This is the premier crypto-mining marketplace in the world and it is where miners and blockchain projects go to source excess hashing and computing power. Through a combination of user friendly mining software and a strong infrastructure, NiceHash has built a formidable presence.

However, is NiceHash all that it cuts out to be?

In this comprehensive NiceHash review, we will give you everything you need to know about the marketplace. We will take a look at the costs, returns and competition. We will also show you how to use NiceHash as well as the the key considerations.

Let’s jump in.

NiceHash Pros

• It’s very simple, quick and easy to setup;
• It puts your mining on autopilot;
• Profits are maximized by automatic switching to the most profitable algorithm;
• Payments are made in BTC daily;
• Can be configured to mine only when your PC is idle.

NiceHash Cons

• You’re mining for someone else;
• If you have very expensive electricity;
• You worry about the hack of NiceHash that occurred in 2017;
• Using NiceHash will be slightly less profitable than directly mining coins;
• The fees for transferring your earned Bitcoin can be higher than with most other coins.

What is NiceHash?

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NiceHash is an online marketplace for buying and selling your computer’s processing power. This processing power is known as hashing power in cryptocurrency terminology. It’s like an exchange service where you’re exchanging computing power for Bitcoin or one of many other cryptocurrencies that use proof of work mining.

Anyone can sell their hashing power, even if you only have a small gaming machine. And anyone can buy hashing power if they want to take advantage of mining without spending an exorbitant amount of money on mining hardware.

NiceHash has been in business since April 2014, so they know quite a bit about cryptocurrency mining and exchange. Since opening its virtual doors, NiceHash has become the largest hashpower marketplace in the world, with over 250,000 daily active miners, more than 3.3 million orders served, and over 181,000 BTC paid out.

Needless to say, over the course of seven years and so many served orders and payouts, NiceHash has gained the trust of cryptocurrency enthusiasts around the world. One other reason for the success of NiceHash is its low fees and ease of use, making it a good choice for first time miners just getting their feet wet.

NiceHash has servers located in east Europe, west Europe, the eastern U.S., and the western U.S. It uses cutting edge technology in its infrastructure and delivery. Each registered user also receives a secure and insured BitGo wallet for BTC deposits.

How NiceHash Works

NiceHash can be used by both sellers of hashing power and buyers of hashing power. This significantly increases it potential user base, and some sellers also become buyers and vice-versa. Buyers are able to begin ordering hashpower immediately following their initial registration, and sellers don’t need to register at all if they prefer to remain anonymous.

As a buyer you can choose which cryptocurrency to mine, with the service supporting 34 different algorithms, including SHA-256, Blake, Equihash, Scrypt, X11, X13, X15. You can mine whichever algorithm is most profitable at the time and payments are made in Bitcoin. To determine which coin is most profitable try using Whattomine.com.

20 of the 34 different hashing algorithms on NiceHash

You can also choose which mining pool you’d like to use. NiceHash currently has support for 23 different mining pools and says that they all work flawlessly with the service. This gives miners access to most minable coins.

After making the decision on which coin you’ll mine simply deposit some Bitcoin (minimum 0.01 BTC) and then go to the NiceHash marketplace to place your order. You can choose either the U.S. or EU marketplace and specify the maximum price you’re willing to pay. Note that all the prices are shown in Bitcoin, regardless of which cryptocurrency you’re mining.

If you’re looking to sell hashing power, NiceHash makes it very easy to do so, no matter what kind of rig you’ve got. You can sell hashing power from a CPU, GPU, and ASIC rig or an entire rig farm if you want. You can also choose your algorithm and the location of the servers you’re mining with.

NiceHash currently operates servers in eastern and western Europe as well as eastern and western USA. You should use the location that’s closest to your own location for the best performance.

Nicehash Profit Calculator

Of course your main objective when mining is profitability, and NiceHash wants you to be profitable as well. So, they’ve created this handy Mining Profitability Calculator that lets you plug in that type of hardware you have and your electricity cost and then tells you how much you can expect to make with the service over 1 day, 1 week and 1 month.

Check profitability before mining. Image via NiceHash

You’ll see that not all hardware is profitable, but since that’s based on current Bitcoin prices it might be that the future price will be high enough to make selling your hashing power now profitable in the future.

NiceHash Plans & Pricing

There are no fixed subscription plans at NiceHash and you can start with as little as 0.001 BTC. While prices are quoted on a BTC/day basis you can create a contract for less than a day or longer than a day. And the prices fluctuate based on the market prices of coins and the total hashing power directed at a given algorithm. NiceHash refreshes the price list every 10 seconds based on the real-time information they are getting from various networks and exchanges.

Buyers have two options for purchasing hashrates:

• Standard bidding – With standard bidding you can place an order with a lower price, but there’s a chance you’ll eventually be outbid and need to increase your bid. Still, this is the cheapest method for bidding on hashing power.
• Fixed – This is a good option for those who want to know their cost basis, and don’t want to mess about changing their bids and orders. Your initial price will be higher, but it is fixed for the life of the contract, so if prices for standard bidding go up later you could end up with quite a good deal. Fixed orders are limited to 24 hour duration, and are also limited to 50% of the total hashing power available to ensure there is still hashing power available for standard bids.

Note that all payments to NiceHash must be made in Bitcoins.

NiceHash Fees

Of course there are fees to consider when using NiceHash. Some of the fees you’ll encounter are as follows:

Buying Hashing Power

• Non-Refundable New Order Fee: 0.00001 BTC
• Amount Spend on Orders for Buying Hashing Power: 3% (unspent amount on cancelled orders is not subject to this fee)

Selling Hashing Power

• Payouts for Balances Greater Than or Equal to 0.00001 BTC (1000 satoshi) to NiceHash Wallet: 2%

Withdrawals and Deposits

• Withdrawals and deposits are subject to fees that vary based on the coin being used and the amount. If you establish a direct connection to the NiceHash Lightning Network node, you will not pay any fees for Bitcoin (BTC) transactions.

You can view the full NiceHash fee structure here.

How to Buy on NiceHash

If you want to mine cryptocurrencies you can buy your own mining rig (expensive), purchase a cloud mining contract (long duration) or simply order whatever hashing power you need from NiceHash.

NiceHash instructions to buy Hashing Power

If you choose to buy your hashing power from NiceHash you can buy it for any algorithm they support and start mining any coin you like almost immediately. Here are the easy steps to follow:

1. Register an account at NiceHash.
2. Deposit a minimum of 0.001 BTC to your NiceHash wallet. Don’t forget to account for the transaction fee.
3. Decide which coin you want to mine and which pool you’ll be using.
4. Register at the pool you’ll be using if necessary, and create a new worker.
5. Save the pool to your NiceHash list of pools. This includes the algorithm, Stratum server, port (some pools have special NiceHash port), worker username, and worker password (usually the worker password is x).
6. Verify the pool with the NiceHash Pool Verifier. Please note that some pools have the option to custom set the worker’s difficulty. Usually, that is the worker’s password. In that case, you need to enter d=16383 in the password window if the pool verificator shows you that the minimum pool difficulty is 16383. Example:

“Pool difficulty too low (provided=2048, minimum=16383)” Worker = nicehashminer Workers password: d=16383

7. Place a new order on the marketplace and be sure to use the correct algorithm for the coin you want to mine. You will be able to select the EU marketplace or the U.S. marketplace when placing your order. Each has its own pricing for standard and fixed orders. Once you decide how much you’re willing to pay the order begins, with your Bitcoins being withdrawn as you mine and unspent coins remaining in your wallet.
8. Finally, go to your pool and check your earnings. Note that NiceHash is only responsible for delivering hashing power to the mining pool, they are not responsible for the amount of rewards received from the pool or the payouts.
9. For a more detailed NiceHash buying guide you can see this pdf created by the NiceHash team.

How to Sell on NiceHash

Those selling their hashing power are sometimes called miners, even though this isn’t technically correct. A seller at NiceHash can be anyone who owns computer hardware that can be used for mining, and who wants to earn some Bitcoin by using that hardware to mine through NiceHash. Getting started as a seller takes little more than 15 minutes.

How to Sell Hashing Power on NiceHash

While you can sell hashing power on NiceHash from ASIC rigs and even mining farms, I’m fairly certain most of you reading this only want to sell the hashing power of your CPU or GPU. You can do this with both AMD and Nvidia cards, and the easiest way to do so is to use the free NiceHash Miner software.

This will require you to register an account at NiceHash so you can use the NiceHash wallet to deposit your mining profits. The NiceHash miner makes it very easy to connect the software with your NiceHash account by allowing you to use the email used for your NiceHash account to link the two, rather than needing a long, hard to remember wallet address.

The NiceHash miner will also automatically select the most profitable algorithm and mine with that algorithm, so you don’t have to worry about the time consuming process of checking coin prices or algorithm difficulties yourself.

If you already use some other software such as CCMiner you can connect directly to the NiceHash Stratum servers to sell your hashing power.

Those few of you who are reading this and own ASIC rigs can follow the special instructions created by NiceHash for ASICs here.

Payouts at NiceHash

NiceHash uses a Pay Per Share (PPS) system to pay sellers, so you can expect automatic daily payouts as long as you meet minimums as set out below:

• Daily payouts for unpaid balances in NiceHash wallets greater than 0.001 BTC
• Daily payouts for unpaid balances in external wallets greater than 0.1 BTC
• Weekly payouts for unpaid balances in external wallets greater than 0.001 BTC

NiceHash QuickMiner

NiceHash QuickMiner is a next-generation miner developed by NiceHash.

NiceHash QuickMiner uses only Excavator for GPU mining and XMRig for CPU mining. Excavator is an in-house developed miner and is 100% free of any malware, and XMRig is an open-source CPU miner. There are some more open-source C# libraries used. Code running as NiceHash QuickMiner is either developed by NiceHash or used from public repositories, which means it is 100% safe, and you do not have to worry about exposing your PC’s sensitive data or getting infected with malware. NiceHash QuickMiner will (in the future) NEVER use any closed source software, software of unknown or unverified origin.

Quick and easy mining app. Image via NiceHash

NiceHash QuickMiner has all the following features:

• Autotune – Automatically find the best core clock for your memory clock thus lowering your power consumption.
• OCtune – No need for 3rd party tools! OCTune allows you to use alternative overclocking methods not available in common overclocking tools.
• Auto Optimize – Auto optimize your GPUs with Rig Manager with a click of a button.
• Memory Timings – Change memory timings on 1000 series GPUs and increase GPU performance by up to 50%.
• Game Mode – Want to game? No problem, simply press a button and apply stock or gaming overclocks while you game.
• Auto Recovery – QuickMiner will perform various recover actions in order to keep on mining even after driver crash or other issues.
• Auto-Update – Stay up to date! User must confirm the update.
• Auto Location Picker – Will pick the closest location to you based on the share latency.
• Auto Location Switcher – In case the location is unreachable.
• Start with Windows – Start QuickMiner automatically after Windows boot.

What is the difference between NiceHash Miner and NiceHash QuickMiner?

For NiceHash Miner to fully work, it relies on 3rd party plugins and miners. In most cases, these are programs of unverified and unknown origin. The real names of the authors of these programs are not known, or no company stands behind the software. Why the developers of these programs keep their identity so private is unknown to us. There could be various reasons. The reasons are most likely not to harm miners because they charge developer fees for using their miners. But we cannot be entirely sure that they have no intention of ever putting anything harmful inside their programs. Trusting them blindly would be a big mistake.

That is why, if you want to use NiceHash Miner, you need to agree with that, confirm and acknowledge that, and if these unknown developers really do something stupid one day, NiceHash cannot be held liable. That means, if you use your PC for serious business, have important information on it, or even coins or money, it is best NOT to use 3rd party miners of unknown origin. Luckily, NiceHash has created its own miner in the past called Excavator. The code running it was entirely developed in-house, and NiceHash can vouch that there is nothing harmful inside. Another lucky factor is that the speeds Excavator reaches in Daggerhashimoto (Ethereum mining) are completely comparable to other miners with developer fees. When you also calculate in developer fees, Excavator can be, in most cases, even more profitable than 3rd party miners.

Using Excavator on its own is not so simple – you need to configure command files and prepare everything for your machine to work properly. That is why we created another product for end-users called NiceHash QuickMiner, which does all the hard and tricky configuration automatically. Hence, you click buttons and don’t have to worry about too deep technical stuff. Because NiceHash makes all the Excavator plus wrapper (QuickMiner) code, there is no risk involved with anything harmful being put in.

NiceHash Private Endpoints

The NiceHash Private Endpoint solution is designed for medium-sized and large mining farms that want to optimize their connection to NiceHash and secure maximum performance and earnings.

NiceHash Private Endpoint is a network interface that connects you privately and securely to NiceHash Stratum servers. Private Endpoint uses a private IP address and avoids the additional latency caused by DDOS protection.

Private Endpoints for BEST performance. Image via NiceHash

Users enjoy the following benefits and service:

• The lowest possible latency when connecting to NiceHash.
• Dedicated hardware infrastructure that gives you the edge when submitting shares.
• All NiceHash Private Mining Proxy servers are managed by the NiceHash team.
• Private endpoint functional in less than 24 hours.
• Payment for this service is available in Bitcoin or Euro.
• Starting from €200 + VAT/mo. (for each location).

The NiceHash Exchange

One of the newer additions over at NiceHash is an exchange platform that they’ve made available in a simple view for newcomers to the crypto space, and a trade view for those that are more experienced and looking for more in-depth trading tools.

Simple View

The Simple View platform offers users a quick and easy way to buy and sell crypto. It’s best suited for beginners. To trade on the Simple View platform users just choose the trading pair and amounts. All orders are set at market rates and the trade is instantaneous.

Trade View

Trade View is a complex trading platform suited for experienced traders, or for those looking for more powerful features and flexibility. It uses an order book, giving users access to both price charts and market depth.

Powerful charting from Trade View. Image via NiceHash

With Trade View the trader is in complete control. This allows for advanced order types that give more control and better fills. There are also a number of trading tools and analytics available for determining the best entry and exits from trades.

Both the Simple and Trade View platforms are linked to the same NiceHash wallet. That’s the same wallet used for NiceHash mining, meaning users are able to immediately begin trading with all their mining profits. Already more than 50 coins are supported, with more being added regularly.

Fees

Fees are comparable with other popular exchanges. And they decrease over the lifetime of your trading activity. So at the beginning the fee is 0.5% up to €1000 in trade activity. Once you pass that threshold it reduces to 0.4%.

It remains at 0.4% until your account reaches €10,000 in trade volume, and then reduces to 0.3% until you reach €100,000 in trade volume, where it drops to 0.2%.

This continues until the fees reach 0.01% at €100,000,000,000. While that seems massive, it is a lifetime total, so who knows in 20 years you might actually reach that volume of trades!

In reality most users will find their fees range from 0.5% down to 0.3%. Very active traders might get below that in a fairly short time span. And given that the trading volume continues to accrue over the life of the account, rather than resetting monthly, over the long term this can work out quite well.

The NiceHash Mobile App

The NiceHash mobile app is an app for managing your NiceHash account and activities. Note that this app is not a mobile mining app. You don’t use your smartphone processing power for mining with the NiceHash mobile app.

Easily manage your NiceHash account on the go. Image via NiceHash

The NiceHash mobile app has five main sections:

1. Rig Manager – allows the users to remotely manage their mining rigs and check the mining status on the go.
2. Wallet – gives the option to deposit or withdraw different cryptocurrencies and check all wallet activities. Please note that this is not a mobile cryptocurrency wallet, no seeds are stored on your device.
3. Hash-power Marketplace – check the status of your hash-power orders, place new orders and manage or cancel existing orders.
4. Notifications – users can enable push notifications and get instant information about their NiceHash activities.
5. User profile – mange your NiceHash profile or your organization profile.

Conclusion

It’s quick and easy to see how you like NiceHash since the software can be downloaded and configured within 15 minutes. And if you’re considering using NiceHash as a buyer it can be even faster to secure a lot of hashing power. This can be very useful when you come across a situation where a certain algorithm or coin becomes more profitable than usual.

At the end of the day it’s your decision. I’ve mined directly before, and I’ve tried NiceHash and honestly the simplicity of NiceHash was refreshing. And I didn’t notice a huge difference in earnings.

If you’re just getting started, or are a casual miner, then NiceHash might be a perfect solution for you.

The post Nicehash Review: The Mining Power Marketplace appeared first on Coin Bureau.

The intention behind this upgrade was  to fight off the constant threat that ASIC mining rigs have been posing to the Monero ecosystem. Moreover, with the upgrade to RandomX it means that you can now mine Monero with your CPU. No expensive mining rigs and equipment required!

So you are perhaps wondering how you would do this?

Well, in this in-depth guide I will take you through the exact steps required in order to mine Monero with your CPU. I will also give you some top mining tips.

Why The Upgrade?

For those that have been following the Monero story for quite some time, you will no doubt have heard of their battle against ASIC mining chips. ASIC mining can lead to the centralisation of a network which can threaten the privacy of Monero.

Last year, Monero forked the blockchain and made tiny changes to the code. This seemed to work for a while as the ASICs that were developed were rendered moot. However, the issue raised its head again recently as it became clear that ASICs were still hashing Monero.

Monero’s Anti ASIC Stance. Image via Shutterstock

The problem lay with the old mining algorithm that Monero used. This was the cryptonite algorithm that was pretty easy to develop an ASIC for. Hence, Monero could continue forking the code or they could look to a completely new solution.

Enter RandomX

RandomX is a mining algorithm that takes the fight against ASICs one step further. It is able to acheive this through the use of random code execution and memory hard techniques.

Moreover, RandomX was optimised for more general purposed CPU use. Of course, this could have a perverse effect on some of the GPU miners that have been hashing on the old algorithm. Indeed, the mining return for those running GPUs dropped considerably post update.

However, one miners loss is another’s gain. Given that RandomX was optimised for CPU mining it means that you can use your home machine to start mining some Monero. So, let’s take a look at how exactly that is done.

XMR RandomX Mining: Step-by-Step

Now let’s get you set up to begin mining XMR with the CPU in your machine. It’s a quick and easy process.

If you don’t already have a wallet that supports Monero the first thing you’ll need to do is to download a wallet so you have somewhere to receive the XMR you mine. We recently did a review of the Best Monero Wallets that you can use to help you decide which wallet to use.

You could solo mine Monero, but you’ll almost surely need to wait a long time to find a block. The better solution is to use one of the many mining pools. It’s easy to set up and it stabilizes your earnings from mining. We’ve done a Monero Mining Pool guide previously, but there are many other good pools you can choose from too.

Once you’ve decided which mining pool you’re going to use you will need to download the mining software for Monero. The two best choices are XMR-STAK-RX and XMRIG.

Using XMR-STAK-RX

Here are the instructions for using XMR-STAK-RX. Note that all mining software is identified as a virus by Windows. Click for “More Information” and allow the download.

Step 1: Downloading the Files

After downloading the appropriate version of XMR-STAK-RX you will need to extract it, and then you can run xmr-stak-rx.exe. You may get a similar message from Windows about the software being a virus when trying to run the software, again you’ll want to add it as an exception and allow it to run.

Step 2: Running the Chosen Files

It will open a command prompt window and ask if you want to use the simple setup method. Press ‘Y’ and then enter.

Step 3: Simple Setup

You will be asked which currency you wish to mine. Type ‘monero’ and press enter.

Step 4: Choose Monero

Next, you’ll be asked for your pool address. We’re using 2Miners as our pool. Once you’ve entered the appropriate mining pool address press enter.

Step 5: Entering Mining Pool information

Next, you’ll be asked for a username, which is your wallet address or pool login. If using a wallet address you should copy/paste and then press enter.

Step 6: Entering your XMR Address

Next, you’ll be prompted for a password. You can simply type ‘x’ and press enter.

Step 7: Entering your XMR Address

Next, you’ll be asked if the pool supports TLS/SSL. If you’re unsure you can just type ‘n’ and press enter. If you’re using 2Miners like us you’ll want to type ‘n’.

Step 8: Pool supports TLS/SSL?

Another command window will open and it may ask you to reboot. Don’t reboot just yet. You can just press enter and the command prompt should move to the next step. The original window will also be open, but it can be closed now that you’re done configuring the mining software.

Step 9: Don’t Reboot

And in the second window, you should see that you’re now mining. You may see several error messages, but eventually, the software will begin using your CPU to mine and will begin detecting blocks.

Step 10: Mining XMR on XMR-STAK

Now you are mining monero using your CPU. It will give you an update of the amount of blocks that you have found and the XMR that you have mined.

Using XMRIG

If you prefer you could also use the XMRIG mining software for Monero, however it comes with a default developer fee of 5%. You can change that in the config file, but you cannot go below 1%, so the XMRIG miner is not free.

Here are the instructions for downloading and running XMRIG.

First download the proper version of the miner from Github.

Step 1: Downloading XMRIG

Once the files are downloaded they will need to be extracted to a location of your choice. The files will almost certainly be flagged as a virus and you will need to add an exception to save and later to run the miner.

Step 2: Allow files to be run

Once the files have been extracted you can go to the folder and see the files. You will need to open the config.json file with Notepad or another text editor (not Word) so that you can set your parameters.

Step 3: Setting Mining Parameters

Once you open the config.json file scroll down near the bottom to the section called “pools”. There you will add “rx/0” for the algo, “monero” for the coin, the pool address for the url, your wallet address for the user field, and “x” for the pass field. You will also want to change the keepalive setting from false to true. Don’t forget the parenthesis or the miner won’t work properly.

Step 4: Optimal XMRIG Config Settings

Save and close the file and then double click the xmrig.exe file to start the miner. You will get a command prompt that opens and the miner will be running.

Step 5: Letting XMRIG Run & Mining XMR

There you have it. You can now leave XMRIG running and it will send the block rewards to the wallet that you have chosen. Of course, this will be reduced by 5% as you will have to give some over to the developers of the software – so pros and cons.

Conclusion

And there you have it, my simple guide about how to mine monero with a CPU. Of course, if you have been mining XMR with your GPU rigs then you may discover a fall in your ROI which is an unfortunate side affect of this RandomX upgrade.

However, if you want to increase your returns from Mining with your CPUs then you can look to invest in some high quality ones. These will no doubt be cheaper than the cost of buying GPUs or advanced ASICs.

For example, you can look to buy the Intel i5 7600 or the Intel i7 8700k. Both of these CPUs should get you added bang for your buck. The i5 has been tested to produce about 1.63 kh/s whereas the i7 can output about 2.36 kh/s. Of course, these are just two examples and there are many other CPUs that can work.

Indeed, now may be one of the best times to start mining XMR with your CPU. As more miners start joining the network the difficulty will increase and your ROI would fall. Be sure to do the appropriate calculations on this number before buying a new CPU.

Happy Hashing!

Featured Image via Shutterstock

The post Mining Monero with CPUs: Step-by-Step Guide post RandomX appeared first on Coin Bureau.

Ravencoin remains popular and profitable, and ASIC resistant thanks to its use of the X16R proof-of-work mining algorithm. This is actually 16 different algorithms that are used randomly during the mining process. It’s this random use of so many algorithms that makes Ravencoin ASIC resistant.

However, even though it is ASIC resistant, it is also difficult enough that most home rigs won’t be successful with solo mining. One of the few remaining ways that you can increase your mining returns is if you join a Ravencoin mining pool. In this piece, I will give you some of the best pools to consider.

Top 7 Ravencoin Pools

There are literally dozens of pools available for Ravencoin, but nearly all the hash rate is concentrated in the top three pools. Concentration of hash power is often seen as a concern especially for those coins with lower market caps.

That said, the network still remains quite decentralized, and the largest pool, Suprnova.cc has less than 20% of the total hash rate. Keep in mind that it is best if you choose a small to medium pool to keep the network as secure and decentralized as possible.

Now let’s have a look at some of the best Ravencoin mining pools:

Suprnova

Suprnova.cc is the largest Ravencoin mining pool by far, controlling 19.65% of the network hash power. When I looked there were 17,962 workers on the pool and it has found 224 blocks in the past 24 hours. They have an average mining fee of 1% and servers located around the world.

Suprnova Ravencoin Mining Pool Statistics

Suprnova is well known and respected in the cryptocurrency community, which is why it is so popular for Ravencoin mining. Suprnova does require you to register, but only with your email address. However, once done you have a unified login that can used across nearly all of the other pools they operate (which is quite a few).

BeePool

BeePool is a mining pool based in China, making it best for miners based in Asia. It is the third largest Ravencoin mining pool and when I looked it had 593 workers and found 106 blocks in the past 24 hours.

Beepool Network stats and Hashrate

They control 9.5% of the network hash power and have a larger than usual fee of 2% for PPS mining, although PPLNS mining is just a 1% fee. The minimum payout is a very small 0.1 RVN and there is no registration required to use BeePool.

Ravenminer.com

Ravenminer is the fourth largest Ravencoin mining pool, controlling 5.4% of the network hash power. They are a global mining pool, so you can use them from anywhere in the world. They also have a small 0.5% fee and use the PROP payout system.

Ravenminer Statistics over different time periods

When I checked they had 7115 workers and 58 blocks found in the past 24 hours. They also have a 5 RVN minimum payout (0.5 RVN on Sundays), which could mean you have to wait for some time for a payout. No registration is required to use the Ravenminer.com pool.

Nanopool.org

Close behind Ravenminer is Nanopool, with 4.7% of the network hash power. They have 6154 workers in the pool and found 60 blocks over the past 24 hours. Currently, the pool has about 473.1 Gh/s in total hash rate mining RVN.

The fee is an average 1% and they have servers located around the world, making this a suitable mining pool for anyone, no matter where they are located. There is a 100 RVN minimum payout, the pool supports CPU mining, and there is no registration required.

Minermore

The Minermore pool has 2.8% of the network hashing power, putting it at the lower end of the medium-sized Ravencoin pools, or possibly at the top end of the small pools. In any case, it has 6960 workers in the network and found 30 blocks in the past 24 hours.

There is an average 1% PPLNS mining fee and servers located globally (U.S., Canada, Europe, Hong Kong). There is no registration requirement at Minermore.

Coinblockers

Coinblockers is one of the more popular small Ravencoin mining pools, controlling 1.1% of the network hash power and finding 10 blocks in the past 24 hours with just 415 workers. The mining fee is the average 1% with a PPLNT payout scheme.

Online stats at Coinblockers Ravencoin Pool

The minimum payout here is only 0.05 RVN, making it easy to get your first payout. There is no registration requirement and servers are globally located.

BSOD.pw

Lastly I’d like to mention the BSOD.pw pool. It has 0.8% of the hash rate and with 1606 miners it found 19 blocks in the past 24 hours.

They have servers located around the world, making it a good choice for any location, and the 0.1 RVN (0.01 RVN on Sunday’s) minimum payout is small enough everyone should get paid quickly. There’s also no registration required at BSOD.pw and the mining fee is slightly below average at 0.9% PROP.

So, although this is the smallest pool that you can join on on the network, when blocks are mined, you will have a larger share of the block reward. Of course, it will take much longer for this pool to find blocks than some of the larger ones.

What Pool is Right for You?

When it comes to choosing the best Ravencoin pool, you have to consider a number of factors that could have a direct impact on your profitability. These include the following:

• Pool Uptime: Pretty fundamental requirement. You can only earn RVN hashing with a pool when the pool is running. Mining pools are also prime targets for DDoS attacks and are hence subjected to long periods of downtime. It therefore makes sense to use a mining pool that has a good record when it comes to historical up-time (preferably close to 100%). Suprnova is one of the few Ravencoin pools that disclose their up-time so that is indeed quite a positive sign.
• Fees: Another really fundamental factor that will impact your profitability is the fee that the pool will charge. From the above pools, it seems that Ravenminer has the lowest fees to mine RVN.
• Hashpower: Pool hash-power is a bit of a tricky one. Although a pool with higher hash-power is more likely to find blocks, it also means that you will probably have to share the block rewards with a greater selection of miners. However, if the pool has less hashing power you can keep more of the reward but you are less likely to find blocks as a Ravencoin pool with higher hash power.
• Server Location: Distance is important when it comes to choosing a pool as this will impact on the latency between your rig and the server itself. Hence, you will generally want to join a pool that has servers closer to you.
• Payout Conditions: As we have seen above, there are numerous different options when it comes to payout structure at the pool. Some RVN pools will also have minimum payout requirements so these are an important consideration to think about before you start hashing there.

So, from the above, it looks like Ravenminer and Suprnova could be strong contenders (depending on where you are located). Of course, you also need to consider that many of these requirements are a tradeoff with each other. The cheaper pools may not always have the best up-time and server location.

Conclusion

As competition heats up in the mining of RVN, so too will the difficulty in mining it. As more hashpower joins the network, adjustments take place in order to account for it. This can only mean that solo home mining will become less practical and hence more reason for using one of the Ravencoin pools above.

There are other smaller pools you can join, but most find less than 1 block per day. You could join one of these smaller pools to help promote decentralization. And maybe with your hash power that smaller pool will begin finding a block a day.

