Goldshell HS3 SE Review and Unboxing

Goldshell keeps on hitting us with product release after product release! The Goldshell HS3-SE is the newest in a line of Handshake coin miners [EDIT: The Goldshell HS-BOX, released in May 2021, was added to this article for comparison]. Whereas biggest miner brand Bitmain is choosing to focus on Bitcoin ASIC miners, and Innosilicon is doubling down on Ethereum ASICs, it looks like Goldshell is betting big on small caps/altcoins (focusing on Kadena, Litecoin, Dogecoin etc.).

Of these small caps, we're quite excited about Handshake (HNS). DNS is a multibillion dollar monopoly and HNS has a chance of disrupting it.

First, a comparison of the Goldshell HS3 SE with all of Goldshell's other Handshake miners:

	Goldshell HS5	Goldshell HS3	Goldshell HS3-SE	Goldshell HS-BOX
Hashrate	2700GH/s	2000GH/s	930GH/s	235GH/s
Power consumption	2650 W	2000 W	930W	230W
Efficiency (Gigahash per Watt)	1020 GH/W	1000 GH/W	1000 GH/W	1020 GH/W
Noise level	80 db	75 db	55 db	35 db
Release date	Feburary 2021	October 2020	November 2020	May 2021
Intended User	Industrial miners	Industrial miners	Industrial miners, Residential miners	Residential miners
Product Details Link	[Link]	[Link]	[Link]	[Link]

You can see that the efficiency of all these devices is nearly the same: these miners will perform almost the same number of computations per unit of power.

If we examine the timeline of these devices, Goldshell's strategy (and the macro trend in crypto mining) is clear: Goldshell is simultaneously releasing more powerful machines that are more suited towards large facilities, and less powerful compact machines that can be run at home by hobbyists. It looks like we'll see a more pronounced barbell shape in the future; at one end, large scale mining enterprise...at the other end, home miners who have the perfect conditions for profitability, and have added advantage of being able to pack up and move their operation in the face of changing regulations.

The Goldshell HS3 SE occupies middle territory. It's powerful enough to be desired by large scale operations, but also consumes low enough electricity to be able to run at home.

What's Handshake?

The primary use of Handshake is decentralized DNS. Every time you go to a website, the Domain Name System (DNS) converts the URL you type in to an IP address like 192.168.1.1 that lets your browser locate the server it's looking for. We use DNS because it's easier to remember names like google.com than random numbers.

The .com part of the domain is called the Top-Level-Domain (TLD). These are governed and maintained by an organization called ICANN, which decides which TLDs are released every year. Since ICANN is a centralized organization, it comes with the problems of every centralized entity: the potential for rent-seeking, corruption, and hacking.

With the blockchain, we don't have to centralize our DNS anymore. We have a naming system that is not owned by a central organization. With Handshake, we can make any TLD we want. Our sites can end in TLDs like: .leet, .🍏 (yes, emojis!), .p

In fact, the domain name registrar namecheap.com bought the p/ TLD on Handshake for $233,775.

How does this work though? Does that mean anyone will be able to go to domains ending in .p, like hel.p? Yes and no. To access Handshake domains, we have to be connected to Handshake DNS (this is very simple to do). Otherwise, we can add ".hns.to" to the end of Handshake domains to access them with our traditional web: try it, go to http://welcome.nb.hns.to/.

Why do we like Handshake so much?

We're willing to bet that crypto users will spearhead eventual mass adoption for Handshake domains. Why? If you believe that decentralization is the future, then apps like Uniswap and AAVE will eventually need to be completely decentralized, and this includes the domain name. If users can only access dApps through centralized domain names administered by ICANN and sold by registrars, they are still vulnerable to hackers and spies! Imagine if a domain name service was hacked...the hacker can simply replace the app with a lookalike that steals user funds.

Check out Namebase for previous and current sales of Handshake Domain Names. Some past sales of Handshake TLDs include xx/ for 190,000.00 HNS (worth $27,360 at time of sale) and dnet/ for 100,000 HNS (worth $34,500 at time of sale).

By mining HNS we are securing the Handshake network and stacking coins with the utility to purchase the Domain names of the future. We believe that it is grossly undervalued, even after its May 2021 run-up where it reached a price of $0.84 (making Namecheap's purchase of p/ retroactively equal to $315,000!). We will eventually publish a valuation of Handshake.

Enough talk, let's get to mining Handshake with the HS3-SE

The HS3-SE comes in a plain box with quite a bit of padding:

With this amount of padding, we're really not afraid anything would have happened during the shipping process.

We got the model with the Power Supply.

The miner itself is hefty, weighing 7.1kg, or 15.7 pounds.

Otherwise the appearance doesn't differ too much from a standard ASIC. It has 4 hashboards inside, and 4 fans, 2 large 2 small, to dissipate heat

The control panel has an IP report button, Ethernet port, SD port, and status lights.

To set up the miner, we simply plug it into power and use an Ethernet port to connect it to our router.

After opening the Miner User Interface (go to https://find.goldshell.com to find miner IP after you've connected it, then go to that IP in your browser), you can connect to a pool with this simple process.

One of the attractions of the HS3-SE is the sound level. Goldshell advertises the sound as below 55db. We found it to be 53.9db when we tested it.

Note that while this is not as loud as bigger ASICs, it's not quiet either. Imagine constant normal conversation volume.

We got the model with colored lights. We know that some people enjoy this, it can create a nice background ambiance, but others would prefer to have no lights at all.