There are products that, at first glance, make even a journalist think, and the ESP32 Solo Miner LCD also brings back a little nostalgia. Around 2010, mining was still a niche subject and ran primarily on CPUs rather than hardware specifically optimized for it. In the years that followed, dedicated hardware, particularly ASICs, took over. Even in 2026, new mining products continue to appear.
For example, Elecrow now offers the ESP32 Solo Miner, a compact miner. It is advertised with a hash rate of up to 1,000 KH/s, meaning the card can run an algorithm up to 1 million times per second which, in the best case scenario, could generate a new bitcoin, albeit with extremely low probability. In practice, it is effectively a lottery, as NMMiner also describes. The system is compatible with NMMiner. Generally, these little cards are faster than the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X models in this very specific use case, although this comes down to a technical feature rather than raw performance, since the ESP32 includes SHA256 acceleration.
Mining on such a system is unlikely to be interesting in practice, and is best viewed as some sort of novelty or entertainment. At the same time, the ESP32 Solo Miner is also a really useful development board, equipped with a screen, Wi-Fi connectivity and a display. This TN screen has a resolution of 320 to 240 pixels. This is a touch screen. Interfaces can be created manually, additional sensors can be connected, and GPIO, I2C, UART ports and a memory card slot are all included. A two-pack is available from Elecrow for $30.