If you do choose to go with one of the pools I’ve listed above its usually best to choose a smaller pool, but there’s enough decentralization in Ravencoin that it wouldn’t hurt if you decided to use Suprnova.cc as long as their hash power remains below 25%.

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Recently ZCoin had a hard fork, with the primary change being the mining algorithm for ZCoin. Previously mining ZCoin was accomplished using the Lyra2z algorithm, but after the hard fork ZCoin uses Merkle Tree Proof, also called MTP, as its mining algorithm. This change was made to help protect ZCoin from ASIC mining as well as the potential for increased centralization and fraud.

Since MTP is new to blockchain technology in general, not just ZCoin, we want to take some time to see how ZCoin can be mined using the new and improved algorithm.

Hardware Requirements for Mining ZCoin

The new Merkle Tree Proof algorithm is quite sophisticated, and this has led to increased hardware requirements for those looking to mine ZCoin. This means some users gave up on mining because they simply didn’t have a rig powerful enough to make ZCoin mining profitable.

Mining ZCoin with the new MTP algorithm requires a computer with at least 8GB RAM. The video card should have a minimum of 6GB memory as well. The newer Nvidia cards are all suitable and any AMD card with more than 6GB onboard will work too.

Because the workload on the CPU is also heavy you’ll need at least one core. You’ll be best served using an Intel i5 or i7 processor.

Mining speed is going to be directly related to the speed of your processor and the amount and type of RAM (DDR3/DDR4/DDR5). Most gaming rigs are going to be capable of mining ZCoin. If you don’t have a powerful machine you’ll need to buy more RAM or a more powerful processor. The issue is that this is expensive and not many people are going to spend the money to upgrade their computer just to mine ZCoin. If you can already mine ZCoin it is quite profitable.

How to Mine ZCoin (XZC)

This guide is meant for Windows users, but can be adapted pretty easily for Linux users. Mac users are out of luck and will need to get a Windows machine if they want to mine XZC.

The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure you have a wallet to store your XZC. You can download the official ZCoin wallet here. Go ahead and install it and let it synchronize with the blockchain. This could take some time (for me it was about 2 ½ hours), but you can go ahead with the rest of the steps and even mine if you’re using a pool. If you plan on solo mining you’ll have to wait until the wallet is fully synched before you can begin mining.

The ZCoin official Wallet

Next you’ll need to download your miner. The Zcoin website lists several options, including one for AMD GPUs. Here are the links to the different miners:

• Nvidia GPU: Official Zcoin ccminer by djm34
• Nvidia GPU: TT-Miner (closed source with 1% fee)
• Nvidia GPU: Cryptodredge (closed source with 2% fee)
• cpuminer by djm34
• WildRig Miner by Andrukun (closed source with default 2% dev fee)

Note that only the official ZCoin ccminer by djm34 has been vetted by the ZCoin development team. The other closed source miners should only be used at your own risk.

Download or extract the executable file to the folder of your choice.

Extract the ccminer executable

Next you’ll need to choose a mining pool if you’re not going to solo mine. Again, the ZCoin website has several suggested pools that are running ZCoin mining with MTP.

• 2Miners (xzc.2miners.com:8080)
• F2Pool (PPS Pool) (xzc.f2pool.com:5780)
• Mintpond (zcoin.mintpond.com:3000)
• Zergpool (mtp.mine.zergpool.com:3000)

Once you know which pool you’ll be using you can set up the .bat file which will have the configuration information to mine and collect your rewards. Start by opening your favorite text editor.

What you enter into the text editor is going to be dependent on which miner software you’re using and which mining pool you’re using. Below are the examples for each mining software listed above. The mining pool address and port is listed in the parenthesis above.

Official ZCoin ccminer

ccminer.exe -a mtp -o stratum+tcp://POOLADDRESS:PORT -u WalletAddress.worker -p password

TT-Miner

TT-MinerCmd.exe -A MTP-100 -P WalletAddress.worker@POOLADDRESS:PORT

Cryptodredge

CryptoDredge.exe -a mtp -o stratum+tcp://POOLADDRESS:PORT -u WalletAddress.worker -p x

Cpuminer

cpuminer.exe -a mtp -o stratum+tcp://POOLADDRESS:PORT -u WalletAddress.worker -p password -t numberofthreads

WildRig Miner

wildrig_avx.exe --algo mtp --opencl-threads 1 --opencl-launch 16x0 --url stratum+tcp://POOLADDRESS:PORT --user WalletAddress.worker --pass password

Note that for all the examples above the POOLADDRESS:PORT needs to be changed to the specific address and port for your pool. The WalletAddress needs to be changed to your wallet address, which can be found in your ZCoin wallet by going to File -> Receiving Addresses. The worker is not required and can be changed to anything, or left blank. The same is true for the –p field and the –t field, although if –t is not specified the miner will use the maximum number of threads available.

Here is my .bat file using ccminer and the 2Miners pool:

.bat file configured for 2miners pool using ccminer

Save your .bat file in the same folder where you extracted the mining software. Then double click to fire up the miner. A cmd window will open showing you the status of the mining, and within a few minutes you should begin to see your shares accepted by the mining pool.

CCminer running in the command window. Source: ZCoin

You will know that your miner is working when you see that your shares are being accepted. If you have decided not to use a pool then at this stage you will have to wait for the Zcoin wallet to be fully synced with the blockchain. There may also be a short period of time that elapses before the speeds correspond between the pool and the miner command line.

ZCoin Mining Profitability

If you were considering mining ZCoin for anything more than a hobby you will need to assess the profitability of it. This is especially true if you are thinking about building a mining rig and want to calculate your RoI.

There are a number of websites that have handy mining profitablity calculators and we have chosen to look at the whattomine one. You will need to input your hash rate, power, cost per kWh, pool fee and hardware cost.

Online Calculator for Altcoin GPU mining

Currently, given the low prices for ZCoin and the cost of electricity, it does not make economic sense to invest in a new mining rig to mine XZC specifically. This could change in due course if markets are to correct and you are able to secure some really low electricity rates.

Conclusion

The Zcoin hard fork had a significant impact on the entire coin ecosystem, making all miners equal, protecting the network against ASIC miners and fraud, as well as increasing the difficulty for attacks on the network due to the expense of the hardware needed to mine XZC.

One interesting aspect of the new ZCoin algorithm in late 2018/early 2019 is that it makes mining profitable again. Due to the extended bear market in cryptocurrency miners have been leaving the markets en masse, but now they can come back and be profitable mining the MTP algorithm.

Yes it costs more to get a rig powerful enough to mine XZC, but many gamers already have suitable rigs and could be mining whenever the computer isn’t in use otherwise, which for many of us is the majority of most days. With that in mind it could be worth finally going for that RAM or processor upgrade.

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As an Equihash Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency, Horizen (ZEN) provides a good alternative for miners looking to branch away from Zcash (ZEC) mining. Miners can easily allocate their resources back and forth between the two chains based on profitability.

However, given the competition from Equihash ASICs, solo mining has become much less profitable than it used to be. This is why it could be considered profitable to join a Horizen mining pool and increase your chances of discovering new blocks.

In this article I’ll introduce you to Horizen and then spend some time reviewing some of the top Horizen mining pools.

What is Horizen?

Horizen is a privacy-centric blockchain platform that aims to provide every global citizen with complete privacy and control over their digital footprint. It is unique among blockchain projects in its real-life use cases beyond simply being another potential currency. Ultimately Horizen hopes to allow its users to communicate privately as well as going anywhere and publishing anything on the web completely anonymously.

Fork of a Fork of ZCash

Horizen initially launched as ZenCash on May 23, 2017 as a fork of ZClassic, which itself was a fork of Zcash. It was rebranded to Horizen in order to fully embrace its own identity separate from that of Zcash.

Just like its mother blockchains – Zcash and Zclassic, Horizen uses the Equihash mining algorithm.

Horizen accepts ASIC Miners

Despite suffering a double spend attack in June 2018 the Horizen team made the decision to remain with the Equihash algorithm rather than switching to an ASIC-resistant algorithm.

The main reason this decision was made is that the team found the Horizen network had become more secure with ASICs mining, even though Horizen isn’t the largest Equihash currency being mined.

The Horizen team monitored the usage of the Equihash ASIC miners and they appear to be mining ZEN directly rather than selling their hashing power to NiceHash, and this has been a positive for the Horizen network.

Top 5 Horizen Mining Pools

So, which mining pools are best for ZEN miners?

In general mining pools tend to be very similar, and with Horizen you aren’t going to have to search hard to find mining pools. The official Horizen website lists 27 mining pools to choose from. We’ve narrowed that down and present to you the most popular Horizen mining pools.

Remember, it’s never wise to increase the hashing power of a mining pool beyond 25%, so simply choosing the largest mining pool is rarely a good idea. Horizen is somewhat unique among altcoins though, because its hashing power is spread out quite evenly, for the most part.

When choosing a good mining pool the fees are important, as is the uptime of the pool, and its geographical proximity to your location. Keep those things in mind and read on to find out the top 5 Horizen mining pools.

Zhash.pro

Zhash.pro is a pool we haven’t come across before, but it is the number one pool when it comes to mining ZEN, controlling roughly 25%-30% of the hash power. It’s not too surprising that it has become the most popular ZEN mining pool since it features extremely low 0.5% fees, auto-payouts at just 0.1 ZEN and global dedicated servers.

ZHashPro Mining Pool Statistics

It also features anonymous mining, making it perfect for privacy coins like Horizen. Because the hash power of this pool is so high it’s better avoided to help maintain network decentralization. If you’re drawn to the low 0.5% fee you might want to try the fifth mining pool in our list, Luckpool, which also has a 0.5% fee with far less hash power.

F2Pool

F2Pool is one of the largest integrated mining pools in the world, and it’s also the second largest Horizen mining pool, controlling roughly 15%-20% of the hashing power. That actually makes it a pretty good choice as you’ll help to decentralize the network. It’s also a sign that ASICs aren’t hurting Equihash mining yet because F2Pool is based in China and is normally very heavily influenced by ASIC miners.

Some Features of F2Pool

One really negative aspect of F2Pool is the high 4% mining fee. It also isn’t the best choice if you want to remain anonymous because you have to register an account in order to mine with F2Pool. That’s a huge downside with a privacy-centric coin like Horizen.

Suprnova.cc

If you’ve done any pool mining at all you’ve almost certainly heard of Suprnova.cc as they are frequently one of the top mining pools for dozens of coins. One nice thing about that is that there’s a unified login that can be used across nearly all of those pools, so you don’t have to reset logins and worker information.

Suprnova.cc ZEN Mining Pool Statistics

Suprnova.cc has the standard 1% mining fee and a nice low 0.1 ZEN minimum payout. They hold about 14%-18% of the total hashing power, making them a good choice if you want a solid pool that isn’t endangering the decentralization of the network.

MiningPoolHub

MiningPoolHub is the fourth most popular Horizen moining pool, it still controls roughly 14%-18% of the hash power. You’ll also see that they are still calling this Zencash. Not a big deal. Miningpoolhub has global servers and the mining fee is a standard 0.9%.

Recent Statistics on MiningPoolHub for Horizen

Minimum payouts are just 0.1%, making this a good choice for home miners. It also supports multi-algorithm switching, changing to the most profitable coin in the algorithm if you like. And you can get pay-outs in any coin you like, even when mining Horizen.

Luckpool

Luckpool.net is a Canadian based pool, so is best used by those located in North America. It is a bit different from other pools in that it charges a smaller 0.5% miners fee, but also offers something they call the Miner’s Jackpot. This is a bonus paid to the miner who actually finds the block. In the case of Horizen the Miner’s Jackpot is 1 ZEN. This leaves 7.63 ZEN to be shared among the other miners.

Luckpool ZEN Stats and Pool Features / Offers

They are also different in using the Proportional (PROP) payout system. The minimum payout is just 0.1 ZEN and this is an anonymous pool, meaning there’s no need to register or provide any personal information. They also control just 8%-10% of the total hashing power, making them a solid mining pool, but small enough to maintain decentralization.

What Pool to Choose

So now that you have an idea of the selection of ZEN mining pools at your disposal, you have to decide on the most profitable pool. This will depend on a number of factors including the following:

• Fees: Clearly one of the most important requirements is the fees that one is expected to pay for the pool. Based purely on this metric the cheapest pools to join seem to be Zhash and Luckpool.
• Pool Uptime: You are only earning ZEN when the pool is fully functional and not down for maintenance. The pool uptime is a really important consideration when it comes to your selection as this will directly impact the amount of ZEN that you are likely to earn. Like exchanges, mining pools can be prime targets for DDoS attacks so it helps to use a pool that has effective safeguards in place.
• Location of Servers: Obviously distance plays a large part in what pools you decide to join. Distance from the server will impact on latency in the connection and that does not work so well when you are competing for block rewards.
• Payout Terms: When it comes to the terms that are attached to payouts from the mining pools, this is really a personal preference. Many of the pools will have a minimum payout requirement that has to be met before you can withdraw coins. They will also differ in terms of the regularity of the payouts.
• Hashpower: This one is often a bit less clear cut. Although a pool with a higher hashpower has more chance of finding a block, you will have to share the ZEN block reward with more miners. So you will have to weigh up the lower probability of finding a block in a smaller pool compared to the lower more payout on a pool with larger hashpower.

Given these requirements, it seems as if Zhash could be a good pool to join given its lower fees as well as the auto payout of a minimum of 0.1 ZEN. This pool does have the largest hashing power on the network at over 25% so you need to weigh up the pros and cons of this as.

Conclusion

These five Horizen mining pools should give you plenty of ideas to get started, but if you don’t see one you like head over to the Horizen website to see all the other ZEN mining pools that are available.

While mining pools can contribute to the centralisation of a chain, they are probably one of the only ways in which you can realistically compete as a home miner. If you want to try and reduce mining centralisation you should then probably join a pool that has less of the hashing power.

However, centralization of mining on Horizen is less of a concern as it is on Zcash and hashing on Zen can be an attractive alternative for your Equihash ASICs or GPU rigs.

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Today I would like to look at the best Monacoin mining pools. Monacoin is the first Japanese cryptocurrency that was created in 2014. It is quite popular in the land of the rising sun, but not so well known in the West.

Monacoin was created as a peer-to-peer decentralized payment network and alternative currency using the Scrypt algorithm for consensus. It later changed algorithms as of block 450,000 and now uses the Lyra2REv2 consensus algorithm. This change was made to keep Monacoin ASIC-resistant at the time.

Interestingly, in early September 2018 there emerged rumors of an ASIC rig capable of mining the Lyra2REv2 algorithm. Monacoin hasn’t yet performed a hardfork to a different algorithm, but that is possible. There also haven’t been any reports of network difficulty increasing, which would be the sure sign of ASIC miners entering the space.

Pool Mining or Solo Mining Monacoin

It’s too early to say for sure, but it certainly looks as if the ASIC miners are taking their toll on the profitability of solo mining Monacoin as you can see here at WhattoMine.com. With that being the case I wouldn’t recommend solo mining (unless you have one of these Lyra2REv2 ASIC rigs), and instead you should focus your efforts on pool mining of Monacoin. You still won’t be profitable, but at least you’ll get coins regularly.

You see, pool mining allows you to combine your resources with that of other miners. With all that computing power combined the mining pool is more likely to find blocks more often. And then the block rewards are split between the miners in the pool.

There are several different ways that rewards can be split, but at the end of the day they all end up being equivalent in the long run. With Mondacoin pool mining you’ll get coins more regularly, even if it’s just a small amount.

And even though Monacoin mining may not look profitable right now, if the cryptocurrency markets rally again and Monacoin sees a substantial price increase all the coins you mine now will be profitable.

Below I’ll go through several Monacoin pools to see what they offer and how they stand out from their peers. But first, I want to have a brief explanation of what you should be looking for when choosing an Monacoin mining pool, and in fact any mining pool for any coin.

What to Look for in a MONA Pool

If you’ve read any of our previous articles about mining other coins you know that the features to look for in mining pools are very similar from coin to coin. With that in mind I’ll give you the shortened version, but if you need more details about what features to look for in a mining pool you can check out the Bitcoin Gold mining pool piece for a more detailed description of each feature.

Fees: The lower the better. 1% is average, but if you can get a lower fee you’ll keep more coins for yourself.

Server Location: Closer is better. The pool should at least have servers on the same continent as you. Generally the larger pools are global, so this rarely becomes a problem.

Trustworthy: You want to be sure that the pool is going to pay you, and that they are going to pay you fairly for the hashing power you’re adding to the pool. Have a look at some online reviews and see what the community thinks before you jump into any mining pool.

Payout Scheme: As I mentioned above there are several payout schemes, but in the long run they all equal out to the same amount of coins in your wallet.

Pool Uptime: Look for a pool with uptime as close to 100% as possible. A pool that’s down is a pool that’s not mining.

Minimum Payout: Lower minimums are always better because it means you’ll get paid more quickly.

Pool Hash Power: Some people look for the highest hash power possible, under the assumption that this is the pool finding the most blocks. That might be true, but there are also more miners to split the rewards with. Even worse, if everyone chooses the largest mining pool it keeps getting larger and eventually controls the network. That’s bad for decentralization, and bad for the network. Stick with mining pools that have 25% or less of the network hashing power whenever possible.

Best Monacoin Mining Pools

Now that you know what you need to look for in choosing the right pools, let’s take a look at some of best pools that you can join. Some of these pools will give you the opportunity to mine Monacoin specifically while others let you choose the mining algorithm and they choose the most profitable coins.

This is also not an exhaustive list and there may be other pools that are not included that have reasonable Monacoin hashing power.

VipPool.net

Not surprisingly for a coin that bills itself as the first cryptocurrency made in Japan, VipPool.net is the largest Monacoin mining pool and it is based in Japan. The pool controls just under 50% of the hash power on the network.

VIPPool Monacoin Pool Stats (Translated)

As far as I can tell there is no mining fee at VipPool.net, but unless you can read Japanese you’ll have to choose another pool, since the VipPool.net website is only in Japanese. That’s ok though, because with nearly 50% of the hashing power you’d want to choose a different pool anyway.

MiningPoolHub

MiningPoolHub is currently the second most popular Monacoin mining pool, with roughly 25% of the pool hash rate. That’s a little bit high, but Monacoin is pretty decentralized, and given the number of pools involved in mining it’s probably ok to mine through them.

Statistics of MiningPool Hub’s MONA Pool

There are global servers and the mining fee is a standard 0.9%. Minimum payouts are just 0.1%, making this a good choice for home miners. It also supports multi-algorithm switching, changing to the most profitable coin in the algorithm if you like. And you can get pay-outs in any coin you like, even when mining Monacoin.

F2Pool

F2Pool is one of the largest integrated mining pools in the world, and it’s also the third largest Monacoin mining pool, controlling roughly 15% of the hashing power. That actually makes it a pretty good choice as you’ll help to decentralize the network. It’s also a sign that ASICs aren’t that prevalent in Lyra2REv2 mining yet because F2Pool is based in China and is normally very heavily influenced by ASIC miners.

Monacoin Mining Statistics and F2Pool Pool Connections

One really negative aspect of F2Pool is the high 4% mining fee. It also isn’t the best choice if you want to remain anonymous because you have to register an account in order to mine with F2Pool. On the upside, the minimum payout at F2Pool is just 10 MONA and they payout once a day.

ZPool

Zpool.ca is a large pool that mines dozens of algorithms and over 100 different coins. While you can request payment in MONA, and the minimum is just 0.05MONA, it could still take time to get paid as the pool may have to wait until a Monacoin block is found before payments can be made.

They currently only guarantee BTC payments, and you can mine Monacoin, but get paid in Bitcoin if you like. Note that with Zpool you choose the algorithm and Zpool decides which coin in the algorithm is most profitable to mine. This means you might not be mining Monacoin at all times if you’re mining Lyra2REv2 because there are 13 different coins with that algorithm and Monacoin is rarely the most profitable.

Lyra2REv2 Mining Pool Stats at ZPool

The pool mining fee is a reasonable 1.25% and there are global servers so no need to worry about location. Hash power varies as the pool changes from coin to coin, but is generally 10% or less.

Aapool.org

Aapool.org is a smaller Monacoin mining pool with roughly 5% of the hashing power. The mining fee is a bit on the high side at 2%, but the 0.1MONA minimum payout is good. They have global servers so can be accessed by anyone.

AAPool Monacoin Information/i>

The information on the website is a bit sparse, so if you aren’t familiar with setting up mining software Aapool.org may not be your best choice.

Conclusion

Monacoin has its roots in Japan, but based on the mining pool activity it has been spreading its wings. While it strives to remain ASIC resistant, there does seem to be some progress being made by the ASIC manufacturers to create a rig that can mine the Lyra2REv2 algorithm, which means we could see a fork from Monacoin soon, or another algorithm change.

The coin isn’t currently profitable using your GPU, but with the price severely depressed from the start of 2018 all it would take is a small rally to make the coins being mined today quite profitable in the future.

There are plenty of good Monacoin mining pools to choose from, so there’s no reason not to get started mining the first Japanese cryptocurrency.

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The coin and mining pools I want to look at today is Electroneum (ETN).

Electroneum is extremely interesting from a mining perspective because it was designed to be mineable using little more than a mobile phone. With over 2 billion mobile phones in use, and that number growing rapidly, it’s a very powerful proposition for the advancement of cryptocurrency adoption by the average person.

It’s a privacy based coin similar to Monero (XMR), and it runs on the CryptoNight algorithm for solid security and initially to keep it ASIC resistant. I mean it really isn’t beneficial to those mining with a mobile phone if ASIC rigs are also allowed to mine.

So, when the blockchain forked back in May 2018 to keep itself ASIC resistant following the release of CryptoNight ASIC miners it seemed like a good thing. It turned out not to be however, as the network saw too few GPU miners to remain secure. That led to the reintroduction of ASIC miners in July 2018.

Solo Mining or Pool Mining Electroneum

Obviously with the reintroduction of ASIC miners solo mining for individual users becomes somewhat out of the question. I mean, you could do it if you’re feeling lucky, or if you don’t mind not finding a block for months and months. It’s really just better to take the pool mining route and ensure you’ll get some coins for your troubles.

Pool mining combines your resources with that of other miners, in some cases it could even be thousands of miners, to make it easier to find blocks and collect mining rewards. The downside of the mining pool is that you have to split the block reward with all the others mining in the pool. This means much smaller rewards for you, but at far more regular intervals, perhaps as often as every day.

And surprisingly given the reintroduction of ASIC mining to Electroneum, when I checked at Whattomine.com it looks as if you can be profitable mining with GPUs, if you’ve got a pretty powerful rig, preferably with multiple GPUs.

Estimated returns from Electroneum Mining. Source: What to Mine

So, there’s no need to avoid this coin because of ASIC mining. You can be profitable already, and with the price of Electroneum on the rise you could find yourself sitting on even more valuable coins than you thought.

Below I’ll go through several Electroneum pools to see what they offer and how they stand out from their peers. But first, I want to have a brief explanation of what you should be looking for when choosing an Electroneum mining pool, and in fact any mining pool for any coin.

Finding an Electroneum Mining Pool

If you’ve read any of our previous articles about mining other coins you know that the features to look for in mining pools are very similar from coin to coin. With that in mind I’ll give you the shortened version, but if you need more details about what features to look for in a mining pool you can check out the Bitcoin Gold mining pool piece for a more detailed description of each feature.

Fees: The average mining pool will have fees around the 1% level, with fees topping out at 3% at some pools, while dipping to 0% at others. Obviously if you’re saving on fees you’re making more for yourself.

Server Location(s): The closer the servers are to you, the better your hash power will be, and the more profitable your mining efforts will be. While it’s possible to mine from servers located on another continent, it’s best if you stick to pools located in the same geographic region in which you’re located, whether that’s Asia, Europe or North America.

Trustworthy: The more established pools are generally considered trustworthy, but if you’re considering a new pool do some research to see if the community has found the pool to be trustworthy in properly crediting your account and in paying on time.

Payout Scheme: There are various payout schemes, with some more geared towards luck, and others based strictly on even sharing of rewards. Which you choose is a personal preference because over the long term it all evens out.

Pool Uptime: You should look for a pool with uptime as close to 100% as possible.

Minimum Payout: The lower this is the better, because it means you’ll get paid sooner. There’s nothing worse than having to mine for weeks and weeks before getting paid.

Pool Hash Power: This is subjective and you’ll have to make your own decision, but in general it’s better for the network if you choose a pool that controls just 25% or less of the network hash power. This helps decentralization and network security. You can certainly mine with the largest pools if you like, but its better for the network if you choose a smaller pool.

Best ETN Mining Pools

Now that the basics are out of the way let’s have a look at the more popular Electroneum mining pools to get an idea of which might be the best fit for you.

F2Pool

I wouldn’t recommend F2pool as an Electroneum mining pool, simply because they currently control nearly 70% of the network hashrate. They are a well known pool, and based on their history its almost certain that all of this hash power is coming from ASIC units.

F2Pool Electroneum Pool Statistics

They also have the highest fee you’ll find for Electroneum pool mining at 3%. And they require registration and personal information to be able to mine, which is a bit against the privacy-features of a coin such as Electroneum.

Poolin

Poolin is the second largest Electroneum pool, with roughly 12% of the network hash power. Like F2pool it is based in China, and it also has a focus on ASIC rig mining. It also has a high mining fee of 2%. Payments are made once daily and there’s a minimum 100 ETN threshold for payments.

Poolin ETN Pool Key Figures

They recently introduced California based servers, so they now have a global base of servers and you can mine with them from anywhere in the world. They are interesting in their use of a native token, the PIN, which is distributed to miners via airdrop on a daily basis.

Spacepools

Spacepools is one of the oldest Electroneum mining pools and it was previously hosted at http://pool.electroneum.space. It isn’t the largest pool by far, but it also isn’t the smallest, with well over 1,000 miners controlling a bit less than 10% of the network hash rate. This has them finding a block roughly every hour.

Spacepool Electroneum statistics and key Figures

One big benefit of mining with Spacepools is the ultra-low 0.1% mining fee. They also feature a 100 ETN minimum payout and global servers.

Fairhash

Fairhash – This is a Russian based pool, but has global servers. Like Spacepools above they have just under 10% of the network hash rate, and tend to find a block roughly every hour or so.

Electroneum Market Stats and Fairhash ETN Pool Numbers

The mining fee is an average 1%, and they support mining directly to an exchange wallet, which is convenient if you’re planning on simply selling your mining profits.

Nanopool

Nanopool – Nanopool has mining pools for several privacy focused coins, and Electroneum is just one of them. They also control roughly 10% of the network hash rate, but are a bit more expensive as they charge a 2% mining fee.

Headline Numbers at Nanopool’s ETN Pool

One nice feature at Nanopool is a quick start guide that should have you up and mining in just minutes. It’s a good choice from a trust and decentralization standpoint.

Other Electroneum Pools

There are other pools outside these five, but they have very few miners, and the hashrates are very low and can be quite choppy as well. You could try some, such as Easyhash, Miningpoolhub, Superpools and Hashvault to keep the hash power more decentralized, but understand that you might have to wait longer to find blocks and for payouts.

Conclusion

Choosing a good altcoin to mine can be confusing with so many options, but you could certainly do worse than choosing Electroneum. Despite allowing ASIC mining it remains a profitable coin if you have a high end GPU.

Similarly, given that it can be mined with nothing more than a smart phone it’s accessible to billions of people across the globe. To be sure you won’t earn more than a penny or two a day with a smart phone, but in some areas of the world that’s all that’s needed to make a difference in someone’s life.

The price of Electroneum has also seen a nice boost higher in September and October 2018, despite the overall cryptocurrency markets remaining weak. This could be a sign of more good things to come, and having some Electroneum in your wallet if it rallies in 2019 could be a smart move.

I would caution to avoid F2pool as an Electroneum mining pool, but any of the others I covered would be good choices to make some ETN for yourself, while also helping to strengthen the network.

Featured Image via Fotolia

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Although Ethereum Classic (ETC) is considered a relatively easy coin to mine, there are a number of things that you need to consider before you start your hashing for some ETC.

These include factors such as the type of hardware you buy to the mining software you install and the configuration of said software. There is a great deal of optimisation that can be done to increase your mining returns.

With that being said, let’s jump right into our step-by-step guide to Ethereum classic mining.

Ethereum Classic Overview

For those who do not know, Ethereum classic is actually the original Ethereum blockchain. The current Etheruem blockchain is actually a fork of Ethereum classic.

We have covered this extensively in our post on Etheruem classic vs. Ethereum but the just the split came down to a disagreement in the Ethereum community. In June of 2015, a famous event called the DAO hack occurred. This was when a hacker was able to exploit a project’s code to siphon off millions of ETH.

There were some developers who were in favour of hard forking the code (current Ethereum devs) but there were others that viewed this as a breach of the “code is law” maxim. Hence, the Ethereum developers forked the code to rescue the users who had their ETH stolen in the hack.

