Nvidia probably thought it had put a definite stop to Ethereum mining on GeForce RTX 30-series (Ampere) graphics cards with the introduction of the Lite Hash Rate (LHR) series. NBMiner, a popular mining software, has found a partial workaround to Nvidia's enhanced anti-mining limiter.
The latest version of NBMiner (via VideoCardz) debuted today and brought a very interesting hack with it. According to the changelog, the tool restores up to 70% of the mining performance on Ampere LHR graphics cards. It's just a partial bypass, but NBMiner is on to something so we can't discard the possibility of a full workaround down the line. Sadly, miners will probably have the LHR series on their radars with this new development. This comes as bad news for gamers as another shortage may be on the horizon.
Ethereum's pending transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) model to a proof-of-stake (PoS) model aims to reduce power usage by up to 99.95%, according to the Ethereum Foundation, and eliminate the dependency on graphics card. The upgrade may happen by the end of 2021 or early 2022 so miners may have their days numbered.
