individual ASIC chips through official retail channels. Chips used in Bitaxe production are typically sourced from third-party component sellers or removed from new or used Antminer hashboards.

This dependency on a single chip manufacturer creates supply chain risk. Chip availability, pricing, and quality are subject to Bitmain’s production decisions and export policies. The BM1370 chips used in the Gamma and GT, for example, are available in small quantities from third-party sellers but at prices influenced by Bitmain’s wholesale market dynamics.

Several initiatives aim to diversify the mining ASIC supply chain. Block, Inc. (formerly Square) has invested in open ASIC chip development through its mining hardware division. Other semiconductor companies are designing competitive SHA-256 ASICs. The Bitaxe Bonanza, a board design using the Intel BZM2 ASIC, demonstrates that the open-source hardware platform can adapt to non-Bitmain chips as they become commercially available.

Bitaxe’s open-source model provides a structural hedge against chip supply centralization. Because the hardware designs are public and modular, the community can adapt the platform to new ASIC architectures as they become available. However, each new chip presents its own challenges. Bitmain does not publish datasheets or register documentation for its ASICs, so developers must reverse-engineer the communication protocols, initialization sequences, and voltage requirements for every new chip generation. If future chip manufacturers provide open documentation, integration becomes significantly easier. If they do not, the same reverse-engineering process that built the existing driver support for the BM1397, BM1366, BM1368, and BM1370 would need to be repeated.

Significance for Bitcoin

Bitaxe’s importance extends beyond its technical specifications. As an open-source project, it addresses a structural vulnerability in Bitcoin’s security model: the concentration of mining hardware development and hashrate production in a small number of corporate entities.

Bitcoin’s security depends on proof-of-work mining being distributed across many independent operators. When hashrate concentrates, the operators who control it gain disproportionate influence over which transactions are included in blocks, creating potential vectors for censorship or regulatory capture. Geographic concentration compounds this risk, as hashrate clustered in a single jurisdiction can be disrupted by local policy changes or infrastructure failures.

Every Bitaxe device operating in a home, in any country, adds to the geographic and operational diversity of Bitcoin’s hashrate. A single unit contributing 1.2 TH/s is negligible against the network’s total hashrate (exceeding 800 EH/s as of early 2026, according to mempool.space), but the cumulative effect of millions of independent home miners distributes hashrate across jurisdictions, network topologies, and operator profiles that no corporate mining operation replicates.

The open-source licensing framework ensures this effect is permanent. Because anyone can build a Bitaxe and no entity can close-source a derivative, the project creates an ever-expanding base of distributed mining capacity that operates independently of any company’s business decisions, supply chain disruptions, or regulatory compliance requirements.

From a practical standpoint, Bitaxe also functions as an educational tool. Building, configuring, and running a Bitaxe exposes users to Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism, SHA-256 hashing, Stratum protocol communication, difficulty adjustment, and block reward economics in a hands-on way that reading documentation alone cannot replicate.

License Violations and Closed-Source Derivatives

The open-source licenses governing Bitaxe require that any derivative product make its complete design source and firmware modifications publicly available. Not all manufacturers comply with these terms.

A growing number of sellers on platforms such as Amazon, AliExpress, Walmart, and Newegg offer devices that are visually identical to Bitaxe hardware but ship with modified firmware that has not been published as open source. Some of these devices have locked ESP32 modules, preventing users from reading, downloading, or replacing the firmware. This directly violates the GPL-3.0 license, which explicitly prohibits using hardware restrictions to prevent users from running modified software on devices they own.

Other manufacturers have taken the open-source Bitaxe and ESP-Miner designs, rebranded them under proprietary names, and marketed them as original products with no attribution to the Bitaxe project or OSMU. In some cases, hardware modifications have been made without publishing the updated schematics, violating the CERN-OHL-S requirement that all derivative hardware designs remain open.

These practices undermine the open-source development model that sustains Bitaxe. Firmware improvements, bug fixes, and security patches produced by OSMU contributors are funded by community donations and volunteer labor. Closed-source derivatives benefit from this work without contributing back, extracting value from the ecosystem while weakening the transparency and trust that define the project.

The Bitaxe community actively monitors for license violations. The bitaxe.org/buy page maintains a list of verified sellers who comply with the project’s licensing terms. Buyers who want to ensure their device runs genuine, unmodified open-source firmware and supports continued development are encouraged to purchase from sellers on this list.

Documented Block Wins

Despite the extremely low probability of a single home miner solving a Bitcoin block, multiple Bitaxe and open-source mining devices have done so. Each event is independently verifiable on the Bitcoin blockchain via mempool.space.

The open-source mining community has collectively earned over $1 million in BTC block rewards since July 2024. The table below documents every confirmed block find through November 2025.

The interval between confirmed blocks has been shrinking: 229 days between the first and second, 179 days to the third, 52 days to the fourth, and 25 days to the fifth. This trend reflects the growing installed base of open-source miners worldwide. Several of these wins came from setups hashing at single-digit terahashes per second against a Bitcoin network exceeding 1 Zetahash (1,000,000 TH/s).

Ecosystem and Related Projects

Bitaxe is the most widely adopted open-source Bitcoin ASIC miner, but it exists within a broader ecosystem of related projects.

NerdAxe is an open-source miner forked from the Bitaxe project and developed by the BitMaker-hub community. It shares firmware lineage with ESP-Miner and runs AxeOS.

Bitcrane is an open-source replacement control board for existing Antminer hardware, allowing users to reclaim control of proprietary miners using open firmware.

Nerdminer is an ESP32-based educational miner that hashes at kilohertz-scale speeds. It is not competitive for block finding but serves as an accessible introduction to Bitcoin mining concepts.

All of these projects share the same foundational principle: making Bitcoin mining hardware and firmware transparent, inspectable, and modifiable by anyone. Together with Bitaxe, they form the open-source Bitcoin mining movement that OSMU coordinates.

Where to Buy Bitaxe

Because Bitaxe is an open-source project, there is no single official seller. The bitaxe.org/buy page maintains a list of verified vendors who comply with the project’s open-source licensing terms. Solo Satoshi is a bitaxe.org verified seller based in Houston, Texas that has shipped over 40,000 open-source mining devices to 70+ countries since May 2024. Every unit is manufactured in the USA, bench-tested before shipping, and backed by a 90-day warranty. Browse all Bitaxe models available from Solo Satoshi.