The Ethereum classic developers dissapproved and kept on running the existing Etheruem blockchain. This is the now the Ethereum classic that we have today.

Can We Mine Ethereum Classic?

Just as Ethereum is a Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency, so too Ethereum Classic is a Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency. This means it can be mined, and the good news is that the network difficulty for Ethereum Classic is far lower than for Ethereum, making it more suitable for miners using GPUs rather than ASIC rigs.

One of the best places you can look at to get an idea of the mining profitability of various coins is whattomine. Ethereum classic often features as one of the most profitable coins to mine. Below is a screenshot from the ETC mining calculator.

Ethereum Classic Profitability on WhattoMine

As  you can see, the required hashrate in order to breakeven for your mining is only 56 Mh/s at the time of this post. This is almost half of that for the hashpower required to breakeven on Ethereum. Given that they are both mined with the Etash mining algorithm, it is a no-brainer where you will turn your hashing power at.

What’s Needed to Mine Ethereum Classic

Mining Ethereum Classic is similar to any other Proof-of-Work coin and you need pretty much the same hardware and software. To begin with, you’ll need a wallet that’s capable of storing Ethereum Classic. While there are many wallets for holding Ethereum, there are less that can hold Ethereum Classic, so make sure yours is an ETC wallet, not an ETH wallet. For the purposes of this tutorial I’ll be using the Exodus wallet, but you could also use Coinomi or one of the hardware wallets, among other choices.

Of course you’ll need hardware for mining, and the better choices are the higher end Nvidia graphics cards such as the 1080 and 1080i. You can also mine using AMD GPUs, but they’ve been found to be less powerful for Ethereum Classic mining. One further requirement is a minimum of 4GB RAM, either dedicated video RAM or system RAM. If you’re technically inclined, the best setup is one that includes multiple GPU’s, as many as 6 can be combined into one mining rig.

Nvidia and AMD GPU cards used in ETC Mining

You’ll need mining software as well, and there are several choices. The most popular, and the one I’ll be using for this tutorial is the Claymore Dual Ethereum miner available from Bitcointalk forums. This miner can be used with both Nvidia and AMD GPU’s and has versions for both Windows and Linux. It also supports dual mining, so when you become more experienced you can dual mine Ethereum Classic and Siacoin or Decred among others.

Another option is Ethminer, which can be downloaded from Github and also supports both AMD and Nvidia cards, as well as Windows and Linux.

Those who decide they don’t want to be bothered with all the technical aspects of mining can consider using MinerGate, which provides a graphical user interface and has no setup requirements other than downloading the application and letting MinerGate know what ETC address to send the coins to. This is the easiest solution, but also gives the lowest returns.

One final consideration is whether you’re going to solo mine or if you want to join a mining pool. You’ll give up a small percentage of your mining profits (generally around 1% for most mining pools), but by combining your hash power with other miners you can get more regular payouts. Two popular Ethereum Classic mining pools are Nanopool and Ethermine

Now, let’s get into the step by step instructions for mining Ethereum Classic.

Mining Ethereum Classic the Easy Way

I’m going to be using Nanopool as my Ethereum Classic mining pool, because they’ve made it super easy to get started by creating a quick start app that makes it a breeze to download and setup the mining software.

Plus Nanopool is one of the most popular mining pools, with global servers and enough history that I know they are trustworthy. There is a 1% mining pool fee, but that’s pretty standard when using a mining pool.

First head over to Nanopool.org and click the Quick Start button under Ethereum Classic.

Selecting What to Mine on Nanopool

You’ll be presented with a set of five simple instructions. The first one instructs you to choose either Nvidia or AMD for your GPU. When you click the appropriate button it will take you to GitHub to download the mining software. You’ll download it as a .zip archive and then extract the archive to a folder on your computer.

Note that the Nvidia choice takes you to the FinMiner software, while the AMD choice takes you to the Claymore Dual Ethereum miner, which can actually be used for both AMD and Nvidia cards, and has been the preferred choice for Ethereum Classic miners.

We will take a look at mining with both the Finminer and Claymore although the latter is preferred.

Using the Claymore Miner

Once you have downloaded the Claymore files and unzipped them, you need to generate a configuration file to run it. There are a number of online tools that will help you to do this although conveniently, Nanopool has one as well.

You can now go back to the Nanopool Quick Start menu and click the button under step 3 to generate your config file. This is the file that starts the miner and specifies the various parameters such as the server to connect to, and what Ethereum Classic address to send earnings to, and what address to send secondary earnings (Siacoin or PascalCoin) to.

Ethereum Classic Claymore Configuration

Note that the secondary wallet field is mandatory, so you will need to choose either SiaCoin or PascalCoin and generate a wallet address. That could mean you need to download and install a SiaCoin or PascalCoin wallet.

Click “Generate”.

Once you click the Generate button another .zip file will be created. You need to download this .zip file and then extract the contents (dpools.txt, epools.txt and start.bat) to the same folder where you extracted the miner in the first step. You’ll be asked if you want to overwrite files of the same name, click yes.

Place Claymore Config Files in mining Folder

Now to mine some coins!

Go to the folder where you extracted everything and double click the ‘start.bat’ file.

Claymore miner hashing for ETC in Command line. Image Source

The miner will go through several steps verifying the parameters and will then launch the mining software. If everything is working properly you’ll see the software begin to find shares.

Using FinMiner

If you do choose to use the FinMiner by clicking the Nvidia choice you’ll need to make some additional changes.

Much like with Claymore, you must download the .zip file from the Github repository for the FinMiner. Once you have downloaded the files and extracted them then you need to configure the miner to run.

Then open the config.ini file with Notepad or similar and insert the following under the line “Address to send funds to”, replacing the line “wallet=”:

wallet=YOUR_ETH_ADDRESS
algorithm=Ethash
coin=ETH
rigName=YOUR_WORKER
email=YOUR_EMAIL
pool1 = eth-eu1.nanopool.org:9999
pool2 = eth-eu2.nanopool.org:9999
pool3 = eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999
pool4 = eth-us-west1.nanopool.org:9999
pool5 = eth-asia1.nanopool.org:9999

Note that you must replace YOUR_ETH_ADDRESS with your actual Ethereum Classic wallet address, and you can replace YOUR_WORKER and YOUR_EMAIL with actual values, but it isn’t strictly necessary. Save and close the file.

Now all you need to is to run the Finminer.exe file and it will launch in the command line and start mining just like with the claymore example above.

Conclusion

With the Nanopool configuration tool, Ethereum Classic mining is a simple task that shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes to get set-up and running, even if this is the first time you’ve ever mined a cryptocurrency. And if that’s too long simply head over to MinerGate, where you can download the GUO client and be mining in 5 minutes or less, depending on the speed of your internet connection.

The other great thing about mining Ethereum Classic is the hash power required to be profitable is still fairly low since the network difficulty of the coin remains low. A strong gaming computer would almost surely be profitable mining ETC at current prices.

And to make things even sweeter, you can even dual mine SiaCoin or PascalCoin while you’re mining Ethereum Classic, getting more bang for your buck so to speak. While you won’t get rich from these coins since you’ll be mining with your CPU, it’s still a nice bit of icing on the cake.

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Komodo is a privacy-centric decentralized, open-source cryptocurrency that was evolved from Bitcoin Dark, but is a fork of ZCash. The lead developer is James “jl777” Lee, the same developer who created Bitcoin Dark.

He created Komodo using a fork of Zcash to include z-snark technology, and Komodo runs on the SuperNET platform, taking advantage of the software applications and infrastructure of that platform.

Komodo uses a Delayed Proof of Work (dPoW) protocol to keep its anonymous, private and transparent transactions ultra-secure. To learn more about Komodo you can read our Komodo Platform Review.

Pool Mining vs. Solo Mining Komodo

Until January 2018 you could still have a chance as a solo miner if you had a powerful GPU rig, but since then going it alone as a solo miner has become increasingly difficult due to the introduction of ASIC miners for the Equihash algorithm (which Komodo uses). These days you need a great deal of hashing power, or a great deal of luck, if you think you’ll find a block when solo mining.

Instead it’s become far better to just joining a Komodo mining pool and combine your resources with other Komodo miners. Sure you don’t get the full block reward, you have to split it with your mining pool companions, but at least you get some rewards, and you get them with a pretty even and regular distribution as well.

Solo mining or Joining a Global Pool? Source: Fotolia

I want to also mention that if you don’t have an ASIC rig to mine with, even if you’re pool mining, you won’t be profitable, unless somehow you’re getting free electricity, and even then you won’t make much more than $0.25 a day. But if you just want to accumulate some Komodo, and you think the price will increase, then you can still go right ahead and use your GPU to mine.

Otherwise, get yourself an Antminer A9 rig, but beware that a new Antminer A9 costs nearly $3,000 from Bitmain, and even the A9 Mini unit goes for $745.

Komodo Mining Pool Considerations

Mining pool features are very similar from coin to coin, and Komodo is no different. Below is a quick run-down on what features you’ll want to look for in a Komodo mining pool to get your best experience and

Fees: Mining fees can range from 0% all the way up to 2%. Obviously a smaller fee is going to make you more profitable, with all else being equal.

Server Location: The pool you choose should have servers in your region of the world. If you’re in North America look for North American servers. The same goes for those located in Europe or Asia. Basically the closer the server is the more hashing power and profitability you’ll see.

Trustworthy: Make sure the pool you’re choosing has a history of making payments and of being trustworthy and reliable in general. The pools that have been around for a few years generally don’t have trust issues.

Payout Scheme: There are various payout schemes, with some more geared towards luck, and others based strictly on even sharing of rewards. Which you choose is a personal preference because over the long term it all evens out.

Pool Uptime: 100% is best. If the pool servers aren’t up you aren’t mining.

Minimum Payout: Minimums are typically set low enough to ensure the average miner will get a daily payout. It’s worth finding out what the minimum is though, because you really don’t want to wait a month to receive your payout.

Pool Hash Power: It’s always tempting to choose the mining pool with the greatest hashing power, since you know they’ll also be finding the most blocks. Try to temper that with some common sense however. Anytime you choose a pool that has more than 25% of the total hashing power you’re also promoting the centralization of mining for that coin. It’s better for the network if you choose a pool with a smaller amount of hashing power to keep things as decentralized as possible.

Best Komodo Mining Pools

There aren’t a huge number of Komodo pools, but there are enough to give you some choice. Below are the 5 best pools that we can recommend currently. There are probably another 10-15 you could consider, but when I was looking any of those had no miners or so few miners that they were mining with less than 10 Ksol/s hashrate.

Komodo Mining Pool

Komodo Mining Pool is the oldest and one of the largest mining pools out there for Komodo. It consistently has more than 40% of the hashing power, making it one of the pools you should actually avoid if you want to maintain a decentralized and secure network.

Komodo Pool Statistics

There’s a 1% pool fee, which is average, and a minimum payout amount of 0.5 KMD. They have miners located globally, and to maintain your privacy there’s no registration required, just use a valid Komodo address and you’re good to go.

Suprnova.cc

If you’ve done any pool mining at all you’ve almost certainly heard of Suprnova.cc as they are frequently one of the top mining pools for dozens of coins. One nice thing about that is that there’s a unified login that can be used across nearly all of those pools, so you don’t have to reset logins and worker information.

Suprnova.cc KMD Pool and Mining Statistics

Suprnova.cc has the standard 1% mining fee and a nice low 0.1 KMD minimum payout. They hold about 15-20% of the total hashing power, making them a good choice if you want a solid pool that isn’t endangering the decentralization of the network.

Luckpool

Luckpool.org is a Canadian based pool, so is best used by those located in North America. It is a bit different from other pools in that it charges a smaller 0.5% miners fee, but also offers something they call the Miner’s Jackpot. This is a bonus paid to the miner who actually finds the block. In the case of Komodo the Miner’s Jackpot is 0.24KMD. This leaves 2.76 KMD + transaction fee rewards – pool fee for all miners.

Luckpool Komodo Pool Hash-rate and Stats

They are also different in using the Pay Per Loyal Time Share (PPLTS) payout system. The minimum payout is just 0.1KMD and this is an anonymous pool, meaning there’s no need to register or provide any personal information. All you need is a Komodo address. They also control just 10% of the total hashing power, making them a solid mining pool, but small enough to maintain decentralization.

Coinblockers

Coinblockers has been around for several years, but they remain one of the smaller Komodo pools, with roughly 1% of the total hashing power of the network. That doesn’t stop them from being a good choice for a Komodo pool. The mining fee is 1% at Coinblockers and minimum payments are an ultra-low 0.01KMD.

Coinblockers KMD Pool and Komodo Network Stats

It’s an anonymous pool with no registration requirements, which is perfect for a privacy-centric coin like Komodo. They also have support for NiceHash if you feel you’d like to rent hashing power and use it to mine Komodo.

Zpool

Zpool.ca is a large pool that mines dozens of algorithms and over 100 different coins. While you can request payment in KMD, and the minimum is just 0.05KMD, it could still take time to get paid as the pool may have to wait until a Komodo block is found before payments can be made. They currently only guarantee BTC payments, and you can mine Komodo, but get paid in Bitcoin if you like.

Zpool Equihash Pool Statistics

Note that with Zpool you choose the algorithm (Equihash in the case of Komodo) and Zpool decides which coin in the algorithm is most profitable to mine. This means you might not be mining Komodo at all times. It also means the hashing power of Zpool varies dramatically as a percent of the total. I’ve seen it below 10% of the total and above 70% of the total. Keep that in mind regarding centralization when you’re deciding which Komodo pool to use.

Conclusion

As you can see there are not only several good Komodo mining pools to choose from, but they each have their own unique features that differentiate them from each other. The only downside is that mining with a GPU is no longer profitable, and you really need an ASIC rig to be profitable when mining Komodo.

However, if you believe the price of Komodo will increase the lack of profitability now shouldn’t be a concern as you’ll become profitable as the price of KMD rises.

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The Siacoin platform is a blockchain based alternative for cloud storage. It’s decentralized cloud storage that competes with the likes of the traditional service providers Dropbox, Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

The benefit to using Sia is that anyone can host or access encrypted storage, and that everything stored and all transactions are verifiable on the public blockchain. All services on the network are paid in Siacoin, and all transactions in the Sia ecosystem are secured through filing contracts and storage proofs.

Pool Mining or Solo Mining Siacoin

There are always those who want to go it alone and take their chances as a solo miner, but the better path is to pool mine Siacoin. The reason for this is the difficulty in finding a block means you need a huge amount of hashing power, or a great deal of luck, if you expect to find a block as a solo miner.

By pool mining you’re combing your resources with those of many other miners. You have to split the rewards with these others when blocks are found, but you’ll also get more regular rewards.

Go it Solo or Join a Pool? Image via Fotolia

It’s also important to note here that it’s no longer possible to use your GPU to mine Siacoin profitably. Since the release of the Antminer A3 in January 2018 the network hash rate and difficulty has increased to the point that you simply need to have an ASIC rig if you want to mine Siacoin. If you try to mine with a GPU, even the most powerful GPU, you’ll wait months to generate enough Siacoin to withdraw from the pool.

So, we’ll look at Siacoin mining pools and which ones are best, but keep in mind that you’ll need to purchase an ASIC rig if you’re interested in mining Siacoin. Bitmain sells new Antminer A3 rigs for just $145 (without power supply) and you can also find them used on eBay for as little as $70. And the Siacoin website has instructions for setting up an A3 rig here.

What to Look for in a Siacoin Mining Pool

If you’ve read any of our previous articles about mining pools you know that the features to look for in mining pools are very similar from coin to coin. With that in mind I’ll give you the shortened version, but if you need more details about what features to look for in a mining pool you can check out the Bitcoin Gold mining pool piece for a more detailed description of each feature.

Fees: Average fees are typically 1%, but if you can find a pool with lower fees you’ll increase your own profits.

Server Location: The pool you choose should have servers in your region of the world. If you’re in North America look for North American servers. The same goes for those located in Europe or Asia. Basically the closer the server is the more hashing power and profitability you’ll see.

Trustworthy: Do some research about the pools to see if others have found them reliable and trustworthy when it comes to payments.

Payout Scheme: There are various payout schemes, with some more geared towards luck, and others based strictly on even sharing of rewards. Which you choose is a personal preference because over the long term it all evens out.

Pool Uptime: 100% is best. If the pool servers aren’t up you aren’t mining.

Minimum Payout: Usually these are low enough to ensure you get paid pretty regularly, but check the minimums just to be sure you won’t be waiting a month or longer to get paid.

Pool Hash Power: While you might be tempted to choose the pool with the most hash power you should really try to choose pools with a smaller hash power to help promote decentralization. In the case of Siacoin, F2Pool and Siamining.com control nearly 80% of the network hash power as of late September 2018. These 2 should be avoid if you want to help decentralization and network security.

Sia Mining Pools

Siacoin mining has become somewhat centralized as of September 2018, but you can help by mining with pools that have a smaller amount of hash power. Below are the top mining pools you can use to mine Siacoin:

Luxor

If you want a simple, fast mining pool then Luxor might be the perfect fit. Even better than the fact that it’s fat, trustworthy and reliable is that the team behind Luxor promises to donate 10% of their profits to the Sia community. This gesture is being made to help the community become more successful. That means not only will you be earning, but you’ll also be giving back to the Sia community.

Luxor Tech Siacoin mining Pool statistics

You can double check on the promise of a 10% donation by looking at the Sia blockchain explorer. Luxor is sending the 10% to the cold storage address of Nebulous Labs, which is the company that employs all the core developers for Siacoin.

One of the downsides to using Luxor is the small number of miners. Currently the pool has just 1% of the total hash power. They’ve offset this somewhat by using a PPS payment scheme, and you have to remember you’re also supporting Siacoin and decentralization by using Luxor.

Siamining.com

Siamining.com is by far the most popular Siacoin mining pool, controlling 55.5% of the hash power on the network. This is actually a bad thing since it promotes a centralized blockchain. If you can avoid using Siamining.com it will be very good for the network.

Siamining.com mining pool statistics

If you have to follow the masses then you can expect to pay a 3% PPS fee at Siamining.com, but you can also expect optimal results from their ASIC optimized mining pool. Siamining.com was the first ever mining pool for Siacoin, and you can mine anonymously with nothing more than a wallet address.

The mining pool is reliable and trustworthy, and you won’t find any hidden fees. Plus, the minimum payout is 500 SC, with payments being made daily.

Nanopool

Nanopool is also a popular choice for mining Siacoin, with more than 1,000 miners active. Even so, it controls less than 1% of the total hash power, which actually makes it an even better choice if you’re just getting started mining since choosing Nanopool will spread out the hash power and help secure and decentralize the network more.

Nanopool Siacoin Mining Pool statistics

The fee at Nanopool is 2% with a PPLNS payment scheme. They payout several times a day with a minimum payout amount of 1,000 SC. They also allow for anonymous mining, and there’s no need to create an account at Nanopool to mine Siacoin.

F2Pool

F2Pool is one of the largest integrated mining pools in the world, and it’s also the second largest Siacoin mining pool, controlling roughly 30% of the hashing power. That alone makes it a bad choice as a pool since using F2Pool will only increase the centralization and decrease the security of the network.

F2Pool Siacoin Pool Hashrate and Ports

It’s also not great if you want to remain anonymous because you have to register an account in order to mine with F2Pool.

On the upside, the minimum payout at F2Pool is just 100 SC and they payout once a day. Even so, it isn’t a recommended pool for mining Siacoin, and even the Siacoin team itself ask you not to mine with F2pool in order to help the network.

Antpool

Antpool is one of the larger Siacoin mining pools, but isn’t too large as it controls roughly 5% of the network hash power. That’s actually a bit surprising since Antpool is owned by Bitmain, the company that makes the Antminer A3 ASIC rig used for mining Siacoin.

Antpool Siacoin Pool Hashrate and Statistics

As one of the largest pools Antpool has solid reliability, and is considered trustworthy among the cryptocurrency mining community.

Unfortunately you do need to register an account at Antpool, so anonymity is out the window. One advantage is that they occasionally run promotions where they waive the fees. The most recent ended on September 18, 2018. Currently the fee for Siacoin mining is 2% and payouts are made daily with a minimum of 100 SC.

Conclusion

It’s unfortunate that you can’t mine Siacoin with a GPU profitably any longer. If you have affordable electricity and the means to run an ASIC rig, then the Antminer A3 can be used to mine Siacoin.

Decentralization is certainly an issue with this coin, as one pool currently controls roughly 55% of the network hashing power. Avoiding that pool, or any pool with more than 25% of the network hashing power is a good idea.

If you’d really like to support the Sia devs, the Luxor mining pool is contributing a portion of their profits to the Sia community.

I should also note here that it is possible to dual mine Ethereum and Siacoin at the mining pools that support both cryptocurrencies. Also, you would be dual mining with your GPU, which isn’t going to be profitable.

Featured Image via Fotolia

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Now, it’s obvious that Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency, but what the Bitcoin Gold community was referring to is the mining process for Bitcoin. Even today Bitcoin mining operations are pretty centralized, because the power required to mine Bitcoin has led to huge mining farms, and powerful ASIC miners.

Bitcoin Gold has gotten away from that to a large degree by using a Proof of Work algorithm known as Equihash, which is ASIC resistant. That means it’s still possible to mine Bitcoin Gold with a home computer, making mining more accessible and decentralized.

And that’s why we’re taking a look at Bitcoin Gold mining pools. But first, is a mining pool even necessary for Bitcoin Gold?

Bitcoin Gold Pool Mining vs Solo Mining

When you’re mining Bitcoin Gold you can choose to mine on your own (solo mining) or with others (pool mining). The difference is when you’re solo mining all the hash power is coming from your computer(s), making it less likely you’ll find a block, but when you do you get to keep the entire reward.

With pool mining you’re combining your hash power with that of hundreds or thousands of others. This means you’ll find many more blocks, but you’ll also have to share the rewards.

Solo Mining or Joining a Pool? Image via Fotolia

Solo mining can work if you have many high end video cards to mine with, so you have a great deal of hash power on your own. But pool mining gives more even rewards. If you solo mine you might not find a block for weeks, and you’ll get paid 12.5 BTG when you do.

If you pool mine you’ll get paid a much smaller amount every day. That amount is based on how much hash power you’re contributing to the pool. So, if your hash power is 1% of the pool total you’ll get 1% or 0.125 BTG (less fees) every time a block is found by the pool.

What to Look for in a Bitcoin Gold Mining Pool

We’ve been over many of these features to look for in a mining pool before as they’re pretty standard. And honestly, with these in place any mining pool is as good as another mining pool, the choice really comes down to the users preference. So, without further ado, here’s what to look for in a good Bitcoin Gold mining pool:

• Fees: This is probably the one feature that will make a difference from one pool to the next over the long haul. As you might have already guessed, the pools with the lowest fees, when all else is equal, are going to be your best choice. On average fees run about 1%, so anything below that is a good deal.
• Server Location: This isn’t a negotiable factor. You need to have servers that are somewhat close to your location. When I say somewhat close I mean Europeans should choose a mining pool with servers in Europe (possibly as far away as Russia) and North Americans should choose a pool with servers located in North America. The closer the server is to your location, the less latency and the greater hashing power you can provide to the pool.
• Trustworthy: Don’t simply choose a pool because it’s located in the same city as you and has 0% fees. It also needs to be trustworthy. Do a search and see what others have to say about the pool before using it. Or simply try it out and see if they are paying in full and on time.
• Payout Scheme: This is something you’ll need to look at and decide how important it is to you. There are many different payout schemes offered by mining pools. Some are geared more towards luck, while others look to make payouts as fair as possible based on contributed hash power. Pay per Share (PPS) and Pay per Share Plus (PPS+) are two popular schemes that remove miner risk as the pool pays a flat payment for each share solved. Another popular payout scheme is Pay Per Last N Shares (PPLNS) where payment is made as a % of shares they contribute to the total shares (N).
• Pool Uptime: This isn’t always easy to find, but try because you need the uptime of the pool to be as close to 100% as possible. If the pool servers aren’t up, you aren’t mining. And that means you’re losing money.
• Minimum Payout: This isn’t a huge deal and probably won’t be a deal breaker if everything else looks good, but a lower minimum payout is better because you get paid more quickly. If you aren’t too concerned with getting paid rapidly this won’t be much of a concern for you.
• Pool Hash Power: You need to do a bit of a balancing act here. On the one hand you want a popular pool with a lot of hashing power, because that pool will be finding the most blocks. On the other hand, if the hashing power is too great you run the risk of centralization and possibly even a 51% attack. A good rule of thumb is to look for the greatest hash power, but not greater than 25% of the total. If a pool already has more than 25% of the hash power you should choose a different pool simply for the health of the network.

Bitcoin Gold Pools

For nearly everyone reading this article the best choice will be to go with pool mining over solo mining. You’ll get regular payouts and won’t have to depend as much on luck. If you have a small mining farm with a dozen or more GPUs feel free to go ahead and solo mine, but understand that your rewards will be inconsistent at best, and if you’re unlucky you might not make nearly as much as you would with a pool.

Pool.gold

Pool.gold is a very popular pool that was created by one of the founding members of Bitcoin Gold. It boasts 100% uptime and 0% fees, and is considered to be very user friendly.

Pool.Gold BTG Pool Stats

Beginners can reach out to the 24/7 support team at pool.gold and someone will help with miner configuration to get you up and running as quickly as possible. There are global servers, and payout is 0.01 BTG minimum, so it’s a very good pool for those new to Bitcoin Gold mining.

Minergate

Minergate is a GUI miner that can be quickly downloaded and easily setup to work on any computer. It also has support for mining about a dozen other coins, and the ability to auto-mine, where it will switch to whatever coin is currently most profitable. There are global servers and minimum payout is just 0.01 BTG. Because there’s really nothing to do in the way of configuration this is probably the easiest miner for beginners.

MinerGate unique selling points

It’s been around since 2014, and has more than 300,000 active miners as well as paying out more than $200 million in 2017. There have been complaints in the past from users that Minergate isn’t paying out the full amounts being mined, but nothing was ever proven.

2Miners

2Miners says they are a mining pool made for professionals by professionals. In addition to Bitcoin Gold they have mining support for 18 other cryptocurrencies. Servers are located around the globe, and latencies are very small.

2Miners Bitcoin Gold Mining Pool Stats

The fee is 1% and there is a minimum 0.01 BTG payout, with payments being made every 2 hours.

BTGPool Pro

BTGPool Pro is a bit smaller than the previous pools, but still had nearly 300 miners connected when I looked on September 17, 2018. That’s not bad at all.

BTGPoolPro Bitcoin Gold Statistics

They have servers located globally, and a standard 1% fee and 0.01 BTG minimum payout. If you’re concerned with helping support decentralization of the network this would be a good choice over the previous three Bitcoin Gold mining pools.

Suprnova

Suprnova.cc is one of the most popular mining pools, with support for nearly 50 different cryptocurrencies. It is also very popular for Bitcoin Gold, with over 2,000 miners. They have servers located globally, and like other Bitcoin Gold pools they collect a 1% fee and have a 0.01 BTG minimum payout.

Other BTG Pools

As you can see, most Bitcoin Gold pools are quite similar, and over the long term you’ll have similar results no matter which you choose. The rest of the pools that will support BTG can be seen on the Bitcoin Gold website.

Conclusion

Mining Bitcoin Gold is a good choice for the home miner, since it uses the ASIC resistant Equihash algorithm. And the Bitcoin Gold Foundation is committed to keeping the coin ASIC resistant, so home miners should be able to continue their mining activity as long as it remains profitable for them.

Fortunately there are also a large number of mining pools to help you keep your earnings consistent. With a 1% fee and 0.01 BTG minimum withdrawal being pretty standard among these pools it really won’t matter which one you choose. My only suggestion is that you try to choose one of the small to mid-sized pools to keep centralization high on the network.

While Bitcoin Gold was subject to some controversy at its inception, there hasn’t been any negative press since, and so the coin continues gaining popularity, although its price has shrunk throughout 2018 as the cryptocurrency markets have suffered a broad based downturn.

Mining now might be a very good choice as you could see the value of your mining rewards double, triple, or more once cryptocurrency markets in general recover.

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post Bitcoin Gold Mining Pools: Where Should You Mine BTG? appeared first on Coin Bureau.

One coin that got a lot of interest a few months ago on Reddit and Twitter, and remains both popular and profitable for home miners, is the Ravencoin (RVN).

There are more profitable coins, but Ravencoin has remained near the top when it comes to profitability, and chances are that will continue, thanks to the ASIC resistance of the algorithm the coin uses. If you haven’t heard of Ravencoin before the following guide will get you on your way to mining this neat little coin with either an Nvidia or an AMD GPU.

The guide below will give you links to all the resources you need from the Ravencoin mining software to mining pools. Let’s get started.

What is Ravencoin?

