Proto Rig & Proto Fleet by Block: status and timeline

Proto Rig & Proto Fleet

Give miners an alternative to the few dominant miner makers, and turn mining rigs from 3-to-5-year throwaway machines into 10-year infrastructure that is upgraded board by board.

DeployStage 4 of 5

On sale since Aug 2025; anchor buyer Core Scientific cancelled its 15 EH/s chip order in Q2 2026.

Updated 29 Jul 2026Checked 11 Oct0 updates this week

Milestones

No announced next step

Proto 3 nm mining chip completedApr 2024Complete.
Core Scientific orders ~15 EH/s of chips10 Jul 2024Complete.
Proto Rig and Proto Fleet unveiled in Dalton, Georgia14 Aug 2025Complete.
Core Scientific cancels remaining deliveriesQ2 2026Complete.

Most important updates

Current obstacles

No named large customer after Core ScientificCore Scientific, the only big buyer Block has named, paid to cancel its order in Q2 2026 to focus on AI data centres.
Miners are leaving mining for AI hostingSeveral big miners now rent their power and sites to AI computing instead, shrinking demand for new mining rigs.
Short field recordThe 10-year chassis claim is untested; reliability of a new design shows only after years of round-the-clock running.

Physics limits

Every hash costs energyEach guess flips billions of transistors, and each flip burns a little energy as heat. Better chip processes cut that cost, but the gains shrink as transistors approach atomic sizes.
Heat removal caps densityA 12 kW box turns nearly all its power into heat. Air can only carry so much away per rack, so denser mining needs liquid or immersion cooling.
The network cancels efficiency gainsBitcoin raises its difficulty as total hashing power grows, so the same number of coins is shared among ever faster machines; a rig's earnings fall as rivals upgrade.

How it works

4 parts

Hashing

Chips that guess numbers very fast

Mining means hashing block data trillions of times a second to find a winning number. Custom chips do only this, using far less energy per guess.

Boards

Hot-swappable hashboards

Nine boards carry the chips. A failed board slides out by hand, no tools, with the rig left on the rack, so repairs take seconds, not days.

Upgrades

Upgrade boards, keep the frame

Power supplies, fans and frame stay; only boards change when better chips arrive. Block puts the saving at 15-20% per upgrade cycle.

Fleet

Open-source site software

Proto Fleet tracks every machine, flags faults and scales power up or down, for example to follow electricity prices.

Spec sheet

Spec	Proto Rig & Proto Fleet
Hashrate (9 boards)	Up to 819 TH/s^R (reported)
Efficiency (air-cooled)	As low as 14.1 J/TH^R (reported)
Power draw	Up to 12,000 W^R (reported)
Swappable hashboards	9 (up to 91 TH/s each)^R (reported)
On-rack repair time	Under 90 s^R (reported)
Weight (9 boards)	110 lb^R (reported)
Chip process	3 nm^R (reported)

^R reported by the company

Update log

3 updates

About Block

The team behind Proto Rig & Proto Fleet

Block

Proto bitcoin mining rigs, Bitkey, Cash App

Block, run by Jack Dorsey, owns Square, Cash App, Afterpay and the Bitkey wallet. Its Proto unit designs bitcoin mining chips and rigs, aiming to break the near-monopoly of Chinese miner makers.

Proto Rig (Aug 2025) is a modular bitcoin miner: 819 TH/s, 14.1 J/TH, hashboards swap out in under 90 seconds.
Its only named big buyer, Core Scientific, paid $41.9M in Q2 2026 to cancel a ~15 EH/s chip order and pivot to AI.
In Feb 2026 Block cut staff from over 10,000 to just under 6,000, citing AI tools.

Company profile →

Founded: 200917 yrs
Headquarters: United States
Status: Public
Listed: XYZ (opens google.com)NYSE
Valuation: public
Staff: ~6,000Feb 2026
Works in: CryptoDecentralized networks
Coverage: 1 program · 4 updateslatest 29 Jul 2026checked 11 Oct
Customers: Core Scientific (opens decrypt.co)
People: Jack Dorsey (opens en.wikipedia.org)Co-founder, Block Head and ChairmanThomas TempletonHardware Lead

Spec

Proto Rig & Proto Fleet

Hashrate (9 boards)

Up to 819 TH/s^R (reported)

Efficiency (air-cooled)

As low as 14.1 J/TH^R (reported)

Power draw

Up to 12,000 W^R (reported)

Swappable hashboards

9 (up to 91 TH/s each)^R (reported)

On-rack repair time

Under 90 s^R (reported)

Weight (9 boards)

110 lb^R (reported)

Chip process

3 nm^R (reported)

Proto Rig & Proto Fleet

Milestones

Most important updates

Current obstacles

Physics limits

How it works

Chips that guess numbers very fast

Hot-swappable hashboards

Upgrade boards, keep the frame

Open-source site software

Spec sheet

Update log

Wed 29 Jul

Thu 14 Aug 2025

Wed 10 Jul 2024

About Block

Current obstacles

Physics limits

How it works

Chips that guess numbers very fast

Hot-swappable hashboards

Upgrade boards, keep the frame

Open-source site software

Spec sheet

Update log

Wed 29 Jul

Thu 14 Aug 2025

Wed 10 Jul 2024

About Block