Even GPU mining did not last long, and soon miners found another way to perform mining using FPGAs.
Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is basically an integrated circuit that can be programmed to perform specific operations.
From CPUs and GPUs to Industrial ASICs
FPGAs are usually programmed in Hardware Description Languages (HDLs), such as Verilog and VHDL.
Double SHA-256 quickly became an attractive programming task for FPGA programmers and several open source projects started too.
FPGA offered much better performance as compared to GPUs; however, issues such as accessibility, programming difficulty, and the requirement for specialized knowledge to program and configure FPGAs resulted in a short life of the FPGA era for bitcoin mining.
The arrival of ASICs resulted in quickly phased out FPGA- based systems for mining.
Mining hardware such as X6500 miner, Ztex, and Icarus were developed during the time when FPGA mining was profitable.
Various FPGA manufacturers, such as Xilinx and Altera, produce FPGA hardware and development boards that can be used to program mining algorithms.
Why This Matters for Blockchain Technology
It should be noted that GPU mining is still profitable for some other cryptocurrencies to some extent such as Zcoin ( ), but not Bitcoin, https://zcoin.io/guide-on-how-to-mine-zcoin-xzc/ because network difficulty of Bitcoin is so high that only ASICs (specialized hardware) running in parallel can produce some reasonable profit.
Key Points to Remember
- FPGA Even GPU mining did not last long, and soon miners found another way to perform mining using FPGAs.
- Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is basically an integrated circuit that can be programmed to perform specific operations.
- FPGAs are usually programmed in Hardware Description Languages (HDLs), such as Verilog and VHDL.
- Double SHA-256 quickly became an attractive programming task for FPGA programmers and several open source projects started too.
Conclusion
FPGA represents one of the many innovative layers that make blockchain technology so powerful and transformative. As distributed systems continue to evolve, a solid understanding of these core concepts becomes increasingly valuable — not just for developers, but for anyone building, investing in, or working alongside blockchain-powered systems.
Whether you are just starting your blockchain journey or deepening existing expertise, mastering these fundamentals gives you the tools to think clearly about decentralized systems and make smarter decisions in this rapidly evolving space.