Ravencoin was developed as an open-source, decentralized peer-to-peer network that is implementing a blockchain specifically designed for transferring assets from one party to another. If you want to take a deeper dive into the project and its capabilities, here’s a link to the Ravencoin whitepaper.

Ravencoin RVN Coin and network statistics. Source: rvnstats

Ravencoin is a fairly new project, having been launched in January 2018 as a fork of Bitcoin. Like Bitcoin it was created with no pre-mine and no ICO. Furthermore, it is a complete proof-of-work coin with the network fully secured by miners. It uses a unique X16R algorithm that was designed specifically for Ravencoin and ASIC resistance.

X16R & ASIC Resistance

One of the reasons Ravencoin has gained popularity so quickly is the X16R algorithm it uses for proof-of-work mining.

The X16R algorithm is actually 16 different algorithms, which are used randomly during mining and the order depends on the hash of the previous block. Because of this randomness it’s extremely difficult to program an ASIC machine to mine the X16R algorithm. And even if someone tried to make an ASIC for the algorithm the developers could simply change the algorithms being used in X16R.

So, it’s fairly safe to assume that the X16R algorithm will remain ASIC resistant for a very long time.

Ravencoin Wallets

As is true for any mining you need a wallet to send your coins to. You can get the latest version of the official Raven wallet from Github, where it’s available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Ubuntu, cenos7 and fedora27. Download the wallet and go to File -> Receiving Address to create a new wallet address.

Ravencoin Proprietary Wallet GUI

You should also encrypt the wallet by going to Settings -> Encrypt and following the prompts.

Next you’ll want to download the appropriate mining software for your GPU.

Ravencoin (X16R) Mining Software

When it comes to mining software there are several options available, and if you look at the hardcore mining forums you’ll find sometimes heated discussions about which miner produces the best results. The truth is your results are highly dependant on the setup of your own machine, and honestly most of the miners produce results that are quite similar.

So, don’t stress too much about your choice of Ravencoin miner. Based on what we’ve read the general consensus is that for Nvidia cards the best miner is zealot/enemy-1.08. The downside of this miner is that it’s closed-source with a 1% developer fee.

I don’t recommend using closed-source miners because you never know what else might be hiding in the code. Open-source options include the Suprminer 1.6 (1% dev fee), the Nevermore 0.2.3 (no fee) or Ravencoin Miner v2.6.

If you’re using an AMD card the most popular mining software is Avermore 1.4.1, which is by the same developer as the Nevermore 0.2.3 mining software for X16R.

For any of the miners you’ll need to download and unzip the files. Note that Windows Defender or your anti-virus will most likely flag the software as malicious and you’ll need to allow it or add an exception.

Ravencoin Mining Pools

The final piece of your mining puzzle is to choose a Ravencoin Mining Pool. It’s best to use a mining pool rather than trying to solo mine. While Ravencoin is ASIC resistant, it is still too difficult to solo mine unless you have a farm of GPUs. You’ll find lots of available pools with fees ranging from 0% to 2%. Below are some of the most popular pools and their hashrate. Note that it isn’t always best to choose the most popular pool because that promotes centralization.

• Suprnova.cc – Largest Ravencoin mining pool with 398 GH/s
• Ravenminer – 330 GH/s
• Ravenminer EU – 106 GH/s
• BSOD – 106 GH/s
• A Hash Pool – 16.5 GH/s

Keep in mind that at the end of the day (or week as it is) your earnings will even out no matter which pool you use. That means there’s really no best pool, only pools with lower fees and different payment types and minimums. Pick any pool that suits you and it will be the best for you.

For this guide I’m using Ravenpool, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best.

Mining Ravencoin (RVN) with Nvidia and AMD

After you’ve downloaded and extracted the mining program you should see a few files, one of which is a batch file. In my case I’m using Suprminer and the batch file is called mybat.bat, but for others you may only see a batch file called “example”.

Ravencoin Miner file directory

In any case you’ll need to right click the batch file and choose “Open with”. You can use Notepad or Wordpad or any other text editor you have installed on your computer.

What you see will depend on the miner you’re using, but in general it will follow this format:

ccminer -a x16r -o [pool url] -u [wallet address] -p [password] -i 19

You need to complete the “pool url”, the “wallet address” and the “password. In the case of Ravencoin miner all of these are prefilled, but need to be changed to reflect your own information. And in most cases the –p field remains blank.

Note the “ccminer” designation at the beginning of the line. In the case of the enemy miner this is “z-enemy” and in the case of the Averminer miner for AMD this is “sgminer”.

The pool url, user and password values all come from your mining pool. In my case I’ve use the Ravenminer pool and my settings look as follows:

.bat file settings for Ravencoin

Save the batch file and then double click it to run. A command window should open and the Ravencoin miner will connect and begin mining RVN.

Ravencoin Miner running in Command Window

Tuning and Troubleshooting

There are a number of errors that can occur when setting up the mining software and I can’t cover all of them here. Remember Google is your friend. If you get an error message you almost certainly aren’t the first person to get that error and a Google search will probably uncover a solution.

There are also a number of settings related to the intensity of mining and other parameters. I’m also not going to touch on those since they’re really for advanced users. Mining with the default settings will be fine.

One other thing to note is that hashrates with X16R aren’t stable due to the constant switching between algorithms. Miners sometimes freeze or crash as well, and in many cases lowering your overclock settings can solve this problem.

RVN Profitability Calculator

There are several ways to estimate your mining profitability with Ravencoin. The first is through WhattoMine.com. The second is RavenCalc, which gives you the same information as WhattoMine.

Finally, you can use the bot in the Ravencoin Discord channel by entering “!hash xx“, where the “xx” is replaced with you hash power. The bot is pretty accurate.

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide has given you what you need to get started mining Ravencoin. There are few coins that are set to remain ASIC resistant as well and as long as Ravencoin, meaning you should be able to continue mining it with your GPU for a very long time. The same is not true for many altcoins.

If you didn’t click through to check out the Ravencoin Discord bot you really should, if only to join the community there, which is now over 10,000 users and is quite active. They can help you with any Ravencoin related problems or questions you might have.

Aside from being mineable with a GPU, the project is also focused on giving a useful blockchain product. With a strong community and complete transparency the project continues growing. I also like the fact that Ravencoin launched with no pre-mine and no ICO , and is avoiding the use of masternodes and staking in favor of mining, which is a far more decentralized consensus mechanism.

Featured image via Fotolia

The post Mining Ravencoin (RVN): Step-by-Step Guide appeared first on Coin Bureau.

Verge makes its anonymity possible by building its blockchain on top of Tor and I2P services which serve to hide users personal data, such as their IP address and geolocation.

Something else that is interesting and unique about Verge is its proof-of-work consensus algorithm. Unlike many other cryptocurrencies, it uses a combination of different algorithms. All of these consensus algorithms still allow users to mine Verge on their home computer’s GPU. This is a huge bonus and this type of home mining works very well if you combine your hash power in a Verge mining pool.

But which pools are the best to join?

In this post, we will take a look at some of the most profitable Verge mining pools as well as give you everything that you need to know about choosing the best pools.

Verge Mining Overview

Verge mining allows the miners to make rewards for securing the Verge network and validate blocks and transactions. It’s also how new Verge tokens are created. While Verge uses 5 different algorithms for mining, they are all Proof-of-Work algorithms. Verge chose to use PoW because it is considered the most secure consensus protocol.

The process of mining uses the processing power of a computer to solve a difficult cryptographic problem. When the problem is solved a new block is discovered, and all the transaction data in that block is validated.

The creation of blocks also rewards the miners with new Verge tokens. Because several of the algorithms are ASIC resistant, Verge can still be mined with a basic GPU. In addition to a graphics card miners also need a Verge wallet and specialized mining software.

Verge Consensus Algorithms

Most cryptocurrencies use just one consensus protocol, so Verge is somewhat unique since it allows for mining with five different algorithms. The algorithms supported by Verge are Scrypt, X17, Lyra2rev2, myr-groestl and blake2s.

Note that the Scrypt algorithm is dominated by ASIC rigs and isn’t really suitable for home mining. Most of the other algorithms will work best with Nvidia cards, with the exception of myr-groestl that performs best with AMD cards. One other possibility is to dual mine Ethereum and Verge, since the Claymore Miner supports dual mining of Blake2s algorithm tokens.

Pool Mining Verge

Because I’m guessing most of you aren’t running ASIC rigs from your home you’ll want to pool mine rather than solo mine. Pool mining allows you to pool your computing resources with other miners around the globe, making it easier and faster to find blocks, and make rewards. Pool mining is very popular for coins that don’t depend on ASIC rigs.

Image via Fotolia

Solo mining, as you might guess from the name, is done on your own, and this makes it unlikely that you’ll have enough hash power to find a block very quickly. The upside of solo mining is that you don’t have to share the reward, but the downside is that it could take months to get any reward.

Sticking with a mining pool will allow you to collect some small reward every day.

Before choosing a pool you’ll need a Verge wallet, because the mining pools will need a wallet address to send your Verge to. You can download Core Wraith Wallets for Windows, Linux and OSX or store your Verge privately on your mobile with the Verge Tor wallet.

Now you can get down to the business of choosing a Verge mining pool. As I mentioned above, most of the algorithms are best for Nvidia cards, but AMD cards can use the myr-groestl algorithm. And the Scrypt algorithm is best avoided since it is dominated by ASIC rigs.

Here are some choices of verge mining pools for each algorithm:

Scrypt

If you’re just stubborn or have some other reason to go with the Scrypt algorithm one very good mining pool is CoinFoundry. It’s not the biggest mining pool, but it’s big enough to find blocks regularly and fairly quickly.

Coinfoundry XVG Scrypt Pool Stats

It also has a low 0.75% fee, which is better than most. There are servers located globally, and uptime is 100%. Other Scrypt mining pools for Verge include:

• Block Masters
• Aikapool
• MiningPoolHub.com
• ZPool which also supports Myr-Groestl, Lyra2rev2 and Blake2s

X17

You can also use CoinFoundry to pool mine Verge with the X17 algorithm. If you want a more popular option however, you could choose Suprnova.cc instead. This is a popular pool for many different coins, and is well trusted in the cryptocurrency community.

Suprnova XVG X17 Mining pool Stats

They have a slightly higher fee of 1%, but also have global servers and 100% uptime. You can also use Suprnova to mine on the Myr-Groestl algorithm. Other popular X17 mining pools for Verge include:

• Block Masters
• HashFaster which also supports Lyra2Rev2
• Poolovich
• Yiimp

Myr-Groestl

This is for those out there with AMD cards in their computers. One of the top mining pools for this algorithm is IDCray, which is based in China, but has servers around the world.

IDCray Myr-Groestl Verge Mining pool stats

They also have the standard 1% fee and one of the largest myr-groestl mining pools for Verge. IDCray also supports other Verge hashing algorithms on its pools such as Lyra2rev2. There are some other options if you’d like to mine with a pool not based in China:

• Poolovich
• Profit Pool

Lyra2rev2

When using the Lyra2rev2 algorithm you have a number of alternatives, some of which are the same pools that are listed above. One different pool is the Block Masters pool, which is interesting because it has a super low fee of just 0.25%.

Block Masters Lyra2rev2 Pool Stats over past 30 days

It also has a fairly large number of miners and hash rate, and global servers. I wasn’t able to find uptime information, but it is a favored site among Verge miners so you can bet that it is at or near 100%. Some other options for mining Verge with Lyra2rev2 are:

• Poolovich

Blake2s

Last, but not least, we come to the blake2s algorithm.  One of the most popular mining pools for this algorithm is the Verge Blake2s CryptoCartel mining pool.

CryptoCartel Blake2S Verge Mining Pool Stats

It has a low 0.5% mining fee, and thousands of miners so you know there will be plenty of blocks found. There’s no registration required at the site, which maintains your privacy. If you want to mine somewhere else these sites also support blake2s Verge mining:

• UniMining
• AntMinePool
• LuckyPool

Conclusion

Privacy-centric coins have become increasingly popular over the past year, and Verge has been rising right along with other popular privacy coins. With the RSK technology coming at the end of 2018, Verge will be the only privacy-centric cryptocurrency that can also do smart contracts. That should give the coin a boost.

From the home mining perspective it’s a great coin because it lets you choose between five different algorithms to mine. While Scrypt isn’t really suited, the other four are, so even if one were to find itself overtaken by ASIC miners there would still be plenty of room for the home miner.

With privacy, anonymity and fast transaction speeds, Verge has quite a lot going for it, and could be one of the coins that ends up as a top contender for regular daily transactions. It’s too early to tell, but mining some at home when you aren’t using your computer anyway certainly won’t hurt.

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post Best Verge Mining Pools: Where to Mine Your XVG appeared first on Coin Bureau.

In it I’ll be covering how to create a stream of passive income by staking PIVX, the increasingly popular privacy-centric coin known. We will also take a look at some of the most important factors that you need to consider when you are staking.

Before we show you how to stake PIVX, we will quickly take a look at a general overview of PIVX as well as what Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is. If these are familiar to you then you can jump straight to the staking guide and start earning your PIVX!

What is PIVX

PIVX is an acronym that stands for Private Instant Verified Transaction. The PIVX blockchain and cryptocurrency were created by a fork from the DASH blockchain, but with a key difference. Where DASH uses Proof-of-Work as its consensus mechanism, PIVX uses Proof-of-Stake as a consensus mechanism.

Image via Fotolia

For those looking to profit passively from cryptocurrencies this is a huge distinction. New PIVX coins are not mined, and that means there’s no need for expensive mining hardware or messing with mining software and mining pools. Instead, holders of PIVX coins are rewarded when they keep those coins in the official core PIVX wallet, and keep the wallet open and running with an internet connection.

Proof-of-Stake is far more environmentally conscientious versus Proof-of-Work as it uses no additional energy.

Some PIVX History

PIVX was launched on February 1, 2016 with the name Darknet (DNET), but was later rebranded to PIVX based on community feedback. The rebranding was meant to more accurately reflect the ideologies and intent of the PIVX community and their ideals.

PIVX is focused on achieving nearly instantaneous private transactions, as well as working with a governance that sustains the network while benefitting all PIVX users.

Additionally, PIVX has a core focus on privacy. To improve on existing privacy, PIVX migrated to the privacy-enhancing Zerocoin protocol in November 2017. That made PIVX the very first Proof-of-Stake coin to move to the Zerocoin protocol.

The move to Zerocoin has made it possible for PIVX users to send and receive completely anonymous financial transactions.

PIVX has an ambitious roadmap as well, and future changes include a decentralized exchange, an iOS wallet, in-wallet voting, elastic block sizes, I2P Network integration, and much more.

What is Proof-of-Stake?

Now that you know about PIVX, let’s take a look deeper into Proof-of-Stake as a consensus protocol.

Proof-of-Stake is one of many different consensus mechanisms that are used to secure a blockchain network. Proof-of-Stake has become a preferred method because it is environmentally friendly. This is in direct contrast with the most popular consensus mechanism, which is Proof-of-Work. With Proof-of-Work, which is used by Bitcoin and many other blockchains, users contribute the processing power of their computers to solve cryptographic problems and find blocks.

Proof-of-Work compared to Proof-of-Stake. Source: Blockgeeks

This secures the network and keeps it functioning, and as a reward those doing the processing and verifying, known as miners, are given a reward for each block discovered. As block discovery has become more difficult, the amount of energy needed to power this process has increased dramatically. This has led to a search for a superior consensus mechanism, and some have settled on Proof-of-Stake as that solution.

Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies do not require enormous amounts of processing power or electricity. Instead, the blockchain network is secured by those who already hold the cryptocurrency. That’s done by a process called staking. For staking coins and keeping the network secure these users are rewarded with new coins as they are minted. Those with the largest stakes receive the largest rewards, which also gives them the greatest incentive to maintain a smoothly running blockchain.

Why Proof of Stake is Good

The obvious answer is that Proof-of-Stake is good for users because they get paid simply for holding cryptocurrency. This is like receiving interest or dividend payments for holding digital assets. Proof-of-Stake is also good for our environment since it doesn’t require an excessive use of resources (electricity) to function.

And finally, Proof-of-Stake is good for the blockchain network because it aids in decentralization. Because there isn’t a huge monetary investment for mining many more users will operate nodes, keeping the network for more decentralized. Users are also less likely to simply move to a different coin for mining if the current coin becomes less profitable, because they have an incentive to keep staking.

Passive Income PIVX Staking

Because PIVX uses the Proof-of-Stake mechanism, anyone who holds PIVX coins in the official PIVX core desktop wallet can stake their coins and earn new coins completely passively. If you’d like to know just how much passive income you can earn simply have a look at the official PIVX Staking Rewards Calculator.

The first thing you’ll need to stake PIVX is to download the official PIVX desktop wallet from here. Download the appropriate version for your operating system and then install it. Don’t choose the Light Desktop Wallet if you’re planning on staking.

Download PIVX Clients

The installation will simply require you to agree to the installation directory and click “Next” a few times. It takes less than a minute.

Next you’ll be presented with a screen asking where to store the data directory. This is where the blockchain data is stored. It needs a minimum of 1GB of free space. The default directory is fine, and you can click “OK”. If you get a pop-up message from Windows Defender or other anti-virus just click to allow access.

The PIVX core desktop wallet will launch and begin downloading the blockchain. That download will probably take several hours at a minimum, so just let it run until it’s complete.

The core desktop wallet for PIVX

While you’re waiting for the blockchain to download you can buy some PIVX from Binance, Bittrex or Trade by Trade. Once the wallet is synched you can transfer them to the new PIVX wallet.

Next you’ll want to encrypt the wallet to keep it secure. You do this by going to “Settings” and clicking “Encrypt Wallet…” This will generate a password that you use to unlock your wallet. Make sure to store the password somewhere safe and secure.

Now you can unlock the wallet using the password you’ve just created. When doing so tick the box that says “For anonymization and staking”. The wallet will open and you should see a little green arrow in the lower right corner of the wallet display, which means your wallet is successfully staking.

You need to keep your wallet open and connected to the internet 24/7 if you want to get the full staking reward. If the wallet is only open 30% of the day you’ll only get 30% of the reward.

According to the PIVX Rewards Calculator, if you hold 1,000 PIVX (at the Aug 30, 2018 value of roughly $1,240), you will receive around 3.79 PIVX (worth ~$4.7) approximately every 30 days.

PIVX Masternodes

Another really good opportunity to earn more returns is by operating what is called a “masternode” on the PIVX network. Masternodes are essentially authority nodes on the network that will perform services which are not completed by the other nodes on the network.

On the PIVX network, these masternodes help with the anonymous and instant transactions as well as take part in important governance decisions. In order to be a masternode on the PIVX network you need to stake 10,000 PIVX. This will be put up as collateral to keep the masternode “honest”.

At current prices, that means that you need as least $12,400 to operate a masternode. While this may be beyond the budget of those who are just starting out, it increases your staking rewards considerably. For example, if you stake the minimum 10,000 PIVX, not only will you earn the 37.88 PIVX for staking but they will also earn 53.92 PIVX for the masternodes reward.

Hence, if you are already staking more than 7,500 PIVX then it makes more economic sense to add another 2,500 PIVX and operate a masternode and earn that extra reward. If you wanted to operate a masternode then you can follow the setup guide here.

Conclusion

While PIVX is interesting as a privacy coin, and for its focus on nearly instantaneous transactions, many PIVX holders are most interested in its staking feature. And that’s understandable since it basically represents a dividend for simply holding the coin in an open wallet.

The lack of a heavy environmental impact from the Proof-of-Stake consensus method will likely see more coins choosing this consensus protocol. That will give investors even more staking opportunities, but as one of the first and most popular PIVX has a decided advantage at this time.

If the coin could gain traction as a payment system, which makes sense due to its privacy features and lightening fast transactions, the price could rally strongly. And that means anyone getting in now will be making significantly larger dividends in the future.

Featured Image via Fotolia and PIVX

The post PIVX Staking: Beginners Guide to Earning PIVX appeared first on Coin Bureau.

There’s a major distinguishing difference in Vertcoin that makes it very attractive to individuals – it is ASIC resistant. While most people might not appreciate this difference, I’m guessing you do, since you’re reading an article on Vertcoin mining pools. ASIC resistance makes Vertcoin and ideal choice for the individual home mining enthusiast.

Vertcoin is somewhat unique as it has remained true to the original vision of cryptocurrencies, which was a financial system owned by the users, where everyone is their own bank.

Vertcoin has a market cap of $33.7 million as of August 2018 and one VTC is roughly $0.74. This is way below the all-time high of $9.38 hit in December 2017. Basically the price has been slipping lower all throughout 2018 along with the broader market. Even at these low levels VTC remains a profitable coin for mining.

Vertcoin uses a consensus protocol you may not have heard of called Lyra2REv2. This is an ASIC-resistant protocol, which is keeping with Vertcoin’s mission to remain decentralized and free of ASIC mining. One factor to consider when mining VTC is that the Lyra2REv2 protocol works best with Nvidia GPUs.

Vertcoin Mining Software

Image via Fotolia

You can use the popular and reliable CCMiner software for mining Vertcoin. Or, if you are new to mining and not technically inclined you can use the One-click Vertcoin Miner, which is basically a graphical interface of CCMiner. Your hashrate will be a bit lower with the One-click Miner, but it is easier to setup and the difference isn’t huge, so it is a compromise worth making.

Once you’ve downloaded the software you’ll need to decide which mining pool you’re going to use, and you’ll also need a Vertcoin wallet. It’s recommended that you use the Vertcoin Core wallet if you’re going to be mining.

What is a Mining Pool?

You could go it alone and solo mine Vertcoin, but unless you’ve got a very powerful rig with 8 GPUs there’s little chance of finding a block. Using a mining pool is far better as it allows you to combine your hash power with that of many other users. That combined power can more easily find blocks, and the block rewards are then distributed between all the miners in the pool based on their contribution to the pool’s hash power.

In short, if you solo mine you might not find a block for months, but with a Vertcoin mining pool you can get a small amount of coins every day.

Now that you know how a mining pool can help you let’s look at the features you should be looking for when choosing a Vertcoin mining pool.

What to Look for in a Vertcoin Pool

Features to look for in mining pools are pretty standard from one coin to the next. Here are the main features you’ll want to consider when choosing a Vertcoin mining pool:

Trustworthy – You don’t want to use your processing power only to have the pool walk away with the rewards. You need a trustworthy pool that’s known to pay reliably.

Fees – Most mining pools will charge a fee for using their services, this is to pay for the pool servers, and to provide some small compensation to the pool owners. Obviously lower fees are better for you since you get to keep more of your coins, but sometimes it’s acceptable to pay a higher fee. For example, P2Pool mining has no fees, but can be troublesome to setup and is also known to have more invalid blocks.

Location – Where the pool servers are located is an important factor for you to consider. You want to have servers located as close to your location as possible. The closer the server the lower the latency and the greater hash power you’ll be providing to the pool. Of course that means bigger payouts for you. So, if you’re in North America look for a pool with North American servers. Europeans should look for European servers and Asians should look for Asian servers, preferably in the same country.

Payout Scheme – This is something you’ll need to look at and decide how important it is to you. There are many different payout schemes offered by mining pools. Some are geared more towards luck, while others look to make payouts as fair as possible based on contributed hash power. Pay per Share (PPS) and Pay per Share Plus (PPS+) are two popular schemes that remove miner risk as the pool pays a flat payment for each share solved. Another popular payout scheme is Pay Per Last N Shares (PPLNS) where payment is made as a % of shares they contribute to the total shares (N).

Minimum Payout – It’s not a huge thing, but the minimum payout amount might be important to you, especially if you’re not contributing much hash power. A smaller minimum payout might mean getting paid every few days, but a larger minimum payout may mean you have to wait several weeks to get paid.

Pool Hash Power – This is a tricky one. On the one hand you want to find the popular pool with the most hash power because that’s where the most blocks will be found. On the other hand you want to avoid centralization, so any time a mining pool has more than 25% of the hash power it’s a good idea to choose a different pool. This will foster decentralization and keep the network stronger and more secure.

Uptime – If you can find the uptime of the pool you should find one with an uptime as close to 100% as possible. Certainly greater than 95%. You can’t mine if the pool servers are down.

Vertcoin Mining Pools for 2019

With Vertcoin being such a popular coin for home miners there’s no shortage of available pools. So, I won’t be listing all of them, but I will give you a good selection of choices.

MiningPoolHub

MiningPoolHub is currently the most popular Vertcoin mining pool, with 31.2% of the pool hash rate. That’s a little bit high, but Vertcoin is pretty decentralized, and has forked in the past to avoid a botnet controlling more than 50% of the network hash power.

Vertcoin Miningpoolhub Statistics

There are global servers and the mining fee is a standard 0.9%. Minimum payouts are just 0.1%, making this a good choice for home miners.

AHashPool

AHashPool – This is the second most popular Vertcoin mining pool, with 22% of the pool hash rate. There’s a 1% fee for mining here. Servers are globally located. The payouts are a bit different here as the pool only pays out in BTC. There’s a minimum 0.003 BTC payout, and payouts are made once every 24 hours. The pool also does auto switching, so if you’re mining Lyra2REv2 the pool will mine whichever coin is most profitable.

Zergpool

Zergpool – Once you get below the top two Vertcoin mining pools you’ll find the hash rates are much smaller. In the case of Zergpool it is roughly 2% of the hash rate. The good news is that Zergpool has a very low 0.5% miners fee.

ZergPool Lyra2v2 Stats over past 30 days

Payments are made every 12 hours for balances over 0.0001 BTC equivalent. You can mine just Vertcoin, or you can use auto-switching to mine the most profitable coin.

EasyMine

EasyMine – This pool is similar in size to Zergpool, controlling about 2% of the hash rate. It is unique in that it allows merge mining where you can mine both Vertcoin and Unitus at the same time. The mining fee is 0.5% for Vertcoin and 1% for Unitus. Payouts are made every 12 hours and there’s no minimum.

Overview of Easymine Vertcoin Pool

There are quite a few other Vertcoin mining pools, but most have less than 100 active miners, and in some cases there are less than 10 or even no miners using the pool. If you want to see a more complete list there’s one here.

Conclusion

Vertcoin is an attractive coin for home miners since it is still profitable to mine the coin with your GPU. And the Vertcoin developers are committed to keeping it that way, so theoretically you should be able to continue mining Vertcoin with a home computer for as long as the network and coin exist.

If you’re just getting started with cryptocurrency mining Vertcoin seems a good choice, especially since it offers a graphical interface in its One-click Vertcoin Miner.

Featured Image via Fotolia & Vertcoin

The post Vertcoin Mining Pools: Complete List of the Best Pools appeared first on Coin Bureau.

Currently used in over 100 countries it comes with many cutting edge features for cryptocurrencies. These include minimal and even nonexistent fees as well as lightening fast transaction speeds.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies that can take many minutes, or even hours in some cases, you are able to send Digibytes to any other Digibyte address anywhere within the world within seconds. And there’s no need to register, and no hidden fees to contend with.

To make the blockchain even more attractive, Digibyte can be used to secure data, including documents and contracts, in ways that have never before been possible.

Benefits of Digitbyte. Source: Digitbyte

Another great feature of Digibyte is that you can still mine it using your computer’s GPU, especially if you join a mining pool to combine your mining power with that of other Digibyte enthusiasts. In fact, Digibyte followed in the footsteps of Monero earlier this year, hard forking the blockchain to remain resistant to ASIC mining on some of the alogorithms that can be used to mine Digibyte.

What is Digibyte Mining?

Mining Digibyte is the act of securing the network, validating blocks, and bringing new Digibyte tokens into circulation. Digibyte was originally a fork off the Bitcoin blockchain, and like Bitcoin it uses a consensus mechanism known as Proof of Work (PoW). PoW is considered to be the most secure consensus protocol for blockchains.

Minng is accomplished by using the processing power of your computer to solve cryptographic problems. This validates blockchain transactions, secures the Digibyte network, and ultimately creates new blocks while also rewarding miners with Digibytes. In addition to a computer with a GPU you’ll also need a Digibyte wallet and specialized mining software to mine Digibyte.

DGB Mining Algorithm Choices

Digibyte is somewhat unique among cryptocurrencies as it allows you to mine with five separate algorithms. The algorithms supported for mining include SHA-256, Skein, Groestl, Scrypt and Qubit. The choice of which algorithm to use is primarily dictated by the mining hardware being used.

Mining Algorithms for Digibyte

The SHA-256 and Scrypt algorithms are dominated by ASIC miners and aren’t suitable for home mining rigs. Qubit uses a combination of multiple types of hardware and is best for more advanced users. And Groestl and Skein are best for GPU mining.

Solo or Pooled Mining

When you get started mining Digibyte you have a choice between solo mining on your own mining rig or pooled mining where you join a group of other Digibyte miners. The pooled mining method is by far the most popular method.

In a mining pool a group of individuals join their resources, or hash power, which allows them to find more blocks, and gather more mining rewards. The rewards are then split evenly between the participants in the mining pool based on how much processing power they are adding to the pool.

