Ethereum Mining Rig Trading Cards Are a Thing

You don’t have to be a Magic: The Gathering fan to appreciate these trading cards, described as the “most meta and nerdy application of the blockchain yet” by Vice. Artist Max Dovey brings us these beauties that can be traded on the Ethereum blockchain, so we can keep gasping in surprise upon seeing the way many of them are stored.

Human ingenuity knows no bounds, and these cards are here to prove it. Dovey said to Vice that these these trading cards are based on photos of real Ethereum mining rigs posted on forums between 2015 and 2017. That means that someone really did keep their rig in the oven. It may have been simply for the purpose of the photo, but our idealism means we prefer to believe otherwise.

Each of these mining cards contains “stats” such as its hash rate, power draw, a description of the rig, aside from a picture and interesting names. The power draw is used in the game, a simple battle system to go with the cards. The cards are meant to be played in a ‘Top Trumps’ style game, where two players battle it out by laying down increasingly powerful mining rig cards until one player has collected all their opponent’s cards.

Although Dovey did not ask permission from the pictures’ owners, he doesn’t really see why he would. “I appropriated the images, yes, but I would only be selling ERC-20 tokens that represent the image. Legally I don’t think there are any serious implications.” Of course, each card contains a hash to prove ownership, similar to the way CryptoKitties, a blockchain-based game, works.