Mining hardware firm, Bitmain, set to extend the durability of its once “most powerful Ethash miner” from April to October 2020. The mining firm announced a new firmware that will prolong the Ethereum ASIC miners to the latter part of the year.

The company had previously announced its plan to do away with the Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) ETH-based mining, Antminer E3 come this April. The miners –which typically lasts for two years – were set to be faced out as the directed acyclic graph (DAG) files on the blockchain increased in size.

However, according to reports from altcoin mining pool 2Miners, if the Antminer E3 hardware stopped in April, an extended drop in hash rate may be witnessed. Recent events on the Ethereum Classic and Ethereum networks showed a glimpse of E3 miners stopping in April. The risks have pushed the Chinese crypto mining hardware firm to release a firmware upgrade that will prolong the obsolescence of the miners until fall this year in October.

“This new firmware will expand the usage of Double Date Rate (DDR) Memory, as more space is needed to process DAG files,” the statement reads.

According to calculations the miner is expected to become obsolete at a block height of 11,400,000, which is likely to fall in October.

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