Solo mining is done on your own, and because mining difficulty has increased so much it is often likened to buying a lottery ticket because you have a very low probability of being the first to solve a block. Of course you don’t have to share the reward when solo mining, but it could take months or longer to find a block.

Mining pools are superior because you are making coins every single day.

Getting Started Mining Digibyte

The following guide on how to mine Digibyte on a Windows 10 PC using either an Nvidia or AMD GPU. It is also based on joining a mining pool, since this is really the best way to generate a steady supply of Digibyte tokens.

Nvidia and AMD Cards used for DGB Mining. Source: nvidia.com and amd.com

Before you decide on a pool to mine Digibyte with you’ll want to make sure you have a wallet, because the pool will be asking you for your wallet address (and you need a place to keep your Digibyte anyway). If you already have a Digibyte wallet, great! If not, you can download official and third-party Digibyte wallets from the official Digibyte website. And while I don’t recommend it, you could also mine directly to an exchange wallet if you have an account at one which supports Digibyte.

Now it’s time to choose a Digibyte mining pool. Your pool choice is going to be dictated by which algorithm you’ll be using to mine. As mentioned above, the best choice for GPU mining is either Skein (Nvidia cards) or Groestl (AMD cards). Below are the DGB mining pools available for each algorithm:

Groestl Mining Pools

• DigiHash
• TheBlocksFactory
• Suprnova.cc

Skein Mining Pools

• DigiHash
• TheBlocksFactory
• MiningField

Scrypt Mining Pools

• DigiHash
• TheBlocksFactory
• P2Pool

SHA256 Mining Pools

• DigiHash
• TheBlocksFactory
• Ispace.co.uk

Qubit Mining Pools

• DigiHash
• TheBlocksFactory
• Suprnova.cc

Note that DigiHash is the first mining pool listed for each algorithm. This is by design because DigiHash is supported by the Digibyte Foundation, and part of the rewards go back to maintaining the network. Many people avoid using the pool though because of the 5% mining fee that’s assessed.

Also note that to be able to mine in certain pools, you need to optimize the miners with Myriad-Groestl which is DGB algorithm. It is also the most profitable way to mine Digibyte currently. You can get the optimized miners at The Blocks Factory

AMD – http://theblocksfactory.com/sgminer-5-0-1-windows-gr.zip

Nvidia – http://theblocksfactory.com/ccminer-1.2-myr-gr.zip

Because I have an Nvidia card I’ll be using MiningField with the Skein algorithm for the rest of this tutorial.

Create Your First Worker

The first thing you obviously need to do is register an account at MiningField and then log in. Next you’re going to create your first worker. Go to the “My Account” link on the left, click it and then click “My Workers” to begin creating a new worker.

Creating Digibyte Mining Worker

Go to the bottom of the MiningField page and you’ll see a form titled “Add New Worker”. Enter your desired Worker Name and Worker Password and click the “Add New Worker” button. You now have a worker in the mining pool (you’ll see it in the “Worker Configuration” to the right) and are ready to download and set-up the mining software.

Adding Your Digitbyte Worker

Download and Configure Mining Software

Next you’ll need to download mining software. If you have an Nvidia card it’s best that you use CCMiner, but if you have an AMD card then the Claymore miner is best. You can download either of them from GitHub. Once you’ve downloaded the appropriate mining package zip folder you need to extract it to a folder on your PC.

Downloading Mining Software (CC Miner)

Next you need to create the config file for CCMiner that tells it where the mining pool is and your account information there. This file will be saved as a .bat file, but you’ll create it using Notepad, so it really isn’t too complicated. Go ahead and open Notepad. Now, copy and paste the following information, replacing “username” with your username, worker with your workers name and “yourpassword” with your worker password.

ccminer-x64 --algo=skein -o stratum+tcp://eu.miningfield.com:3398 -u username.worker -p yourpassword

Example: username.worker

“username” is the username you created at Miningfield when you registered and “worker” is the worker name you created earlier in this tutorial.

Next modify the URL to any of the Stratum ports listed on the MiningField site.

Example: “url” : “stratum+tcp://us.miningfield.com:3397”

Finally we will save the .bat file to the same folder where you extracted the mining software.

To create a . bat file, simply open up notepad and save the file in the same folder as your mining software with a .bat extension ( change “save as type” from text to All files. The file name can be anything at all, but needs to include the .bat extension). Click “Save”.

Save .bat file in same directory

Start Mining

Run the .bat file you created which will start the CCminer application, and if everything is set-up properly you’ll begin to see the lines that begin “accepted” and end “yes!”. That means you’re mining and receiving DGB.

Mining DGB in Command Line

Conclusion

Digibyte mining is an excellent way to get started with cryptocurrency mining because it is one of the few top coins that can still be mined using the GPU and CPU in your own computer. It’s also an excellent coin to mine because the mining application can run without causing your computer to slow down. This means you can continue working in other programs, which isn’t always true when mining cryptocurrencies.

So, now you’re set-up for mining with your GPU you might also be interested to know that the MiningField pool will also allow you to mine with your CPU. I haven’t included instructions though, because most people don’t think CPU mining of Digibyte is profitable.

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post How to Mine Digibyte (DGB): Complete Beginners Guide appeared first on Coin Bureau.

Even then, once they have made the substantial investment in the hardware, they are in constant battle with some of the larger mining giants that have industrial scale operations. This can be a disheartening fact for those just considering mining coins today.

However, there is a particular cryptocurrency that you can mine on your hard-drive right now. This is Burstcoin and it uses a unique and ingenious consensus algorithm that does not require hashing power.

In this post, we will take you through a step-by-step guide that will have you mine burstcoin. Let’s jump right into it with a quick overview of the Burstcoin mining protocols.

PoW vs. PoS vs. PoC

Most of you are probably familiar with the Proof of Work protocol used in Bitcoin mining. This type of mining requires your computer to use its CPU to contribute computational power and solve cryptographic problems or hashes.

Those lucky enough to solve a hash and find a block receive a reward and the transaction fees from that block.

The intent of this protocol is to ensure one person doesn’t become too important to the network. Miners need to consume electricity and computational power to find coins, but they also need more and more electricity to become a larger part of the network.

Why is this important?

It pretty much guarantees that there is a very small probability that any one miner will control a majority of hashing power and be able to launch a 51% attack. It’s simply too expensive to do so.

Even if a miner could control more than 50% of the network it’s likely that he or she would protect the network to maintain their source of mining revenue. This has actually happened with other coins.

Over the years that Bitcoin has been in existence this system has proven to be quite efficient, but also extremely wasteful. The Proof of Work protocol has caused tens of millions of dollars worth of electricity to be consumed.

But now there are other consensus mechanisms. Proof of Stake is one that is well known.

Battle of the Consensus algorithms. Image Source: Fotolia

Another less known protocol is Proof of Capacity. This protocol is used with Burst (BURST) and has proven to be far less costly.

Why is it less costly?

Because Proof of Capacity relies on your computer’s hard drive space rather than computing power. Those with larger HDD space being applied to the network get a larger share in their mining efforts. It’s not time-proven like Proof of Work, but it is far more environmentally friendly and sustainable long-term.

Burst mining can be carried out by anyone who has spare, unused hard drive space. You can even build rigs of hard drives to increase your profitability when mining. This has an additional benefit over GPU and CPU mining besides the lowered electricity consumption. Hard drives also have a far greater life expectancy when being hammered 24/7, so you won’t need to replace them as often as GPUs and CPUs.

No matter if you just have a few GB of space available or a few TB you can moine Burst, so let’s get started learning about Burst mining!

Part 1 – Install Burst Wallet

The Burst wallet is available as an online wallet, a mobile wallet, and a local desktop wallet. When mining, for security reasons it is recommended that you use the local desktop version. It’s available for Windows, Linux and Mac and the wallets can all be downloaded from the Burst site here.

Windows users have a choice between using the Burst core wallet or the QBundle wallet. The easiest choice for beginners on Windows is to download Qbundle, a launcher allowing you to install the Burst local wallet in a few clicks. You can simply follow the wizard walking you through the set up. Qbundle also includes plotting and mining software to start mining easily.

So let’s take that route since it’s easiest.

The latest QBundle release is available on GitHub and can be downloaded here. The current version as of this writing is 2.5.0 which is available as a .zip file. Click the link and save the .zip file to your computer. When you open the .zip folder you’ll need to extract it before running.

Unzip the files

After unzipping you can go into the new folder and double click the BurstWallet.exe file to run the wallet for the first time.

You might get a message that Windows Defender protected your PC and blocked the app from opening. If this happens click the “More info” link and you’ll get a button that says “Run anyway”. Go ahead and click that button.

Run the application anyway in Windows Defender

The installer will look for missing components and let you know if anything is needed. If it is you can click the “Download missing components” link to get what’s needed.

Proceed to download the missing components

Once the missing components have been downloaded you can click the “Continue” button. That will begin to download and install the Chromium Pocket Browser needed to run the Burst wallet. Then the Burst Wallet will open and you can click the button that says “New? Create your account”.

Create a new burstcoin account

You’ll immediately be presented with your passphrase. Write it down and keep it safe. If you lose your passphrase you also lose access to your Burst account. Once you’ve copied the passphrase down click “Next”.

Burst will now ask you to provide your passphrase. This is to ensure you’ve actually copied it down. Type or paste it in the box and click “Next”.

That will take you into your new Burst wallet. Congratulations! As you’ll see the wallet will begin downloading the blockchain.

The burstcoin dashboard

In order to secure your ID, you’ll need to fund your wallet and make a transaction or any action that requires a BURST fee. This is required in order to start mining.

Part 2 – Fund your Wallet and Secure your ID

You have two options to get some Burst into your wallet so you can begin mining. The first is to simply buy it from an exchange. Burst is quite inexpensive and you won’t have to spend more than a few pennies to get enough Burst to begin mining. You can buy Burst from either Poloniex or Bittrex.

The other option is to use a cryptocurrency faucet to get some Burst. This method is free, but unfortunately this is hit or miss as many Burst faucets are regularly empty. You can try these faucets to get a small amount of Burst:

• Burstcoin.cc Faucet
• BurstPay Faucet
• Freeiz Burst Faucet
• Faucet.Burstcoin.ml – This will actually use your CPU to mine Burstcoin. Getting 1 Burstcoin will probably take you several hours or longer depending on your CPU.

If you’re planning on using one of the faucets please remember to use your Burst ID (like this: BURST-H9EF-UEL5-4WPG-DJE6J), not your passphrase.

Once you receive your Burstcoins you’ll need to make a transaction and spend 0.1 BURST fee minimum. Since all we need to do at this point is spend a 0.1 BURST fee we can go ahead and set a receiver for mining, which conveniently costs 0.1 BURST.

We’ll be setting the recipient later when we are setting up the mining client.

Part 3 – Prepare HDD by Writing Plots

Mining Burst uses your HDD as an anti-sybil measure to secure the network and to do so it needs to create plot files on your hard drive. The more space you dedicate to these plots the greater number of BURST you’ll receive when mining.

To get started you’ll want to click on “Tools” at the top and then “Plotting”. This will give you a choice between “Plotter” and “Dynamic Plotting”. You can disregard the third entry of “Plotconverter”. To keep things simple we’re going to use “Dynamic Plotter” since it automatically calculates and plots your HDD.

Burstcoin’s Dynamic Plotter

Click the radio button to enable dynamic plotting, and then click the three dots to the right of the “Choose where to store the plotfiles files” and choose a location to store the files. I created a new folder called “Burst” to store mine.

Next you’ll need to input the numeric account number, which can be found by clicking “More info” in the Accounts box in your wallet.

Numeric Account insertion

You can leave the size of plotfiles and free space as the defaults and click the “Save” button. You’ll get a pop-up message asking if you’d like to download and install XPlotter. Click yes and that component will be added to your wallet.

When you have dynamic plotting enabled Burst won’t actually start writing plots until you begin mining. If you’ve finished downloading the full blockchain and sent a fee already you can begin mining now, otherwise you may have to wait until you receive some BURST to pay a fee, and until the blockchain is finished downloading.

Part 4 – Begin to Mine Burstcoin

Once your plot files are created you can get started mining Burst.

The first thing you’ll need to do is to set a recipient. This tells the mining software who gets the reward if you find a block. You can set this to your own ID if you’re going to solo mine (not worth it unless you have 100 TB or more), or you can set it to the pool ID. By clicking the dots on the right of the field you’ll get a drop-down that has about 10 pools already pre-configured. I am using Burstneon.com as my pool.

You’ll also want to change the “wallet to use” to the online wallet if your local wallet hasn’t finished synching. Take note of the fee and make sure you’ve put enough in to meet the minimum. The field defaults to 0.01, which is the default minimum needed to set a reward recipient. Then click the “Set Reward Recipient” button.

Setting Burstcoin reward recipient

Now you need to start the miner. Go to Tools -> Miner and click. Change the radio button to “Pool Mining”. Again the wallet needs to be synched to do this, and the reward recipient must already be set. Note that it can take 20-30 minutes for the reward recipient to be set in your wallet.

As the mining, update and info servers we’ll use Burstneon.com with a port of 8080. The Deadline Limit should be set to 63072000. Click “Start Mining”. It will ask if you want to install the Blago miner. Click yes and let it install.

Blago CPU Burstcoin Miner

Note that you will then have to go to the Burst 2.5.0 folder created earlier and find the BlagoMiner.zip folder and extract it, otherwise you’ll continue to get errors and mining won’t begin properly.

And now you’re mining Burst!

Conclusion

Mining Burst is simple and best of all it’s very economical since it uses the HDD of your computer. Once you’re set up and mining there is very little CPU involvement, meaning you won’t see much electricity usage from your Burstcoin mining activities.

The project is also planning on tackling issues related to scalability and anonymity as well as adding new payment channel features. The team says it will integrate a number of protocols and ideas already proven by other cryptocurrencies. This list includes the use of Lightning Networks for payments á la Bitcoin/Litecoin, Tangle technology from IOTA, Anonymity characteristics from Monero and Zcash.

Anyone with a few spare terabytes of hard drive space has nothing to lose by mining some BURST, and if it takes off and heads back to its all-time high there could be quite a bit to be gained from the inexpensive mining of Burstcoins.

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post How to Mine Burstcoin: Step-by-Step Beginners Guide appeared first on Coin Bureau.

As a brief intro, we are Luxor Technology and we are building infrastructure to support the next generation of digital assets. We believe that digital assets will fundamentally disrupt the way value creation and value transfer will function in our new digital society.

Before we jump into the interview let’s run over the basics of Hyperspace. For a more detailed overview of the technology you can view the hyperspace website.

Project Overview

Image via Hyperspace.app

Hyperspace network is a decentralized global storage marketplace fueled by Space Cash cryptocurrency. Large cloud storage providers generally run only a few large data centers that are vulnerable to attacks, blackouts and many other threats. Whereas Hyperspace allows for private, decentralized, distributed cloud storage at a lower price point.

Hyperspace allows the user to retain control over their personal data – everything that’s uploaded to the Hyperspace protocol is end-to-end encrypted and locked by contracts. Therefore, all of your files are private and secure.

How Your data is Stored?

Everytime you upload content or data to the network each file is encrypted and split into smaller pieces. It is then uploaded to multiple servers (hosts) to achieve redundancy. Due to the number of times your file is replicated 66.66% of the hosts can disappear, loose your data or go offline and you’ll still be able to recover all your files.

Since your data is split into dozens of pieces and each piece is encrypted there’s no way that one host can access your files. In addition, the host has no way of determining what type of data it is, or whose data they are storing. This gives security to both parties: privacy to the renter and liability protection to the host.

The storage service functions similar to a torrent system since you grab multiple pieces from different hosts simultaneously. This enables extremely fast uploading and downloading transfer speeds.

Renting and Hosting

Anyone can rent storage or host it. Currently a TB goes for $2 USD per month. This is based on 1000 SPACE at a current OTC price of 0.002 USD/SPACE (SPACE is not traded on an exchange yet so its actual value is yet to be determined). This price is very low relative to other cloud storage providers.

Other renting fees include contract and bandwidth fees: Contract fees are one time fees to create the storage contract on the blockchain (1-5 SPACE) and are negligible. Hosts can set the pricing for both upload and download bandwidth to their server. As of August 15th 80 SPACE is the average price for downloading or uploading a full TB.

Collateral is the amount of SPACE the host is willing to risk in case they lose data or not complying with the contract (example uptime %) per terabyte. This is governed through smart contracts. The higher collateral the host puts up the higher trust they have earned with the renters.

Allowance is the maximum amount of SPACE the renter is willing to spend. So your ability to download and upload files will be capped to your allowance. Allowance can be changed at all times.

The default storage contract length is 3 months. Due to the infancy of the network there are very few hosts and renters.

Secured by PoW Consensus Algorithm

Hyperspace relies on proof-of-work which has proved to be the only reliable and trusted consensus mechanism. Alternatives such as proof-of-stake are still largely untested and have many security concerns.

ASICs built for the Blake2B algo are hashing on the Hyperspace network cranking the difficulty and therefore making a 51% attack very expensive to carry-out even at the early stages of the project.

The blockchain is in charge of securing transactions and storage smart-contracts that occur on the network. Data isn’t stored in the blockchain, that would make the blockchain too large for anyone to run a node and way too slow to transact.

There are several mining pools available to help to maintain the network hashrate decentralized. https://miningpoolstats.stream/hyperspace

Airdrop and Coin Supply

3 billion Space Cash are reserved for founders reward and is locked in for 3 years. 3.5 billion Space Cash was generated for a 10 to 1 airdrop to current holders of Siacoin. If you are uncertain about how to claim airdropped coins, there are a number of guides that cover the basics of airdrops.

The block time is 10 minutes and there is 144 blocks per day. 90% of each block reward goes to the PoW miners and 10% goes to the hyperspace community fund. This fund will be used to help further Hyperspace’s development such as getting listed on exchanges.

At the time of launch, the block reward was 60K Space Cash per block. Each block reduces by 0.2 Space Cash until the block reward reaches 6,000. Then it is fixed into the future.

Space Cash isn’t listed on exchanges right now. However, there’s an active OTC market on Discord.

Interview with Mark Huetsch

Mark Huetsch, Hyperspace Project Lead

We had the chance to sit down with Mark the founder of Hyperspace and get his personal view on the project.

Luxor Tech (LT): What is Hyperspace trying to achieve?

Mark Huetsch (MH): Cheap, fast, private storage. We want to be AirBnB for hard drive space. Hyperspace provides a platform where anyone can easily plug in their computer to the network and offer up their extra hard drive space and bandwidth for rent. Likewise, renters can easily upload their data through an interface similar to Dropbox or Google Drive. Unlike Dropbox or Google Drive, all users’ data is encrypted locally before upload, so storage hosts have no access to it.

LT: Where do you see the project in a couple years? What is Hyperspace going to enable that can not be done with existing solutions?

MH: We’d like to be a household name. Once the hosting network is built out and we’ve optimized the user experience, we think people will feel right at home uploading and downloading via the network. We are particularly excited about video streaming, which is already coded and functional.

Because Hyperspace functions under the hood a bit like Bittorrent – where files are chopped up into pieces and uploaded or downloaded simultaneously via multiple p2p nodes – users should be able to enjoy fast video streaming via the network. This is a different architecture from both centralized storage providers like Dropbox and video service providers like Netflix. We think there are compelling technical, economic, and privacy reasons for deploying this new kind of platform.

LT: How Hyperspace differentiates from the Sia project? Why did you decide to fork from Sia?

MH: Sia is explicitly targeting enterprise users. They want users to operate a full node and have that node be responsible for cryptocurrency payments to the hosts and repairing the files on the network if some of the hosts go offline. The idea there is that a service like Dropbox or Netflix might use Sia as a backend and, when an end-user makes a data request, those enterprise clients will pull data from Sia to their local servers, then forward the gathered data to the end-user.

Hyperspace will start by targeting consumer users directly. It strikes us as inefficient that data being stored needs to be routed to a company maintaining a full node first and then passed on to the distributed storage network. It’s better if a laptop or mobile phone can transfer data back and forth with the distributed network directly. But at the same time, downloading and syncing a full node is just never going to fly for a typical user. Moreover, requiring typical users to frequently be online and pay cryptocurrency to hosts to keep their files consistently repaired will never allow us to reach mass consumer adoption.

So Hyperspace’s first order of business is adding light wallet support (SPV nodes) to the network. This has historically been something the Sia team has seemed unwilling to do. From there, we will publish official mobile apps. And then we’ll start working on the tougher task of allowing 3rd party service providers to handle smart contract formation and cryptocurrency payments with hosts on behalf of an end user while still allowing the end user to transfer storage data directly with hosts.

After that, we’ll work on having hosts auto-repair the network when one host goes offline or loses data instead of forcing the end-user to frequently be online to monitor the network for losses and make repairs. And end-user to frequently be online to monitor the network for losses and make repairs. And finally, we want to allow hosts to share in the network’s cryptocurrency block reward, much like the miners who verify the network’s transactions do.

We have some other important philosophical and practical differences with Sia – for example, we have a development fund via the network’s miners while Sia instead taxes the transactions between renters and hosts – but this is the key difference in project vision.

LT: How fiat pricing and free storage is going to be implemented? Are you planning to run “centralized” hosting facility?

MH: As I mentioned, we’d like to allow 3rd party storage contract management support. Hyperspace the business would like to be a service provider on the network. If users are willing to allow us to make their cryptocurrency payments and do negotiation with network hosts on their behalf, we would be able to generate bandwidth and storage contracts for them – essentially let them use the network – in exchange for a fiat fee.

Most companies in this market have a free or trial tier, so we think it’s necessary to provide one as well to be able to entice users. The business has a development fund which is replenished via the block reward of the network’s cryptocurrency, Space Cash, so we expect to be able to use that to help drive network adoption via free services, particularly in the beginning.

I want to stress that the business would be offering an additional service layer on top of the network and that people will always be able to use the network without going through our servers. We as a business just want to offer a convenience for those who think the trade-offs are right. Also, to reiterate, even if you used our servers for contract management, we’d never receive or see your storage data.

LT: Do you plan to enlarge the team? What roles do you need and when do you plan to start hiring?

MH: Currently, we’re just two engineers being helped by a designer. We’re hiring! Development is the biggest project bottleneck at the moment. We need blockchain engineers to help us build out the core protocol modifications and, going forward, we’ll also need front-end engineers and marketers. If you’re interested in a job, please contact me at mark@hspace.app!

Featured Image via Fotolia & Hyperspace

The post Hyperspace Cloud Storage: Overview & Founder Interview appeared first on Coin Bureau.

This privacy enabled cryptocurrency is often chosen by miners given its more attractive returns as compared to other proof of work coins. Up until recently it also used to be one of the only remaining coins that you could solo mine from home.

However, if you make use of a Bytecoin Mining pool, your chances of earning BCN from newly minted blocks are greatly  improved. However, you need to make sure that you are indeed using the best pool that you can get.

In this post, we will take you through the best Bytecoin Mining Pools.

Mining Bytecoin

When it comes to privacy focused coins most people these days think of Monero, but the very first private untraceable cryptocurrency was Bytecoin. And it remains the 26th largest market cap coin even today.

It is similar to Monero in that it uses a privacy algorithm, but unlike Monero it didn’t choose to fork to avoid ASIC mining. Instead it has embraced the ASIC miners for several reasons:

• They protect the network from attacks;
• A fork in this case would de-anonymize Bytecoin users, which defeats the very purpose of an anonymous crypto coin;
• ASIC bans seem to be an unwise decision – the next generation of ASICs will include FPGA devices adjustable in just a few simple clicks, it’s only a matter of time.
• ASICs can’t be reviewed in a “positive-negative” dichotomy. It’s just a direct consequence of the technical progress that our information age continues to make (which is actually way more profitable than CPU and GPU mining).

With that being the case it doesn’t make sense to solo mine Bytecoin unless you have your own mining farm. Even if you have a single ASIC rig you still want to combine your hashing power with others, and the way to do that is through a Bytecoin mining pool.

What is a Mining Pool?

A mining pool is a way to combine the hash power of many different users in order to mine more efficiently. Each member of a mining pool is paid based on their contribution to the pool, so you’re getting much smaller payouts that if you were solo mining and finding blocks, but you’re also getting more regular payments, and there is far less luck involved. If you solo mine you might not find a block for months, but with a Bytecoin mining pool you can get a small amount of coins every day.

Hopefully you now have a better understanding of what makes mining pools so vital to the mining process, and now I want to go on and help you find the best Bytecoin mining pool.

Bytecoin Mining Pool Requirements

Bytecoin uses the Cryptonight algorithm, and when it comes to choosing a mining pool for Bytecoin you’ll want to look at all the same factors you would look at when choosing a mining pool for any cryptocurrency. The most important characteristic is always a trustworthy pool that’s known to pay out reliably. You certainly don’t want to be mining at a pool that’s stealing your hash power or not paying you for all the blocks being found.

Image via Fotolia

Quite possibly the next most important feature to look at is pool fees. Obviously the lower the fees the better, because it means you get to keep more of your mining profits. Most mining pools have 1% fees, but Bytecoin is a better coin in this respect as there are several pools that offer fee-free mining.

You also want to find out where the pool has its servers located. You need to have servers that are located close to your location. This lowers the latency and increases your hash power. So, if you’re in Europe you’ll want a mining pool with servers located in Europe. The same applies for thos in North America or Asia. The closer the servers are to you, the better.

One factor many don’t think of is the payouts offered by the pool. There are many different payout methods, some are more geared towards luck, while others try to split earnings fairly based on the hash power being contributed. You’ll see acronyms such as PPS, PPLNS, PPS+, PPSL and many others.

I don’t want to go into too much detail here because there are so many different payment schemes, but you’ll want to find out more about the benefits and disadvantages of each. You should also think about the minimum payout of the pool. If it’s too high you could be waiting weeks to receive any coins from your mining efforts.

The next factor is one that’s overlooked by many, but can be important for maintaining a decentralized network. I’m referring to the total hashing power of the pool against the entire network. If everyone continues joining the largest pool, it will eventually grow to control more than 51% of the network hashing power, leaving the network vulnerable to double spending.

While it isn’t likely that a trustworthy mining pool would do that, it’s best to avoid such centralization when possible. So, if there are smaller good pools you can join the best thing to do, for the network, is to join the smaller pool.

Lastly, if you can find information about the uptime of the pool you’ll want to check that too. Uptime should be a minimum of 95% and the closer to 100% the better. You can’t mine if the pool servers aren’t up, which completely defeats the purpose of joining the pool in the first place.

Top 5 Bytecoin Mining Pools

There are a fairly large number of mining pools for Bytecoin, which makes sense given the fact that its been around since 2012, has a large community behind it, and it’s one of the 30 largest coins by market cap. Below is a selection of the top Bytecoin mining pools.

Minergate

Minergate is one of the most popular choices due to its large number of minable coins and its ease of set-up and use. Currently Minergate contributes roughly 1.3 MH/s to the Bytecoin hash power, which is roughly 3% of the total.

MinerGate Bytecoin Pool Stats

Fees are the standard 1% for PPLNS and 1.5% for PPS with Minergate and it has a convenient web based interface. The minimum withdrawal is 100 BCN, which isn’t the best, but also isn’t too hard to achieve.

Bytecoin-pool.org

Bytecoin-pool.org is the real top dog when it comes to Bytecoin mining, with 110 MH/s or nearly 80% of the network hash power. In order to maintain network decentralization it is really recommended that you choose a different pool.

Bytecoin-pool.org Mining Pool by the Numbers

Miners like Bytecoin-pool.org for its 0% fees and the ability to mine anonymously without registering. There is also a very low minimum withdrawal of just 5 BCN. There is also a handy mining profit calculator that is in your dashboard. This will allow you to calculate how much BCN you are likely to earn with a given amount of hashpower.

Bytecoin.uk (Unipool)

Bytecoin.uk is a relative newcomer, but it has rapidly gained in popularity because it also has 0% fees and a 5 BCN minimum withdrawal. In regard to hash rate, Bytecoin.uk has roughly 15 MH/s and 12.3% of the total network hash power. It’s a very good alternative to Bytecoin-pool.org for those who want to maintain a more decentralized network.

Bytecoin.uk Mining Pool Stats

The pool operator of Bytecoin.uk has just launched a new website called Unipool.pro. There bytecoin pools are the same as on Bytecoin.uk but it offers users a newer interface to operate with.

Unipool Mining Pool Statistics

Unipool also operates a Monero pool which could be beneficial for those miners who would like to switch between different cryptonight chains.

Bytecoin.party

Bytecoin.party is another newcomer to the world of Bytecoin mining pools and it gained immediate popularity by following the 0% fee structure. It remains a small mining pool however, with 2.9 MH/s in hash power and roughly 3.2% of the network.

Bytecoin Party Terms and Pool Statistics

The minimum withdrawal is a bit higher at 50 BCN, but users seem to like the mining pool and it’s a good choice for maintaining network decentralization.

Bytecoin.fairhash.org

Bytecoin.fairhash.org is a smaller pool, probably because it has a 1% fee. It does support sever other cryptonight coins however, making it useful for switching between more profitable coins when you need to.

With a hash rate of about 9 MH/s it controls roughly 4% of the total hash power of the network, making it the third largest Bytecoin mining pool as of August 2018. As long as you don’t mind the 1% fee this makes it a good choice for maintaining decentralization while also staying with one of the larger, more popular mining pools.

Conclusion

As you can see above, one of the attractive features of most Bytecoin mining pools is the lack of fees. I would certainly recommend choosing a 0% fee pool, but I would also say try to avoid Bytecoin-pool.org, simply because of the huge percentage of the hash power currently controlled by that pool. Or, if you want to keep things as simple as possible with a web-based interface you could use Minergate.

Currently it looks as if Bytecoin will not fork to become ASIC-resistant in the way that Monero did, so you will have to contend with the strength of ASIC rigs. This is what the Bytecoin team had to say back in April 2018 on the subject:

The miners are the main contributors in the network’s health as they are the most rational users on the chain. They weigh their costs and profit to find out which currency is the most profitable to mine at the current moment and with a particular setup.

The decision regarding forking to become ASIC-resistant will be reviewed by the Bytecoin team at the end of 2018, and given the current domination of network hash power by one mining pool it could change. Until then you’ll be best served by joining a mining pool for Bytecoin.

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post Bytecoin Mining Pools – The Best Places to Mine BCN appeared first on Coin Bureau.

I’m talking about Monero, a privacy focused coin that is ideal for those who wish to mine cryptocurrencies with a home computer. Monero is still able to be profitably mined with your GPU thanks to the commitment of the Monero community to remain ASIC-free.

If you haven’t already learned about Monero mining and the best home set-ups you can head over to my Monero Mining Guide to learn more about the actual mining process.

To make things even better for you mining efforts you should consider joining a Monero mining pool. We will cover everything you need to know about finding the right pool and the best XMR pools to join today.

Why use a Monero Pool?

Mining pools combine the hashing power of all its members to mine more efficiently. When you join a mining pool you’ll get smaller payouts, but they will also be more regular. There is less luck involved, and the earnings are smoothed out and regular. Each block mined by the pool is split between all the pool members in whichever payout method is being used by the pool (more on that later).

Mining on your own, called solo mining, is still possible with Monero, and if you did find a block you’d get a substantial amount of coins. The problem is that with a home rig setup you’d need to get really lucky to ever find a block. So even if you did find a block, it isn’t likely you’d do so very often. Which means you’re somewhat better off with a mining pool since it does away with a great deal of the variance that’s involved in mining cryptocurrencies.

Before you can actually join a mining pool, you have to make sure that you know what you are looking for from said pool.

What to Look for in a Monero Mining Pool

Cryptocurrency mining pool features to look for are similar no matter which crypocurrency you’re planning on mining. The top feature is going to be a trustworthy pool which is known for paying out all the proceeds due to the miners in the pool.

This isn’t uncommon from unscrupulous operators, but the more established pools are generally considered to be trustworthy. You’d be surprised how quickly savvy miners will discover pool operators who are trying to skim some of the payouts or hashing power.

Image via Fotolia

The next feature you’ll want to investigate is the fees charged by the pool. The higher the fees, the lower the payouts and all other things being equal you want to find a mining pool with the lowest fees so you can maximize your earnings. Generally you’re going to find that most pools have very similar fees, but there are some that are higher or lower, and it’s worth your time to find out how much you’ll be giving up in fees.

A third factor you’ll want to consider is the location of the pool servers. You need to find a pool with servers that are located close to you, at least on the same continent. So, if you’re in Los Angeles it’s best to find a pool with servers in Los Angeles, or at least in the U.S. A pool that has servers only in Asia isn’t going to be most effective for you. This is because the closer the pool servers are to your location, the greater your hash power will be.

Another factor that some look at is the minimum payout of the pool. A lower minimum payout is always better, but if you aren’t too concerned with the frequency of withdrawals you might find a higher minimum payout to be acceptable. The power of your rig will also play into this. If you can hit the minimum payout in a day or two with your rig you’ll be less concerned than if it would take 10+ days to hit the minimum payout.

Many pool miners don’t consider the next factor, but it is really important in maintaining decentralization for the network. This is the total hashing power of the pool. Unfortunately too many miners just look for the biggest pool and then join it, not thinking that they are increasing the hash power of a pool that is already extremely influential within the network. It is much better to choose a smaller pool, and you’ll find with Monero that there are a good number of miners who solo mine simply because it helps to keep the network as decentralized as possible.

Finally, check the uptime of the pool. Most pools do have a very high uptime, but it’s worth taking a minute to be sure. The higher the uptime is the better, because if the pool isn’t up it isn’t mining.

Monero Hard Fork

Monero Hard Fork

Before I go on to the best Monero mining pools I want to take a minute to talk about the recent Monero Hard fork for those who might not be aware of it.

Basically what happened is that the leading ASIC producer Bitmain announced that they had developed an ASIC miner capable of working on the Cryptonight algorithm, which is the algorithm used by Monero. The Monero community is so deeply against the centralization caused by ASIC mining that they decided to hard fork Monero to disable the ability to use ASIC miners on the coin. The hard fork occurred on April 6, 2018.

This hard fork sent a strong message to the ASIC mining folks, and we wouldn’t expect to see another ASIC miner for Monero. The fork also made the coin more privacy focused, increasing its desirability amongst the privacy concerned mining community.

The good news for individual miners is that the fork kept Monero mining easy enough that individuals can still mine the coin without worrying that ASIC rigs will dominate hash power and push aside the individuals. Monero remains extremely popular, which should also lead to price increases. In fact, it is so popular that its usage on the dark web has surpassed Bitcoin.

Mining difficulty dropped significantly immediately following the fork, and it remains much easier to mine Monero now than it was before the fork. Now is a great time to get started. Let’s take a look at some of the best Monero mining pools.

Top Monero Pools

Now that you have a rough idea of what you need to be looking for in a mining pool, we can summarise a list of some of the most respected pools currently in the market. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list and as with anything cryptocurrency related, you should do your own research.

Minergate

Minergate has been a very popular Monero mining pool choice due to its ease of use. It has 99.7% uptime, which is quite good, and its mining pool fee is just 1%, which is standard among mining pools. Minergate also has a very low minimum payout of 0.01 XMR so most people will be able to get daily payouts.

MinerGate Pool Statistics

Finally, you are able to do web mining with Minergate, which is very convenient and has contributed to the popularity of the pool. Minergate contributes roughly 16 MH/s to the world hashrate, which is approximately 460 MH/s.

Nanopool

Nanopool is another popular choice for Monero mining pools. It has the standard 1% mining fee, but when looking at uptime there may be some concern. Over the past week the uptime was 99.99%, but over the past month it was just 92.74%. It’s probably an isolated incident, but worth noting.

XMRNanopool Dashboard

The minimum payment is 0.3 XMR, and Nanopool has several payment rounds per day. One reason to avoid Nanopool is that it currently has the largest hashrate of any pool at 103 MH/s.

MineXMR

MineXMR will hit you with the same 1% fee as the above mining pools, but when it comes to minimum payout MineXMR is a low 0.004 XMR, which means pretty much anyone should be getting daily payouts. Uptime is an outstanding 100%.

MineXMR Features

One similar concern to Nanopool is the large hashrate at MineXMR, which is currently over 95 MH/s. It is less than 25%, but worth keeping an eye on if you choose to mine here. You can see hashrate and pool uptimes here.

Monero Crypto Pool FR

Monero Crypto Pool FR has been a popular option for European based miners, but recently their uptime hasn’t been all that good. Over the past month they are showing an uptime of just 81.79%, which is simply unacceptable.

In addition, they have quite a high mining fee of 2%. Minimum withdrawal is 0.3 XMR, which is also a bit high compared with competing sites. As for hashrate they are at 1.59 MH/s.

MoneroHash

MoneroHash is one of the oldest pools for Monero, having been launched in October 2014. They have a bit of a high mining fee at 1.6%, but they also allow you to mine directly to an exchange wallet, so you avoid transaction fees.

MoneroHASH Features

There’s a fairly high minimum payout of 0.5 XMR, so consider that as well, especially if you don’t have a particularly powerful mining rig. The hashrate at MoneroHash is 4.32 MH/s and uptime over the past month was a solid 99.92%.

Support XMR

All the previous pools mine coins other than Monero, but Support XMR mines only Monero. They have a low fee of just 0.6% and a minimum payment of 0.1 XMR, making them one of the best in financial terms. They also allow you to monitor the performance of your rigs on the per worker hash rate chart.

Support XMR Pool Stats

SupportXMR pays their miners every two hours and they allow you to set your own payment thresholds for normal and exchange wallets. They’re popular, as you can tell by their 82.89 MH/s hashrate. In terms of uptime they are also one of the best, with 100% uptime over the past 30 days.

XMRPool.net

This is another Monero only mining pool, but XMRPool.net is far smaller than Support XMR. Like Support XMR they have a low 0.6% fee, but the minimum payment here is 0.3 XMR. You can see how small the mining pool is when you look at the hashrate, which is just 607.27 KH/s. Uptime is excellent though at 100%.

Unipool.pro

Unipool is a pool operator which has just launched their new website. They have a Monero pool as well that can also be accessed here.

Unipool Monero Pool

Unipool’s Monero pool is smaller than all of the other pools above. However, this can be beneficial when it comes to block rewards and decentralisation. The total pool fee for mining XMR is 0.5%.

Conclusion

Monero mining remains one of the best options for home mining enthusiasts, thanks to the Monero community’s commitment to remaining ASIC resistant.

When you combine your Monero hashing power with other users you can smooth out the variability in earnings, since mining pools will find blocks far more frequently than individual miners.

There are many good Monero mining pools, and your choice of which one to use should be based on the location of the servers, the fees charged, the trustworthiness of the pool, the uptime of the pool, and the hash rate of the pool.

Happy Hashing!

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post The Best Monero Pools: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Coin Bureau.

It was released on January 18, 2014 as XCoin and was late renamed Darkcoin before finally being called Dash on March 25, 2015. The developers feel it can solve most of the problems Bitcoin has and currently it’s the fourteenth largest coin by market capitalization, although at one point it was as high as the sixth largest cryptocurrency.

Many people get started and learn about Dash and they wonder if it can be mined, and the answer is yes it can be mined. While it uses the Bitcoin core code, it does not use the same consensus algorithm. Dash uses the X11 algorithm, which is becoming increasingly popular as it supports many of the privacy-centri coins.

When Dash was first released it was possible to mine it using just the GPU in your computer, but those days are gone. ASIC miners have been created that can mine Dash, and now you need far more than a GPU to be profitable mining Dash.

Dash ASIC Hardware

Antminer D3. Source: Bitmain

Bitmain released the Antminer D3 in 2017, which is the most popular Dash miner on the market. It mines the X11 algorithm, which is good if you’re planning on purchasing the hardware, because there are a good number of X11 coins, so you can always switch between coins so you’re always mining the most profitable coin at the time.

The Antminer D3 has hashing power of 17 GH/sec and a power consumption of 900 W. When it was first released you would have had to pay over $2,000 for this ASIC miner, but prices have been falling dramatically and you can get a new Antminer D3 from Bitmain for just $241 (as of July 30, 2018). That’s probably less than you’d spend to build your own GPU rig before the ASIC units were released, so it’s a pretty good deal.

Joining a Dash Pool

Even if you do decide to purchase your own ASIC rig, you might not want to solo mine Dash. Pooling your hashing power with others is a more reliable way to generate Dash on a steady basis. Pool mining smooths out the variability of finding blocks, making the rewards more constant, although the rewards are also smaller.

The official Dash website has a list of 18 different mining pools that can still be used for Dash. They do specify that the list is only for informational purposes, and that none of the services have been evaluated by Dash, and that none of them are endorsed by Dash.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with a review of 18 different services, so I’m going to give you just 5 of the mining pool services that I know are considered to be reliable and trustworthy. In most cases these mining pools can be used for a large variety of coins, they just happen to also offer a Dash mining pool.

What to Look for in a Mining Pool

The features you want to look for in a good Dash mining pool are similar to those of any other cryptocurrency pool. First of all you need to find a trustworthy pool. The pool is paying you based on your contribution to their hash power, and you have to trust that they are being honest about their calculations.

The next thing to look at are the fees. Lower fees mean higher payouts for you. Fortunately most pools have very similar fees, so this shouldn’t be too big of a chore to find a pool with a reasonable fee.

You also need to look at the location of the pool servers. A Chinese pool won’t be much good to you if you aren’t located in China. The same goes for any other location. You need to find a pool that has servers relatively close to your location to maximize your hash power in the network.

5 Top Dash Mining Pools

Given that you are committing your hashing power to a pool operator, you want to make sure that they are known for being honest and have a solid reputation. We have reached out to the community and have come up with the below list of the best DASH mining pools.

MiningPoolHub

MiningPoolHub began as a small mining pool run by a dedicated group of Ethereum enthusiasts, but has since grown to not only one of the largest Ethereum mining pools, but it also includes support for mining roughly three dozen other coins. And one of those is Dash.

Like other global mining pools it has servers in Asia, Europe and North America and a low 0.9% fee. Best of all, the servers in each location are redundant, meaning there’s no need for a backup.

MiningPool Hub DASH Pool Statistics

One feature user’s love is the algorithm switching feature that allows you to mine multiple coins of the same algorithm at the same time. People also love the auto-exchange feature that exchanges your mined coins for another coin you specify. And finally there is an auto algorithm switching feature that will set your account to mine whichever algorithm has the most profitable reward at the time.

Dash ASIC miners are profitable here, and the pool is finding blocks roughly every 150 minutes.

Suprnova

Suprnova is one of the largest and most popular mining pools for Dash. Suprnova also has pools for nearly 4 dozen different coins and servers located all around the world, meaning you’ll never be stuck for a profitable coin to mine. It uses the Proportional (Prop) payment scheme and users love its 0% fees. Like MiningPoolHub above it is also finding blocks roughly every 150 minutes.

Coinmine

Coinmine is another popular choice, especially for privacy-concerned miners since Coinmine allows anonymous mining. It has a 0.1 Dash minimum payout, which is quite low, and uses the PPLNS payment scheme. It also has 0% fees and servers at key locations around the globe.

Coinmine DASH Pool Statistics

It also has roughly 10 times the number of Dash miners that MiningPoolHub and Suprnova have, and finds blocks every 40 minutes on average. While you might think bigger is better, I always advise avoiding the largest mining pools to avoid centralization of mining.

viaBTC

At viaBTC you can choose a PPS payment method, or they also offer pay-per-last-n-shares (PPLNS), which is a very popular payment scheme at mining pools. Either way, there are no transaction fees, and miners are only responsible to pay a small maintenance fee of 4% for PPS payments and 2% for PPLNS payments.

ViaBTC Homepage

Servers are located around the globe, and like Coinmine blocks are found roughly every 40 minutes.  viaBTC also offers cloud mining for those that don’t want to deploy their own hardware.

AntPool

AntPool is run by Bitmain, the same company that makes the Antminer D3. As you might guess they have quite a bit of hashing power, and blocks are being found quite quickly.

Antpool DASH Mining Statistics

While they don’t list the average time to find a block they do show the blocks that have been found, and it seems that on average blocks are found every 40 minutes. Currently there are no fees being charged at AntPool, and it supports both PPS or PPLNS payments. Servers are located worldwide.

Conclusion

It’s unfortunate that ASIC miners have removed the ability to mine Dash with pretty much any hardware, but good to see that the price of ASIC miners has dropped enough to make Dash mining still profitable. And if Dash mining did become unprofitable (it has in the past) there are a large variety of coins that use the same X11 algorithm that could be mined instead.

That said, given the need to purchase, setup and maintain an ASIC miner Dash might not be your first choice for mining if you’re just getting started. No worries. You can have a look at one of the other pool mining guides I’ve put together to get an idea of what other coin might be better suited to your experience and needs.

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post Finding the Best Dash Mining Pools – Everything You Need To Know appeared first on Coin Bureau.

Decred did decline with the broader market from January through April 2018, but it rebounded much faster and stronger than almost any other coin. It has since pulled back somewhat from its highs, but obviously there is an appetite for this coin among investors and traders.

This has also attracted the interest of miners who are interested in the profit potential from mining Decred. Many of them were using GPUs and mining pools for Decred mining, but over the past five months the attractiveness of mining Decred has dropped dramatically for one reason – ASICs.

Using ASICs To Mine Decred

Back in January Obelisk announced that they had created a Decred ASIC miner. Called the DCR1, it has a hash rate of 1200 GH/sec and requires just 500 watts for power consumption. Other manufacturers followed with their own Decred ASIC miners.

Decred DragonMint ASIC Miner. Source crypto-miningblog.com

As you might expect this is significantly increasing mining difficulty. In fact, since the beginning of May the mining difficulty has increased from 273,629,001 to 3,975,462,300. As you might have guessed by now, GPU mining for Decred is dying, and is possibly dead already.

Of course there are still mining pools out there for Decred, and if you use the Claymore miner you can also dual mine Decred with Ethereum. But by many reports online it isn’t even worth it to dual mine Decred any longer, thanks to the massive increase in mining difficulty caused by the introduction of ASICs.

Mining Pool Considerations

If you are going to join a mining pool for Decred, there are some basic things you should look into when comparing the pools. For the most part there isn’t much difference in mining pools, but there are some factors that will differentiate one pool from another.

1. Pool fees. Obviously the lower the fees the more coins come to your wallet, so lower fees are always better. Generally speaking fees are going to be 1% at most mining pools, but sometimes you still come across a pool with 0% mining fees.
2. Geographic location. You need a mining pool that’s in the same geographical area as you to make your mining work effectively. So, if you’re in the U.S. you want to choose a mining pool with servers in the U.S. The same goes for Europe, Asia, Australia or wherever in the world you are. Basically, the closer the servers are to your location, the better.
3. Trustworthy – Most mining pools have been in operation long enough to have a history, and users know that the pool owners are trustworthy. Those that aren’t typically get shut down quickly as word spreads. Just make sure to do some research into the mining pool to be sure there aren’t any questions about its trustworthiness.
4. Payment method. There are several payout schemes that are used by mining pools, with the most common these days being the Pay Per Last N Shares (PPLNS). Take some time to get to know the different payment schemes and make sure you’re comfortable with the scheme your chosen mining pool uses.

Best Decred Mining Pools

If you want to go ahead and try a Decred mining pool, the four below are good choices to begin with:

Suprnova – One of the largest and most popular Decred mining pools, Suprnova has pools for nearly 4 dozen different coins and servers located all around the world. It uses the Proportional (Prop) payment scheme and has 0% fees.

Coinmine – Coinmine is another popular choice, especially for privacy-concerned miners since Coinmine allows anonymous mining. It has a 0.1 DCR minimum payout, which is quite low, and uses the PPLNS payment scheme. It also has 0% fees and servers at key locations around the globe.

Decredpool – Decredpool is a smaller mining pool, but it is still a good choice. With 0% fees and Proportional payment it’s quite similar to Suprnova.

Luxor Mining – Luxor Mining has recently launched their Decred pool that offers a 1% PPS scheme. They currently have four servers that you connect to with two in the US, one in Europe and one in Asia.

Another Way to Mine Decred

Decred is a bit different from other cryptocurrencies in that it uses a hybrid Proof of Work/Proof of Stake consensus algorithm.

As the difficulty of finding blocks in the Proof of Work mining system increases, more people have been finding their way to the Decred Proof of Stake mining pools (Stake Pools) to generate profits from their investment in Decred.

Overview of the Decred PoS System with “Stakey”. Source: Medium

There are quite a few of these pools, and the only real metrics to judge which pool to join is how large the pool is (smaller pools are preferred for decentralization, but larger pools have less missed votes), and the fee charged by the stake pool.

You have a fair number of stake pools to choose from and you can see the full list here on the Decred website.

Why Choose a Stake Pool

A stake pool is used to delegate your voting powers to a third party (the pool). The pool cannot steal your funds.

Participating in a stake pool is perfect for people who wish to take part in Decred’s proof of stake voting but can’t due to:

• Not wanting to keep a constantly unlocked wallet
• Lack of a reliable/low latency Internet connection

In order to participate in Proof of Stake voting and the stake pools, you need a wallet that supports stake pool voting, and enough DCR to buy tickets for voting.

There are currently two wallets which support stake pool voting:

• Decrediton – GUI wallet for Windows/macOS/Linux. The Purchase Tickets tab is used to buy tickets.
• dcrwallet – CLI wallet for Windows/macOS/Linux. The Buying Tickets with dcrwallet guide explains how to purchase tickets via command line.

As of late July 2018 the average DCR needed to buy tickets has been just above 93. At current prices that’s nearly $7,000, which should be kept in mind by those considering using Proof of Stake voting and stake pools.

Which Stake Pool to Choose

There’s really very little difference in stake pools other than the percentage of network votes controlled, the percentage of missed votes, and the fee charged by the stake pool.

The two largest are Stakeminer, which has more than 17% of the network votes, and Stakepool, which has over 7% of the network votes. It’s not recommended to join pools with more than 5% of the network vote in order to support increased decentralization. The former charges a 1% fee and the latter charges a 2% fee.

Decred StakeMiner Stats. Source: Stakeminer.com

Some smaller alternatives that are just as good, or better than the largest Decred stake pools are:

Ubiqsmart – This stake pool is medium sized, with just over 400 users, and has a low 0.95% fee. The missed vote rate is somewhat worse than that at Stakepool, but similar to Stakeminer.

UltraPool – A mid-sized European based alternative with a 1% fee, low missed vote rate of 0.08% and over 500 users.

Stakeynet – This is a fairly new Stake Pool with just over 200 users, it’s been in operation for six months. It has a 1% fee and a very low 0.05% missed vote rate.

Conslusion

Like so many other coins, ASIC mining has ruined GPU mining for Decred. Thankfully it is still possible to use the Proof of Stake mining in this coin to profit from current DCR holdings.

I’m not going to suggest you purchase DCR just for Proof of Stake mining as it would be quite an investment, but if you have the necessary cryptocurrency already and want to accumulate Decred without outright buying it, the Decred Stake Pools might be your best option.

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Because of this mining pools have grown in popularity, and you can find mining pools for pretty much any minable coin, and that includes everyone’s favorite meme coin – Dogecoin.

If you aren’t too familiar with mining pools it might be difficult to decide which one to use when mining Dogecoin, but I have your back covered. In this article you can learn which are the best Dogecoin mining pools if you want to be secure and profitable.

Dogecoin Basics

Dogecoin was launched in December 2013, and was based on the popular internet meme featuring a Shiba dog. The creator intended Dogecoin to be an alternative to Bitcoin that could potentially reach a much larger demographic, but it has since become more of cryptocurrencies tip jar, with cryptocurrency enthusiasts often using Dogecoin as a way to tip fellow users online.

It’s interesting to note that Dogecoin, which began as a joke, is now the 37th largest coin by market capitalization, and has a market cap of more than $430 million. In January 2018 Dogecoin hit its highest all-time level with a market cap of over $2 billion. Because it remains popular within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, it is also popular with miners.

Mining Dogecoin

Dogecoin is different from Bitcoin because it uses the Scrypt algorithm. Litecoin is another cryptocurrency using the Scrypt algorithm, and while this makes Dogecoin different from Bitcoin, it is also similar because it still uses Proof of Work as its consensus mechanism, and this means anyone wishing to mine Dogecoin needs a computer capable of doing so.

Because Dogecoin is based on the Scrypt algorithm the Scrypt ASIC miners used for Litecoin can also be used to mine Dogecoin, however this isn’t too common since mining Litecoin with the expensive ASIC rigs is often more profitable. In fact, these days most Dogecoin mining is simply a by-product of Litecoin mining. Rather than mining Dogecoin directly you are able to “merge” mine, which lets you mine both Litecoin and Dogecoin without any decrease in your hash rate.

GPU Mining Rig via Fotolia

Because the difficulty of mining Dogecoin has increased so much in 2018 the only way to really compete is to join a Dogecoin mining pool.

A mining pool simply combines the hashing power of all the members, making it far more likely for the pool to be able to solve a block and receive the block reward. That reward is then split between the members of the mining pool, allowing the pool members to generate revenue in a faster and more consistent manner.

Before you join any mining pool, and this includes Dogecoin mining pools, you should investigate to see how the pool calculates rewards for its members, what fees the pool takes, how secure the pool is, where the pool servers are located, and how much hashing power the pool holds.

You might also look into whether the pool is specific to Dogecoin, or if it also allows mining other crytpocurrencies. Pools that mine a variety of cryptocurrencies can provide some flexibility for miners, allowing them to switch to a more profitable coin if necessary. To get an idea how profitable your Dogecoin mining might be you can use a mining profitability calculator such as this one, which will also let you compare other Scrypt based coins to know which one is currently the most profitable to mine.

Pool fees are fairly standard, and you won’t find much variation there, but the payment methods can differ, so you should understand the difference between Pay Per Share (PPS), Pay Per Share Plus (PPS+) and Pay Per Last “N” Shares (PPLNS) payment schemes before you commit to a mining pool.

Best Dogecoin Mining Pools for 2019

Now that I’ve gotten all the background out of the way, here is a list of the four best Dogecoin mining pools for you to consider. I’ll give you some of the top benefits, and let you know any serious downsides, but you should also visit each site and do your own research before deciding on one pool over another.

Prohashing

Prohashing will not only allow you to mine Dogecoin, but it is one of the few mining pools that actually payout in Dogecoins. In fact, it will pay you in any coin you like, so you could mine Dogecoin and get paid in Bitcoin, or you could mine Monero and get paid in Dogecoin.

Prohashing Mining Pool Stats

It works on a Pay Per Share system, and pays directly to you wallet or bank account if you prefer. It also has an algorithm you can use which will automatically switch your hashing power to the most profitable coin. The fee at Prohashing is a flat 4.99%, with no minimum payout and no withdrawal fee.

Multipool

Multipool offers pool mining on a number of different cryptocurrencies, including those using the SHA-256 algorithm (Bitcoin, Digibyte, etc) and X11 algorithm (Dash). Of course there are also other Scrypt mining options like Litecoin and Verge. Multipool will also pay in Dogecoin, as well as a number of other coins.

Multipool DOGE Statistics

There are no withdrawal fees when the minimum thresholds are met and autopay is used. One other nice feature is the support for merged mining. This means you could mine Litecoin and also mine Dogecoin at the same time without any loss of hashing power.

1Coinpool

The 1CoinPool pool is a smaller pool offering a Proportional Pay Per Share (PPPS) payout structure that pays you a percentage of every block found. Coins are automatically deposited into your wallet.

Advantages of 1coinpool

In addition to Dogecoin, you can also mine Litecoin at 1CoinPool and they will also be adding support for Ethereum and ZCash in the near future. Currently there are no fees for mining with 1CoinPool, and the site claims that they find three blocks per week on average.

Aikapool

Aikapool is another smaller Dogecoin mining pool with less than 50 active miners typically. In addition to Dogecoin there are 14 other Scrypt coins offered, and if you want to change to something other than Scrypt algorithm there are 10 other algorithms being mined on Aikapool.

Aikapool Dogecoin Statistics

Miners are rewarded on a PROP system (proportional) where there is no risk to the pool operator as the system pays only when a block is found.

Conclusion

Obviously the above doesn’t cover all the pools you could use for Dogecoin, but it gives you two very good larger options, and two very good smaller options. Fees are minimal to non-existent at each, but payment systems vary, so you’ll want to look into those to see which is most suitable for you.

Server coverage is global in each case, so you won’t be hampered by your location, no matter where you live one of these mining pools will help you gather as much Dogecoin as possible for your mining rig.

Most also support other coins, and even other algorithms, so if you feel like switching away from Dogecoin to another altcoin it will be a fairly quick, easy and painless task.

If you need more information about Dogecoin, or need to download a wallet you can do so at the official Dogecoin website.

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1. Buy ZCash
2. Mine ZCash

Personally I prefer the mining option because it feels like free coins (even though it isn’t at all). ZCash is a Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency, so every transaction is verified and bundled into a block by miners, who then collect a reward for performing this necessary function for the blockchain.

The most famous Proof-of-Work crpytocurrency is Bitcoin, and he creation of ZCash was actually inspired by Bitcoin. So, ZCash was developed using the same core software used in Bitcoin, however some changes were made to ensure maximum privacy for the users of the coin.

One of these changes was in the consensus algorithm. Where Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm, ZCash decided to go with the Equihash algorithm. The major change in ZCash however is the ability for users to remain anonymous when using ZCash.

I’m assuming you’re already familiar with the mining process, and today I want to discuss using ZCash mining pools. These mining pools have become increasingly important for many home miners due to the rise of ASIC chips that can be used with the Equihash algorithm. Let’s get to some basics about mining and pools.

The Basics of ZCash Mining Pools

Mining pools exist for any cryptocurrency that uses proof-of-work as a consensus mechanism, and ZCash is no different. The mining pools are platforms that allow individual miners to come together and pool their hashing power to help increase the chances of finding blocks and receiving mining rewards. This also lowers the risk for miners as it gives them more regular payouts.

One commonality between almost all mining pools is that they all charge a small fee for providing the pool service. These fees are in place to help the pool owner pay for the servers and bandwidth necessary to run the pool. Fees can differ from pool to pool and even from cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency, and finding a low fee pool can help maximize mining profits.

Image via Fotolia

ZCash can also be mined, and until recently it was possible to mine ZCash at home with nothing more than the CPU or GPU in your personal computer or laptop. That all changed in February 2018, when Bitmain announced that they had developed an ASIC chip capable of mining Equihash algorithm cryptocurrencies.

These ASIC chips are very powerful, and they increase the difficulty of finding blocks for all other miners, especially those using less powerful CPUs and GPUs.

So, for most of us who don’t have an ASIC rig to mine with, the best chance to get some ZCash is to join a mining pool.

This is likely to remain true for some time also, as the ZCash Foundation isn’t being quick to fork ZCash to make it ASIC resistant again in the way that Monero did when Bitmain developed an ASIC chip for the Cryptonight algorithm. They have said they will research the impact of ASIC chips on mining, but their initial position is that accepting the ASIC chips might be the better long term strategy. You can read more regarding their reasoning here.

If you’re a home miner a pool is a great resource since it allows you to get a continual supply of small mining rewards. Basically, pools aggregate the resources of all the members, and anytime the pool finds a block the rewards are split between members based on their contribution to the hash power of the pool. This means small rewards, but because of the pooled resources the pool is far more likely to find blocks versus solo mining.

What to Look for in a ZCash Pool

The features you want to look for in a good ZCash pool are similar to those of any other cryptocurrency pool. First of all you need to find a trustworthy pool. The pool is paying you based on your contribution to their hash power, and you have to trust that they are being honest about their calculations. When it comes to ZCash there are several pools that have been operating almost since ZCash was created, and they are trusted by the ZCash community.

The next thing to look at are the fees. Lower fees mean higher payouts for you. Fortunately most pools have very similar fees, so this shouldn’t be too big of a chore to find a pool with a reasonable fee.

You also need to look at the location of the pool servers. A Chinese pool won’t be much good to you if you aren’t located in China. The same goes for any other location. You need to find a pool that has servers relatively close to your location to maximize your hash power in the network.

One final thing you want to look at is how much of the total hashing power does the pool control. While it might be tempting to simply go with the largest pool, that isn’t always a good idea as it could lead to the pool controlling 51% or more of the network hashing power.

In fact, this very thing happened back in November 2017, when Flypool controlled more than 51% of the network hashing power. They didn’t perform a double spending attack, but they could have, and this type of centralization in Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies needs to be avoided. So, sometimes it’s better to simply choose a smaller mining pool to increase the decentralization of the network.

The Best ZCash Mining Pools for 2019

Best is a subjective term. What’s best for me might not be best for you. Obviously geography will play a part in choosing the best pool for you. Your feeling on creating decentralization might contribute to your choice of a best ZCash mining pool as well. With that in mind, here are my 4 best choices for ZCash mining pools.

FlyPool

Flypool is still the largest ZCash mining pool and one of the most popular among ZCash miners. First off, Flypool charges a 1% mining fee, but also comes with a host of features that make it attractive. These include servers located in the U.S., Europe and Asia as well as anonymous mining using just a wallet address.

Flypool ZEC Pool Statistics

The current hash rate for July 2018 is 169 MH/s and Flypool has detailed and accurate hash rate reporting. You can customize your minimum payout and take advantage of the instant payout feature at Flypool. Payouts are via a real-time PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares) method. And for the more advanced among you it has full Stratum support.

NanoPool

NanoPool is another popular ZCash mining pool, and based on user reviews the payouts here are very similar to those from Flypool. Servers are located in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Japan and Australia.

Nanopool ZCash Hashing Statistics

NanoPool offers other coins in addition to ZCash, but as far as ZCash is concerned it has more than 11,000 miners and 21,000 workers with a hash rate of 36 MH/s. The pool fee at NanoPool is 1% just like at Flypool and the default minimum payout is a low 0.01 ZEC. It supports anonymous mining, but only with public (t) addresses and makes payouts several times a day. Stratum is also fully supported at NanoPool.

MiningPoolHub

MiningPoolHub is a recent addition to the popular ZCash mining pools having come online in February 2018. In addition to ZCash it also supports mining of 34 other cryptocurrencies, and has an auto-switching feature that will allow your mining to switch between the most profitable coins for the algorithm you choose.

MiningPoolHub Stats for ZEC Pool

MiningPoolHub has servers in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and currently has a total hash rate of 21.8 MH/s. The pool fee at MiningPoolHub is slightly lower than other pools at just 0.9%, which is a benefit. You are also able to automatically convert your mined coins to a different coin for withdrawal. Payments are made via the PPLNS(Pay Per Last N Shares) system.

Suprnova

Suprnova  is another fairly new ZCash pool, although they do offer pools for other coins for some time. The hash rate is just 5.8 MH/s, but that’s enough for the pool to regularly find blocks. You can mine anonymously, and the pool uses the familiar PPLNS payment system.

ZEC Mining Pools at Suprnova

There are servers located in the U.S., Europe and Asia, with the newest server in Shenzhen China. Like most other pools the fee is 1% when mining at Suprnova.

Conclusion

As you can see, the largest ZCash mining pools are very similar, offering anonymous mining, PPLNS payment systems, servers in each major geographical area, and 1% fees for the most part. For the best fee you would want to choose MiningPoolHub, but for the best geographical server coverage Nanopool seems superior.

While Flypool is the largest pool with the greatest hash power, that doesn’t make it better. In fact, at this time it would be best to choose one of the smaller pools to help promote decentralization of the network. Perhaps MiningPoolHub since it allows you to automatically switch to the most profitable coin at any given time.

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Litecoin has often been called the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. While Litecoin uses a different algorithm than Bitcoin, it is still a proof of work coin, and as such it can be mined to be awarded Litecoins.

Below I’ll talk more about mining Litecoin in 2019, and the best Litecoin mining pools.

Litecoin Mining Pool Criteria

Just as I suggested in my guide to Ethereum mining pools, one of the first things you’ll want to look at is the fees charged by the mining pool. The lower the fees are, the more Litecoin you get to keep for yourself, so choosing a low fee pool is an obviously good choice.

You’ll also consider the minimum payout level. One of the reasons for choosing to mine through a pool is the steady payments at regular intervals, and if these intervals are kept shorter, that’s better too.

And finally you’ll want to look for a mining pool that’s close to you geographically. You don’t want a pool with servers in China if you’re mining in New York. The closer you are to the pool servers, the better your mining performance will be.

Below I’ll take a closer look at several popular Litecoin mining pools, as well as discussing the P2Pool option for mining. Beyond that is a short discussion regarding the recent addition of ASIC Litecoin mining hardware, and what that can mean for Litecoin miners.

How to Pick the Best Litecoin Mining Pool

There’s no “best” Litecoin mining pool, there’s only a best Litecoin mining pool for your needs. For example, the top three Litecoin mining pools are Antpool, F2Pool and LTC.top, but they would never be the best for me because their servers are located in China and their websites are predominantly in Chinese.

That’s ok though because there’s not too much difference between the various mining pools. Simply choose a pool that has servers close to and a fair fee structure and you’ll see payments that are similar pretty much across the entire selection of Litecoin mining pools.

See, choosing a Litecoin pool is actually pretty easy after all. Simply make sure the pool servers are close to your location to maximize your mining rewards, and find one with low fees to minimize your expenses.

You can also go to other forums and articles to read up on what others think of the various Litecoin mining pools, but I don’t think you’re going to hear much different than what you’ll learn here. So, unless there’s someone you know who’s mining Litecoin and you want their opinion, I don’t think it’s going to be necessary to get the opinions of others.

To get you started, here’s a list of three mining pools, and a fourth suggestion that’s like a pool, but not exactly like a pool. Confused? That’s ok, you soon won’t be.

LitecoinPool.org

This is one of the oldest and largest Litecoin mining pools. It’s a pay-per-share (PPS) pool and a merged mining pool as well, which can yield the best results at times thanks to the mining of the secondary coin. Plus, with the PPS system you get paid even if a block gets orphaned by the Litecoin network.

There are eight geographically diverse servers, making this a good pool from nearly any location on the globe, and there are no fees for either automatic payouts or manual payouts.

LitecoinPool.org was started in 2011 by one of the main Litecoin devs, who goes by the name Pooler. Because of this the pool has been highly trusted since its earliest days. At one point in 2012 the pool controlled over 40% of the Litecoin hash power.

LitecoinPool.org Statistics

Because of that registrations were closed for several months, and since then it has required approval to get accepted to the LitecoinPool.org pool. The pool was also the first to offer secure mining over TLS-encrypted Stratum connections, protecting miners from potential man-in-the-middle attacks.

viaBTC

This is the next largest Litecoin pool behind LitecoinPool.org, making it the fifth largest Litecoin mining pool. It’s a combined pool and in addition to its Litecoin pool there are also Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Dash and Zcash pools available at viaBTC.  It’s a newer Litecoin mining pool, having started as a Bitcoin mining pool back in June 2016, and then adding Litecoin in January 2017.

At viaBTC you can choose a PPS payment method, or they also offer pay-per-last-n-shares (PPLNS), which is a very popular payment scheme at mining pools. Either way, there are no transaction fees, and miners are only responsible to pay a small maintenance fee of 4% for PPS payments and 2% for PPLNS payments.

ViaBTC Litecoin Pool Statistics

Even with the fees viaBTC can be quite profitable as it uses merged mining and pays out 800 DOGE for every 1 LTC mined. viaBTC also offers cloud mining for those that don’t want to deploy their own hardware.

ProHashing

ProHashing is the ninth largest Litecoin mining pool, and has been in operation since August 2014. It was started by three engineers, two of whom are brothers. In addition to Litecoin and other Scrypt coins, it also has mining pools for SHA-256, Equihash, and x11 algorithm coins.

It uses the PPS payment model, and is unique in that you can get paid in any coin you like. So, you could mine Ethereum, but get paid in Litecoin or Bitcoin if you like. You can even choose U.S. dollar payouts if you like, and unless you’re asking for very small payouts there are no payout fees at ProHashing. There are also no transaction fees charged. Instead, ProHashing aims to have a flat 4.99% fee that includes the use of all their features.

Prohashing Scrypt Statistics

If you like, you can set ProHashing to mine automatically, in which case it will use your hash power to mine the most profitable coin. That coin is determined by the ProHashing custom algorithm, with profitability recalculated by the algorithm multiple times per second. In addition, ProHashing will merge mine coins whenever possible, increasing profitability even more.

Large Mining Pools

While there currently aren’t any mining pools that are near 51% of the total hash rate of the network, it is recommended that you avoid using the largest mining pools to keep any one pool from growing to that 51% limit. Remember, bigger doesn’t mean better when it comes to mining pools.

Payments are determined by the payment scheme, and since most pools are PPS or PPLNS the payments at larger pools are not larger, nor do they come faster. You can see the Litecoin hash distribution rate here. Check that and avoid joining the largest pools.

Try P2Pool

Instead choose a smaller pool, or you could even consider using P2Pool, which is a peer-to-peer public mining network that can be joined by anyone without registration. The P2Pool nodes are completely decentralized (great for cryptocurrencies), and can be connected to using your Litecoin wallet address as the username and anything at all as the password. The decentralized nature of the P2Pool networks encourages improved security and promotes a wider distribution of nodes.

A P2Pool node provides connected miners with low difficulty work. Upon completion of each portion of work, the miner is awarded a pool share. Shares are communicated among P2Pool nodes and assembled into a sharechain – just like the Bitcoin network assembles blocks into the blockchain.

Once the pool finds a block, all contributors are paid directly, according to their shareholding as reflected in the sharechain. Payment is issued by the sharechain and without third party involvement. Below is a list of some Litecoin P2P Pools.

Is Litecoin Mining Profitable?

Yes, you can still make money by mining Litecoin, however doing so with a GPU is becoming increasingly difficult. In fact, you’ll need a high end GPU to successfully mine Litecoin these days. The reason is that Bitmain released an ASIC Scrypt miner over a year ago. Simple GPU mining can’t come close to the raw power of the Bitmain Antminer L3+ units.

If you’re considering mining Litecoin or other Scrypt algorithm coins in 2018 and beyond your best bet is to go with one of these ASIC miners. The good news is that the cost of these ASIC miners isn’t higher than the cost of a good GPU, and with aftermarket markups, the ASIC Litecoin miner is actually less expensive. Even with the ASIC miner you’ll be best served by joining a pool rather than going it alone.

Conclusion

If you’re confident that cryptocurrencies, and Litecoin in particular, are going to increase in value long-term now might be a great time to get started mining.

Because of the lower prices the difficulty of mining is currently lower, and the cost of the mining hardware is also lower. If Litecoin recovers back to late 2017 prices by the end of 2018 you could be sitting on a valuable stash of coins.

And by using the Litecoin mining pools listed above you can be sure you’re getting reliability and safety from well established mining pools. You’ll also be assured of low fees and the strongest hash rate when you chose a pool that has servers near your own location.

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The post The Best Litecoin Mining Pools: Complete List appeared first on Coin Bureau.

The first is obviously a strong Ethereum mining rig. Assuming you’ve already bought or built a rig for mining Ethereum the next thing you’ll want to do is find an Ethereum mining pool to join.

A mining pool is nothing more than a group of individual miners who have joined forces to help increase their hash power, and to lower the volatility of their payouts. Rather than waiting for a large payout when you successfully mine your own Ethereum block you can join a pool and collect a small part of the entire pools’ Ethereum each day, or more frequently in some cases.

Mining Pool Criteria

One thing that’s important to look at when choosing a mining pool is the fees charged. You’ll want lower fees to increase your own profits. It’s also good to look at the minimum payout of the mining pool to ensure you won’t be waiting too long between payouts. Finally, it’s important to consider where the mining pool servers are located. The closer your rig is to the pool servers the more efficiently you’ll be able to mine.

Below I’ll go into more depth about four different mining pools and what you can expect from them. Beyond that is a short discussion of what might happen once Ethereum switches from proof of work mining to the hybrid proof of work/proof of stake mechanism expected to be implemented sometime in 2018 with the Casper network upgrade.

If you want a complete list of mining pools to compare for yourself after reading this article you could head over to Investoon.

How to Pick the Best Ethereum Mining Pool

It’s somewhat misleading to say “the best” since the definition of the best will depend on the persons requirements and expectations when looking at Ethereum mining pools. The fact is, it isn’t all that easy to determine the best Ethereum mining pool for you, since they are all quite similar on the surface.

Image via Fotolia

You’ll soon find that there really is little difference between mining pools, and almost any of them could serve you well. The rewards you will receive will be similar, and the real differences come from the fees charged and the location of the pool servers. You might be able to choose simply based on these two criteria alone.

Your location in regards to the location of the pool servers will play an important role in how quickly and efficiently you’ll be able to mine Ethereum with your rig.

You might find some differences in the details of the mining pool once you’ve joined, such as software configuration, or in the hashrate you’re experiencing, but you have to try and see what your personal results are.

Maybe you read on a forum that mining pool A is great and mining pool B sucks, only to read at a different forum that mining pool B is the best, and everyone should avoid mining pool A.

To at least get you started with the factors that are objective in determining the best Ethereum mining pool I’ve put together a list of five you should definitely consider.

Ethpool/Ethermine

Ethermine and Ethpool are actually the same pool, owned by Bitfly, but they run different payout schemes. Ethermine is the most popular Ethereum mining pool there is, with over 129,000 miners in its global mining network. You’ll find servers located in Asia, Europe and North America, and the network comes with DDOS protection to avoid attacks.

Ethermine uses a PPLNS payout scheme and pays immediately in real-time once you hit your minimum payment threshold. The minimum payout allowed is a low 0.05 ETH, which is great for those who aren’t running high powered rigs. Ethermine does take a 1% fee, but they also pay all mining rewards.

Screenshot from Ethermine.

You can also mine anonymously through Ethermine, and they allow for several different mining software configurations, including Claymore Miner, Ethminer and Phoenix Miner.

One of the things that has attracted so many miners to use Ethermine is the great support they get, along with the highly efficient mining engine.

As for Ethpool, this is a Solo-type mining pool which pays the entire reward to the miner that made the greatest contribution to solving the latest block. Because this is a volatile (but fair) way of mining there are far less pool members (less than 900 as of June 2018).

If you’re interested in solo mining you should read the payout rules before continuing. One interesting feature of Ethpool is that all uncles are paid to a random miner.

Nanopool

Nanopool has just over 85,000 miners, making it the third largest global mining pool according to Investoon. You’ll find the pool fee is the same as at Ethmine, just 1% and that the pool pays all rewards. The default minimum payout at Nanopool is just 0.2 ETH, and you can set it even lower in your settings if you like. It’s a pretty straightforward and easy site to use, so it’s suitable if you’re just getting started with mining Ethereum.

Nanopool Statistics

Note that there have been some online reports regarding the hashrate at Nanopool being significantly less than when mining on their own, or even through other pools. That said, the community seems to be quite pleased in general with Nanopool, as evidenced by the large base of miners using the pool.

Dwarfpool

Dwarfpool used to be among the most popular Ethereum mining pools, but it has fallen out of favor more recently, although I’m not exactly sure why. Still, it remains the fourth largest global mining pool for Ethereum, and has global servers in both North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Benefits of Dwarfpool

It charges the same 1% fee as the mining pools above, and is considered by some to be the fairest exchange because it has a true round based payment system which is proportional to your shares.

Mining with Dwarfpool is completely anonymous, you don’t even have to register for an account, and they make automated payouts every hour. You are able to find every statistic about mining on their website, and can also monitor every mining rig via automated emails.

I’ve seen some complaints about the default minimum payout at Dwarfpool, which is 1.01 ETH, but these people probably fail to realize that there is a webform that can be submitted to change the minimum payout to as little as 0.05 ETH, or as low as 0.01 as slow autopayout at the end of the queue.

MiningPoolHub

I’m including MiningPoolHub last, but it certainly isn’t least in our consideration. While it began as a small mining pool run by a dedicated group of Ethereum enthusiasts, it has grown to be the second largest global mining pool. Because there are a lot of things to like here.

One of them is the fact that you can also mine roughly three dozen other coins. Another is the charges, which are calculated based on rewards depending on the block finding fee, transaction fee, the bonuses and a few added incentives too.

Like the other global mining pools it has servers in Asia, Europe and North America and a low 0.9% fee. Best of all, the servers in each location are redundant, meaning there’s no need for a backup.

One feature user’s love is the algorithm switching feature that allows you to mine multiple coins of the same algorithm at the same time. People also love the auto-exchange feature that exchanges your mined coins for another coin you specify.

And finally there is an auto algorithm switching feature that will set your account to mine whichever algorithm has the most profitable reward at the time.

If you are a looking to be a professional Ethereum miner, Miningpoolhub might be the perfect Ethereum mining pool for you.

2Miners

One of the newer mining pools that has just entered the market is 2Miners. Given that they are one of the newer pools, they have a unique and modern user interface design.

2Miners UI

2Miners developers have taken into account all the drawbacks of the current mining pools and made their product from scratch. The operation of this pool is completely transparent – all statistics could be viewed and analyzed by anyone.

2Miners have 2 different payout systems: PPLNS and SOLO. This is the only pool with the notification bot available for different messengers.

The pool is really easy-to-use. The “Quick start” option enables the rookie miners to set up their hardware and start mining in a few seconds. 2Miners provides the 24/7 support via helpdesk, social networks and messengers.

In terms of Ethereum Pool fees, it charges the standard rate of 1% on the block rewards. It will be interesting to see how 2Miners grows as miners try to diversify away from established pools.

Post-Casper GPU Mining

Ethereum will be switching to a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism sometime in 2018 and some wonder how this will impact mining. The good news is you can still mine, but the bad news is you’ll have to do it by staking Ethereum, and by all accounts it will need to be a large amount of Ethereum.

You could start mining now, but if you don’t already own the hardware it probably isn’t worth it, although you could go the cloud mining route to accumulate some Ethereum and avoid the hardware costs.

Ethereum Casper PoS

That said, the initial Casper change will be a hybrid Proof of Work and Proof of Stake system, where PoW still mines coins, but every 50th block uses PoS as validation. That is the switch that is coming sometime in 2018, and no one knows for sure when Ethereum will move fully to PoS.

With that being the case, it might be worth it to buy or setup an Ethereum mining rig now, if you believe the price of Ethereum will increase dramatically in the next couple of years, because it will likely be at least that long until Ethereum becomes totally PoS.

One fear that has been circulating revolves around GPU mining in general. There have been estimates that as many as 2.5 million GPUs are being used to mine Ethereum, and if Ethereum mining stops there will be a glut of GPUs that will make mining a profitless task.

What isn’t figured in is that these GPUs will likely be slowing moving away from Ethereum once the hybrid system is implemented. And by the time a full PoS system is in place for Ethereum there will almost certainly be other coins that can be mined, and even other projects that can take advantage of spare GPU computing power.

So, chances are money spent on a GPU mining rig now will hardly be wasted.

Conclusion

If you believe in Ethereum for the long term, then starting a mining rig and joining a mining pool now makes perfect sense. There are plenty of great pools to choose from and even with Ethereum switching to Proof of Stake, it looks as if several years will pass until that transition is completed.

If you choose one of the four Ethereum mining pools listed above you’ll know you’re getting reliability, stability and fair rewards. Plus you’ll have a jump on the move to Proof of Stake in Ethereum.

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post Ethereum Mining Pools: Best Places to Mine ETH appeared first on Coin Bureau.

It doesn’t matter if you’re mining specifically for profit as a business, or if you’re mining casually as a hobby, there are tax consequences that need to be addressed.

With the IRS reporting that just 802 people paid tax on cryptocurrency profits in 2017, I think this message needs to be spread.

U.S. Cryptocurrency Tax Regulations

The IRS created a regulation for cryptocurrency mining back in 2014. It is known as Notice 2014-21, Q-9 and it relates how the IRS applies existing tax code to the treatment of virtual currencies, including mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

According to the document, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies obtained through mining can generally be considered self-employment income, so long as the mining is not done by an individual in the capacity as an employee.

Self-employment income is treated in a similar fashion to regular earnings from employment, although there are some differences, such as deductions allowed, and self-employment taxation.

Wages vs Self-Employment

Image via Fotolia

When you work as an employee you receive wages, and you pay half of the self-employment tax, while your employer covers the other half. Income derived from self-employment requires you to pay the full self-employment tax, which is 15% as of 2018.

However, if you’re claiming your mining activities as self-employment you’re also able to take advantage of certain deductions, which I’ll cover later in this post.

If you claim your Bitcoin mining activities as a hobby, the earnings are handled the same as wages. Additionally, only amounts over $400 legally need to be reported for self-employment tax purposes.

The IRS notice stipulates that cryptocurrencies obtained from mining activity must be recognized as income during the tax year in which they were mined. The market price of the cryptocurrency is equal to the market price on the day the coins were awarded on the blockchain, and that price is also used as the basis for the Bitcoin to calculate gains and losses going forward.

The IRS has clarified this with the following example:

 “…[A]ssume you mine 1 bitcoin in 2013,” the government tax agency writes. “On the day it was mined, the market price of bitcoin was $1,000. You have $1,000 of taxable income in 2013. Going forward, your basis in the bitcoin is $1,000. If you later sell the bitcoin for $1,200, you have a taxable gain of $1,200 – $1,000 = $200.”

Of course there is some ambiguity in the calculation of value. As we all know, the value of cryptocurrencies can vary greatly, even within a single day. The IRS notice says the value of the coins mined are based on the price on the day they were mined, but they don’t specify if that’s the high price, low price, average price or even from which exchange price data should be obtained.

To clarify to some extent, the IRS notice also contains the following guideline

“…fair market value of the virtual currency is determined by converting the virtual currency into U.S. dollars (or into another real currency which in turn can be converted into U.S. dollars) at the exchange rate, in a reasonable manner that is consistently applied.”

The key there is at the end of the statement “in a reasonable manner that is consistently applied.” Using the day’s average from a single exchange in all your transactions could certainly be considered both reasonable and as long as it is done in the same way for all transactions, consistently applied

Other Considerations

The IRS admits that the tax treatment of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is “uncertain”, and recommends you get advice from a tax professional to determine whether your mining activity constitutes a hobby or business, and what your tax obligation would be

Remember, it doesn’t matter if your mining is classified as a business or a hobby, you still have to pay taxes on the coins you mine. Self-employment taxes don’t kick in until you receive more than $400 in a tax year, and are 15% of the value of the coins mined.

Image via newswire.net

If you can pass the test to list your activity as a business you will probably be able to reduce your tax liability with deductions and credits. If the IRS sees your mining activity as a hobby you still might be able to deduct some expenses, but only if they exceed 2% of your gross income

You will also need to consider the tax implications of selling your Bitcoin in the future. When you sell the Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrency) it is a taxable event and is subject to capital gains taxes. Of course if the coins are worth less when you sell them than their basis you can claim a loss for tax purposes.

This makes it critically important to track the data and value of all coins you mine. Consider too that capital gains taxes are different for short term holdings – if you sell after holding the coins less than a year – and long term holdings of longer than a year

Not only does the information above apply to coins you mine yourself, it also applies to coins you might receive through mining pools, faucets, or cloud mining. And if you’re considered to be self-employed in mining cryptocurrencies you’ll likely be required to make quarterly tax payments or face a penalty for late payment

Crypto Mining Costs and Your Taxes

Since you incur costs such as electricity and the cost of hardware when mining cryptocurrencies you might be wondering if these costs are deductible on your taxes.

The quick answer is “Yes”, you can deduct your cryptocurrency related expenses. The amount you can deduct will depend on whether your mining activity is categorized as hobby or business. I’ll look closer at the two scenarios later in this post.

Types of Deductible Mining Expenses

The U.S. tax code specifies any ordinary and necessary expenses can be deducted, which means anything that’s typical, helpful and appropriate to mining activities. Yes, this is a bit flexible, but in general it would cover any of the following mining expenses

• Mining hardware (GPUs, ASICs, and component parts)
• Electricity
• Internet service
• Newsletter/forum subscriptions
• Mining pool fees
• Accounting/bookkeeping
• Tax preparation
• Coin storage (USB, hardware wallets, safe deposit boxes, etc.

You will need to determine the proper allocation of some of the above expenses for your mining operation. For example, you won’t be able to deduct 100% of your electricity expenses, since your electricity is also used to power many other things in your house aside from your mining rigs.

It might even make sense to purchase a portable electricity meter (which would be a deductible expense), so you would know exactly how much electricity your mining rig uses. For large hardware purchases you may have to use the depreciation method for deducting the expense.

Your accountant can give further guidance on the rules that cover assets which depreciate.

Business vs. Hobby

As alluded to above, you’ll need to determine if your cryptocurrency mining is a business or a hobby under IRS guidelines. To qualify as a business the activity must be done on a continuing, consistent basis, with the purpose of profit generation. If it is sporadic and/or insubstantial it is a hobby and reporting will be different

Deducting Mining Expenses As A Hobby

Most people’s cryptocurrency mining efforts fall under the hobby umbrella, because most miners won’t meet the substantial, continuous test for business activity. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it does free you from the 15% self-employment tax.

If your mining is a hobby, any deductions are reported on Schedule A as itemized deductions.

Schedule A Itemized Deductions Form

The downside here is that itemized deduction rules don’t allow for home office deductions, start-up costs, or continuing education costs like conferences. And you can only deduct expenses that exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income. Further, it is not allowed to deduct any losses from your mining activity.

Also, you are only allowed to itemize your deductions if you aren’t taking the standard deduction.

In 2017 the standard deduction was $6,350 for singles and $12,700 for married couples, so you would need to have substantial itemized deductions to make it worth your while to itemize. Those with mortgage expenses will likely be able to qualify, but many others will not.

Deducting Mining Expenses As A Business

If you can qualify your cryptocurrency mining as a business you’ll have a much easier time declaring deductions. Business expenses are calculated using schedule C and are far more generous.

You can include your continuing education expenses, home office expenses, and start-up costs if you are filing as a business. Plus there are no limitations as there are with itemized deductions. It’s definitely a greater benefit, but it also comes with a cost.

The cost is that a business is subject to self-employment tax of 15% on top of your usual income tax. So, it’s possible that qualifying as a business could wipe out the benefit of your deductions due to this self-employment tax.

Conclusion

As you’ve now learned, cryptocurrency mining is subject to taxation in the U.S., as are gains on cryptocurrency holdings. This is offset by the fact that you can deduct expenses related to cryptocurrency mining, but those deductions will possibly be limited depending on whether your activity qualifies as a business or a hobby.

If your mining is a business you’ll have greater deductions, but also be subject to additional self-employment taxes. If it’s a hobby your deductions are limited, but you won’t have to pay the additional self-employment tax.

Knowing which is better will take some careful calculations, and is completely dependent on each individuals personal situation.

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post The Tax Implications of Home Crypto Mining: How Does it Work? appeared first on Coin Bureau.

This announcement set off a firestorm of complaints from the Zcash crypto community, reigniting a debate that has long been going on between ASICs and crypto currencies.

Let’s take a quick look at the current state of play and what the ZCash developers plan to do about it.

ASIC PoW Centralisation

The core of the problem has to do with the proof of work verification process inadvertently creating centralization amongst minors, especially those who use ASIC chips. This gives them the advantage of being able to mine coins more efficiently than regular GPU miners.

Proof of work is a method of consensus whereby complex computer calculations are performed in order to create a new group of trustless transactions on a Blockchain.

The problem with Proof of work is that it is resource-intensive and creates a centralizing tendency among miners based on computer resource capability. For Bitcoin, mining equipment (and therefore mining power) is mostly concentrated in the hands of a few mining companies.

With the creation of a new ASIC miner specifically developed for one crypto currency (Zcash), the concern is that Bitmain has the potential to manipulate the currencies price whenever something good or bad happens to the company.

Another problem created by centralization is the fact that miners with too much concentrated power could effectively manipulate transactions by overpowering 51% of the network. This is often termed the infamous “51% attack” that is the bane of every crypto chain.

Zcash, a privacy focused crypto currency, still has a low market cap and much fewer transactions than Bitcoin, and so many believe that a single company manufacturing its mining equipment goes against the decentralization ethos the crypto community abides by.

Bitmain is one of the largest miners of crypto currency, as well as the largest producers of ASIC chips. This shows a very clear objective to monopolize and occupy both the supply and demand side of the mining space, which forces all crypto currencies that use Bitmain to become centralized simply by association.

Other Coins Affected

Zcash is not the only crypto currency that has its community split on the ASIC issue. Just this April, Monero hard forked to avoid the impending centralization of ASIC miners.

Moreover, the move by Bitmain to target Equihash coins has got the Bitcoin Gold (BTG) developers in a bind. This Bitcoin fork was created specifically to avoid the impact of ASICs on the Bitcoin chain. The developers are now also wondering whether they will have to fork again.

Siacoin has made similar threats to do the same over the release of Bitmain Antminer A3, which is developed specifically to mine Siacoins.

Siacoin is developing a storage platform for large amounts of data, which makes it especially averse to centralization. The community has also been weary of Bitmains tactics to undercut Siacoin’s developer’s own mining operation – Obelisk.

Zcash Adoption

Antminer Z9. Source: Bitmain

The Zcash community is the most recent victim of this controversy, and the implications of a Zcash custom made miner developed by Bitmain are significant.

For one, we could see a mass exodus of miners from Zcash. Miners who don’t feel like they can compete with big players in the space and seeing their profit margins continue to decrease will simply move on to mining other crypto currencies.

Investors, sensing the effects of centralization beginning to take hold, may jump ship as well. They, just like all other stakeholders, don’t want to risk investing their time and capital in a project that can be open to price manipulation.

Both of these factors will eat into Zcash’s value at a crucial time when they are competing with other players in the same privacy market, like Monero (XMR).

Perhaps Zcash may go the way of Monero in forking their protocol to keep away from ASICs entirely and avoid becoming more centralized.

For the Zcash community, it seems the choice is between a more efficient mining tool that could lead to long-term growth, or a slightly less efficient GPU mining process that allows them to stay true to their decentralization ethos.

It should be noted that the Zcash foundation is currently involved in research and development of a more ASIC resistant strategy an immediate technical priority.

Proof of Stake The Answer?

Image via blockgeeks.com

The conflict around mining companies creating centralization has only helped create more buzz for an alternative method of consensus called proof of stake (PoS). In this method of consensus, a user can mine or validate block transactions according to how many coins he or she holds.

Mining power is attributed to the proportion of coins held by the miner, and the miner essentially risks (or ‘stakes’) their coins in order to guarantee that they are incentivized to not manipulate any transactions and to maintain a secure network (otherwise they lose their stake).

This removes the arms race to accumulate hashing power, which creates centralization, while also reducing the massive amounts of energy consumed by mining rigs when using the proof of work consensus method.

Companies like Bitmain would have fewer opportunities to monopolize the mining process when Proof of stake is being used.

Ethereum is the most high profile Blockchain making the switch to proof of stake with its new consensus protocol – Casper. Currently, there is an expectation that a hybrid version of Casper will be implemented before the end of the year.

PoS Has It’s Flaws

There are still risks that a POS method of consensus can become centralized.

Those who hold the largest stake in a Blockchain will also receive the largest reward. So even though these large players are not incentivized to validate fraudulent transactions, there is still a concentration of decision-making left to a small group of people with the largest tokens to stake.

Other flaws include the ‘nothing to stake’ problem, where people with no tokens to stake can still vote on a particular version of a proof of stake Blockchain, with nothing to lose, and something to gain if the particular version of the Blockchain they vote on is accepted.

Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik has proposed a ‘wrong voting penalty’ for those who vote on multiple versions of a block, or the incorrect block.

Another flaw is something called the ‘long range attack’ problem, where an attacker who (for example) holds 1% of all coins at or shortly after the genesis block can start mining from their own new chain.

Although the attacker will be selected to produce a block only 1% of the time, they could easily produce 100 times as many blocks, and simply create a longer Blockchain in that way.

One possible workaround to this issue is to give every block a timestamp, and have users reject chains with timestamps that are far ahead of their own, forcing the long-range attacker to conform to the same time constraints (more on this here).

Conclusion

The battle against ASICs is part of a wider discussion around what the ideal method of consensus is to validate transactions on a Blockchain. Just because the crypto community aspires to create a decentralized world, doesn’t mean that corporations like Bitmain, primarily driven by profit, are interested in playing by the same rules.

At this time, it seems like Zcash founder Zokoo Wilcox is not interested in forking Zcash, saying he doesn’t “believe that any proof-of-work change can achieve what we really want, which is decentralization and attack-resistance”. He went on to say

miners who want the “we will continuously change the PoW to deter ASIC manufacturers” feature should mine Monero

Quite a few members of the community seem to be in disagreement, as evidenced by a recent Twitter poll that had more than 200 votes, of which 80% of them felt ASICs were bad for Zcash.

Poll: Should #Zcash be minable by ASICs? Or does the Zcash Community support ASIC resistance? @zooko @zcashco https://t.co/IWprUHCjU3

— mine Zcash ᙇ (@mineZcash) April 3, 2018

It remains to be seen how Zcash will resolve this issue, as they are expected to hold a more formal community vote in June.

However, what remains clear is that the crypto community will have to reckon with Bitmain’s growing influence. As the founding team behind a cryptocurrency, you should ask yourself whether relying on a centralized mining company to boost the growth of your project is worth the risk of no longer being decentralized.

You will be exposing yourself to all the risks that come with a traditional centralized organization, primarily, exposure to a single point of attack on the network and price manipulation.

Featured Image via Fotolia & ZCash

The post The Battle Against ASICs: Antminer Z9 Angers the Zcash Community appeared first on Coin Bureau.

Other than the time spent initially setting things up, your time requirements in mining are quite small, since the computer hardware does all the work.

Sure, you might have some time involved with updating drivers or troubleshooting some hardware or software issues, but the real investment isn’t your time, it’s the cost of the mining equipment, or rig, and the cost of the electricity used to power your mining rig.

So, right from the start I’m going to go ahead and answer the question of whether it’s worth it to mine cryptocurrencies at home. The answer is “Maybe”.

Home Cryptocurrency Mining Considerations

I know that the maybe answer seems like a cop-out, so I’ll explain further.

There are a number of considerations to take into account before you can answer the question of whether home mining is going to be profitable. It certainly can be, but you have to make the right decisions if you want to make money with home crypto mining.

And it’s not likely you’re going to get rich, although you could create a nice little stake, especially if the cryptocurrency you choose to mine increases dramatically in value. So, here are some things to consider:

• Will you use your existing computer equipment, or will you be buying new equipment?
• Which coin will you mine? You can even decide on multiple coins you might mine, and this will affect your decisions regarding what hardware to use.
• Will you be CPU mining, GPU mining or ASIC mining?
• Will you solo mine, or will you join a mining pool?
• Do you even need mining hardware, or are there other alternatives that are acceptable to you?

Can You Mine with your Current Computer

Unless you have a very high end system you won’t have much success in mining. At the very least you’ll need to add additional GPU’s to your system specifically for mining. This is going to mean you’re incurring additional costs, and will extend the amount of time you need to mine before you break even.

If you’re thinking of buying additional equipment you’ll probably want to dig a little deeper before you decide what equipment to buy. This is because your hardware could dictate which coins you can mine.

CPU, GPU or ASIC?

CPU mining these days isn’t profitable at all, so you’ll be deciding between GPU mining and ASIC mining. GPU mining has some definite advantages going for it, although an ASIC miner will be far more powerful, giving you the greatest hash power.

If you decide to go the GPU mining route you can start small and scale up later. You’ll want to do your research to see which graphics cards perform best for mining, but with so many to choose from you’ll also be able to balance your costs.

If you’re cash strapped you can start off with cheaper cards, like the Radeon RX 470 or Radeon RX 480, which run around $200 each. As you begin to make profits you can later scale up, adding more graphics cards to your rig, or better performing cards.

Images via Fotolia

GPU mining also gives you more flexibility as most cryptocurrencies can be mined using a GPU, although some are certainly more suited to GPU mining. Zcash and Monero are both favorites for GPU mining, and Ethereum is also very popular with home GPU miners.

Finally, you may be able to find used GPU’s at even cheaper prices, lowering your initial investment further. Try looking on gaming sites for cards rather than on cryptocurrency sites, because gamers will tend to sell the cards at lower prices, and you don’t run the risk of buying a card that has already been hard-used for mining, and not necessarily running at its optimum performance.

ASIC mining has the obvious benefit of more raw hashing power. That said, these ASIC rigs are quite an upfront investment, with prices running in excess of $2,000 and up to $5,000+ in some cases. You’ll also have much higher running costs with an ASIC rig as it uses a lot of electricity.

Finally, you lose your flexibility with an ASIC card as each one is made specifically for one coin. And many cryptocurrencies, cannot be mined with ASICs as no card specific to the coin has yet been developed. If all you’re interested in is hashing power though, an ASIC rig is definitely the way to go.

I should also note that even though the ASIC rig is more expensive upfront, you’ll typically recover your initial investment faster with an ASIC card versus a GPU. You can see a comparison of the costs of many popular GPUs and ASICs here. You’ll also get all the relevant information you need to plug into a cryptocurrency mining calculator to determine profitability.

Solo Mining or Pool Mining

Image via bitcoininvestment.news

Solo mining is going it alone. The benefit is that you get to keep all the rewards of any block you successfully mine. So, in the case of Bitcoin, if you mine a block, you get to keep the full 12.5 Bitcoin for yourself.

You also get to keep the network transaction fees that are generated. The downside is that your earnings can be very erratic with solo mining. Perhaps this month you mine two blocks – Hooray! – but then you don’t mine another block for several months.

Pooled mining is a protocol that allows miners to “pool” their resources. All the hashing power goes into the same pool. This increases the chance of successfully mining a block. However, any rewards are split between all the members of the pool. Pooled mining can also come with fees, which obviously lower your rewards. And in pooled mining the transaction fees are not distributed.

Other downsides to pooled mining is that it is subject to attacks, such as DDOS attacks, and it can be subject to downtime as well, although it is possible to configure your software to use another pool or solo mine if your main pool goes offline.

The major benefit that keeps most miners in pools is that earnings are more consistent, even if they are lower by 1-2% over time versus solo mining. With pool mining you can be reasonably certain of seeing similar earnings each month, without the huge variation that solo miners are subject to.

One criticism of mining pools is that they centralize mining by controlling so much of the hashpower. For example, back in 2014 the mining pool GHash.io controlled 42% of Bitcoin hashpower. That’s dangerously close to the 51% attack level. Currently the largest pool BTC.com has 27.8% of the Bitcoin hashrate.

There are many different mining pools to choose from. One of the largest is AntPool, which is owned and operated by BitMain, a company that specializes in the development, manufacture and sale of ASIC cards. The oldest and third largest is SlushPool, which has pools for Bitcoin and Zcash currently. You can find pools for many popular coins with a simple Google search.

Alternatives to Home Mining

If all of this sounds expensive and like too much trouble, there are alternatives to setting up your own mining rig at home. One of the most popular is known as Cloud Mining. In cloud mining you contract with another company to lease hashpower.

They setup and maintain all the hardware and all you need to do is pay for the hashrate and collect the rewards. Obviously there are fees involved in this, so it isn’t going to be as profitable as setting up your own mining rig, but it is far less hassle.

One of the largest and most well-known cloud mining companies is Hashflare.io. There you can lease hashrate for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Zcash and DASH mining. The company has been opating since early 2015 and is respected in cryptocurrency circles.

Another choice is Genesis Mining, which offers mining contracts for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Zcash, DASH and Monero. And with Genesis Mining you can switch your hashrate to whichever coin is most profitable at the time. The downside to Genesis Mining is very high contract rates. There’s no way to purchase a small plan here, so expect to spend several hundred dollars at the least. Another downside is that they are frequently out of stock or hashpower, and so you may need to wait to get a contract.

Staking as Mining

Some Coins For Staking

You might also consider “mining” a different consensus mechanism. For example, coins that use Proof of Stake pay miners who simply hold the coins. Some interesting choices are available for those who would be happier doing their mining simply by holding coins.

One is NEO, which is a good choice because it doesn’t require you to keep your wallet open at all times to collect your rewards, nor does it require you to run a masternode. PIVX and OkCash are two staking coins that are easy to start with as they have no minimum staking requirement.

If you have a substantial amount of money (or have been mining it already), DASH is a hybrid that allows for staking. However you have a minimum of 1,000 DASH coins to run what is called a masternode. At a current price of $439 that means you’d need $439,000 worth of DASH to take advantage of the staking option.

Interestingly, Ethereum is supposed to move to the Casper proof of stake system sometime in 2018, so you could mine it now, and then when it switches over you’d already have some Ether for staking.

In Conclusion

Mining cryptocurrrencies at home can be a fun hobby, a side gig, or a way to make substantial cryptocurrency profits if done correctly and scaled up.

It may not be for everyone, but if you don’t mind the technical nature of building your own rigs and maintaining them, along with configuring the appropriate software for running your rigs, it could be a way for you to build up a stake of your favorite cryptocurrency.

Or you can take the simple route of purchasing a cloud mining contract or coins that work on a proof of stake mechanism. Either requires no additional work on your part, and can yield decent returns.

Featured Image via Fotolia

The post The Economics of Home Mining: Is it Worth Your Time? appeared first on Coin Bureau.

The IOTA foundation is dedicated to developing industrial standards and open protocols for a machine-to-machine economy, ensuring the real-time circulation of validated, well-defined and clear-cut data and the securing of critical infrastructure on a global scale.

Running a IOTA node is a way to enter the network which is called the “tangle”. The Tangle is an example of a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) based cryptocurrency. The node can function as a load balancer to the Tangle and helps by speeding up confirmation times in a given segment of the network while receiving weekly distributed donations for doing so.

In the following sections we’ll focus on some of the key components which constitute the IOTA protocol and network infrastructure. We will then provide instructions on how to set up and operate a node, as well as some of the applications, use cases and available tools.

So, if you are interested in setting up your own full node in the comfort of your home, read on..

Seeds, Keys, Addresses and Transactions

A IOTA seed is the starting point of creating a transactions channel. A seed must be safely generated off-line and securely kept. In a Linux shell prompt this is done with the following command:

cat /dev/urandom |tr -dc A-Z9|head -c${1:-81}

For Mac users:

cat /dev/urandom |LC_ALL=C tr -dc 'A-Z9' | fold -w 81 | head -n 1

/dev/random generates pseudo-random numbers by gathering environmental noise from device drives, network packets, etc. into an entropy pool from which the seed is generated.

While there are online seed generation tools, it is highly recommended that you avoid these. There have previously been phishing websites which masqueraded as tools that have stolen users seeds.

The generated 81 character long string consisting of A-Z uppercase letters and the number 9. All private keys and sets of addresses bundling transactions derive from the original seed in a stream-like manner (somewhat similar to mnemonics in Ethereum wallets).

Once a send transaction is done from an address that address should never be reused as each output reveals part of the private key. Receiving outputs can be pooled in a single address, but once that address is spent from it should be emptied and it shouldn’t be reused for either sending or receiving. The seed is not compromised if funds are received in a spent from address, but the funds are.

This is due to the quantum-resistant cryptographic scheme adopted by IOTA. One-time signature schemes (and one-time cryptographic hash functions in particular) are methods for constructing digital signatures using one-way functions. Similar in principle to one-time pads and, as the name implies, this works by using key pairs only once. In essence, once bits are looped they must afterwards be consumed.

This minor, early-phase inconvenience and seemingly technical barrier to participation is soon to be resolved with the upcoming release of the Trinity wallet (currently in alpha testing phase). This is intended to provide a user-friendly and intuitive cross-platform interface to the tangle and a module for the seed and address handling logic offering a smoother user experience.

Transactions, Bundles and Snapshots

Image via Fotolia

A transaction on the tangle consists of an encoded 2673 tryte string which decodes an object containing address, signature, value and tag attributes. Transactions are usually grouped in arrays called bundles which wrap together value transactions containing outputs to receiving addresses and inputs to spending ones. Value transactions as such require that inputs are signed.

As the database of transactions grow, periodic snapshots are performed which group non-zero balances together. These are stored into a single record and the rest are shed off. The addresses with non-zero balances serve as new genesis addresses in a way, with no previous history attached.

Presently, under coordinated mode of operation, snapshots are done manually by the foundation. The foundation is building a solution whereby the process will be automated in the near future and permanodes placed for retaining the entire history of the tangle.

Services such as thetangle.org and the Oyster network (which stores data on the tangle by reattaching it and performing PoW) presently can be considered to serve as permanodes. Any valuable data can be preserved on the tangle by coupling it with a few iotas or otherwise staking some value into the system.

Alternatively, specialized nodes which store only contextually relevant data or transactions flowing through their neighborhood segment of the tangle can also be put in place.

Coordinated Consensus Mode and Milestone Transactions

The Coordinator (or Coo for short) are IOTA nodes spread across the globe and operated by the IOTA foundation. These serve the purpose of issuing zero-value transactions (called milestones) which ensure the incoming transactions that reference the milestone ones conform to the rules of the protocol.

This will set the direction for tangle growth by coordinating the steps. Participating nodes for their part also verify that the Coo is not breaking consensus rules by creating iotas out of thin air or approving double-spendings.

The purpose is as a temporary safeguard for the network in its stages of infancy to avoid against larger scale attacks. When the volume of organic activity on the tangle reaches a sufficient threshold for it be self-sustainable, the Coordinator will be shut off. The tangle will then switch to ensuring consensus via Monte Carlo Markov Chain random walks.

Setting Up A Basic Node (IOTA Reference Implementation)

To set up a node one needs an optimal configuration. Below are some of the minimum recommended hardware / software:

• 8 to 12GB RAM
• 25GB storage
• dual core CPU
• 24/7 Connectivity
• Either Ubuntu (16 or 17) or CentOS is preferable

A VPS (Virtual Private Server) running in a data center is a common and convenient solution and there are a number of VPS hosting providers to use.

After getting access to the server (IP address and user password), log in remotely via command-line (or PuTTY in Windows):

$ ssh your_username@IP.address.to.server

Enter password, and if user isn’t “root” (Contabo servers are by default root) make sure you have “sudoer” privileges and execute “sudo su” to log as root. After that, simply run:

$ bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nuriel77/iri-playbook/master/fullnode_install.sh)

This fetches a deployment script which will automatically detect system parameters, download the necessary software packages and their dependencies. Make sure, during installation, to enable the Nelson and Field – modules on top of the core protocol. This will fulfill different responsibilities important for building a healthy network.

After successful installation, you will be presented with the URLs at which the peer manager and the Grafna dashboard (monitoring CPU I/O usage) are located. Peer manager is typically IP at HTTP on port 8811 and Grafna interface at port 555 and /dashboard/db/iota?refresh=30s&orgId=1 (default username “iotapm” and password as provided during installation)

These provide remote interface access to node statistics and health metrics without the necessity to log in directly to the remote server via ssh.

Grafna login screen

Grafna monitoring in Browser

Grafna Price Data

Next, in the running ssh console to the remote VPS, run the following to enter your node’s GUI configuration interface:

$ iric

IOTA Reference Implementation Configuration Manager

After downloading the fully synchronized database (“Get Fully Synced DB”), we go on to enable Nelson.

Nelson Auto-Discovery Peer Manager

The basic IRI is usually bound to a structured overlay network of neighbors in the tangle. This is done via a JavaScript wrapper called “Nelson”. Nelson acts as a gatekeeper and network overseer responsible for discovering peers, negotiating connections, load balancing traffic and protecting against bad actors.

Each Nelson node maintains a list of trusted peers and has a “personality” which changes over intervals of time on the tangle called “epochs”. These last between five to ten minutes. This means incoming contacts may not be immediately accepted depending on a number of parameters and factors. As more contacts are earned, trust accumulates, the weight of which is a fundamental metric in how the tangle operates.

Bolero is a similar cross-platform implementation which is easier for Windows users and spawns the whole full node setting with a single click. This has recently been integrated (but not fully so) with Nelson and Field.

After we’ve enabled Nelson, we next go on enabling Field.

CarrIOTA Field

CarrIOTA is a public load balancer for optimizing node performance and resource usage to the benefit of the whole network. It provides protection against DDoS attacks and a layer of hardened security for critical applications. Additionally, it computes statistics and provides health metrics for an IRI and its neighbors which serves as valuable data for further building of applications and integrating various instances.

CarrIOTA Field also functions as an incentivizer which significantly speeds up transactions within it, stabilizes the tangle as a whole. It also distributes weekly IOTA token donations among participants doing Proof-of-Work (the simple Hashcash type PoW, not the Bitcoin miner kind).

Upon enabling Field from the configuration GUI one needs to enter a unique identifier (any string) and an address for receiving the weekly distributed donations. The output of a generated seed as explained above should have the following form:

QAZEEELQCKLVOORDUBXTCLNDBQYMYHLTCADJSUVXBAYWHZXBHACHUBQWQONZHGUJOKWSOXKGEOIPSSUML

The seed is entered in the wallet after which a generated receiving address is copied and pasted in the address field in the configuration GUI.

The currently used IOTA wallet

Lastly, we need to enable Proof-of-Work for Field to pass attachToTangle jobs to the IRI full node, so we go to “Configure Files” and enter “Field”.

Configuration Setup

Line “pow” must be changed from “false” to “true”, Ctrl+O to save and Ctrl+X to exit. This can also be done from the command line with:
field --pow --address IOTA_ADDRESS

We now go to http://field.carriota.com/ and use our provided identifying string to check if the node is present on the tangle in Field. This can alternatively, can be searched for in the plaintext file at http://field.carriota.com/api/v1/graph.

If the correct ports were not enabled during the installation, then open the following ports in the NAT router:

• UDP: at 14600 (many neighbors want to use just UDP as a fast, lightweight network packet)
• UDP: at 15600
• TCP: at 16600
• TCP: at 21310 (for CarrIOTA Field)

Donation funds are dispersed to the provided donation addresses of the participating nodes in a 48 hour interval after a season ends. A total of over 3.4 billion iotas have been paid out in the beginning of March as disclosed in the below tweet by an IOTA researcher.

https://twitter.com/RomanSemko/status/971990819027562496

Perhaps more importantly for adoption, the number of participating nodes has also quadrupled since.

Additional Resources and Information

Pending transactions can be manually reattached via a python script ran from the command line of the node after fetching the official IOTA python libraries post-installation.

apt-get install python-pip -y && pip install --upgrade pip && pip install pyota

After this, one needs only run “reattach” from the command line.

$ reattach

A number of basic Web-based tools (such as various binary to ternary converters, current Field statistics, database size, etc.) are accessible at Tangle Tools and a small collection of tutorials can be found here.

ChainLink’s Linkpool have also released an IOTA adaptor for ChainLink Oracle nodes recently and other such oracle services as the XYO geolocation oracle appear to have IOTA integration as priority in their roadmap agenda.

Other IOTA-based projects under development include machine learning as a service, an IOTA payment gateway, various ‘tangled’ chat applications and many more.

For keeping up with updates and announcements and participating in discussions, or plain seeking to better understand the dynamics of the tangle and ask questions, IOTA’s official Discord houses a large and active community of people working on developing applications and collaboratively building projects on IOTA. An official community forum has also been recently launched.

How Much can You Earn?

While running an IOTA node can be an interesting exercise that benefits the broader ecosystem, you are no doubt interested in the returns that you can earn. You do, after all, have to meet the cost of running the VPS and remunerating your time for maintaining it.

This will depend on a number of factors. These include the the demand on the network, competition, the server configuration and of course the price of MIOTA.

However, at current levels one could expect to earn anywhere between 12-15 MIOTA per month for running the node. If you were to go with the most simple configuration on a VPS, monthly fees are about $8. This means, at current prices, you are earning at least $8.

Assuming all remains equal, that means that you are earning about 100% on your investment per month. Of course, you could always hold onto the MIOTA you have as profit. If you long term positive on the IOTA ecosystem then this will no doubt serve you well…

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The post Setting Up An IOTA Node & Earning MIOTA: Step by Step Guide appeared first on Coin Bureau.

One very interesting mineable coin is the privacy conscious Monero, and today I’m going to go through the steps you need to take to mine Monero yourself right from your home laptop or desktop computer. And don’t worry. There’s nothing terribly tech heavy in the instructions, and you can have everything set up and running within 30 minutes or less.

Monero Mining Battle

Monero (XMR) is a decentralized, scalable cryptocurrency that has the benefit of providing complete anonymity for its users. In fact, it was created exactly for that purpose. Monero was launched in 2014 and has been steadily increasing in popularity. It is not a fork of Bitcoin or Ethereum like so many other coins, but is its own unique coin that runs off the CryptoNoteV7 protocol.

In fact, Monero became so popular that recently one of the major mining companies created an ASIC chip capable of mining Monero. Because the project is adamantly opposed to ASIC mining, claiming it fosters centralization, they almost immediately forked the project, disabling the ability of the new ASIC miners.

This was accomplished by changing the minimum ring size on transactions from 5 to 7. The Monero hard fork occurred on April 6, 2018 and while the hashrate dropped 75% immediately following the fork, it has since recovered, showing miners are supporting the new fork.

One change that has come about due to the fork is that many of the software Monero mining packages that previously worked when it was using the 5 ring CryptoNote protocol no longer work with the new 7 ring CryptoNoteV7 protocol.

Fortunately Monero itself supports mining directly through its GUI wallet, and there is at least one other option that is a bit more involved.

Why Mine Monero?

Image via Fotolia

There are many Proof of Work (PoW) coins that you could mine, so why choose mine Monero? There are actually several reasons that make Monero an excellent choice for a new miner.

The first is that mining runs very well on AMD hardware, as well as on Nvidia GPU’s. In fact, Monero typically sees one of the best hash rates of any cryptocurrency on an AMD card.

Next, the CryptoNightV7 algorithm used by Monero is optimized for CPU mining. Most cryptocurrencies are unprofitable when mined using a CPU, either because they aren’t optimized, or because of the ASIC mining.

Finally, Monero has become an extremely popular coin in and of itself. The privacy and anonymity provided by Monero has made it useful to scores of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, particularly since one of the goals of cryptocurrency is to avoid the snooping that global governments have become so good at.

Solo-mining Monero with its GUI Wallet

Solo-mining is not the most profitable way to mine Monero, but it is preferred by many users for several reasons.

The first reason is that solo-mining helps to strengthen the entire Monero network. When you mine solo without a pool you add to the decentralization of the network by putting your hash rate against that of the rest of the network. If you join a pool of miners you are simply contributing the that pool’s hash rate, which actually makes the network more centralized as these pools gain more and more power.

You can see how this type of pool centralization hurts a cryptocurrency by looking at the issues that Vertcoin has had, where a mining pool known as Coinotron has gained control of 51% of the network hash rate. This is known as a 51% attack and gives Coinotron the ability to change transactions on the network, and potentially double-spend coins. Another privacy coin – Zcash – has seen similar issues.

Setting Up Monero GUI Wallet Mining

Getting solo-mining set up is simple and easy, with the functionality built right into the official Monero GUI wallet.

Just as with Bitcoin mining, if you successfully find (solve) and mine a block before the rest of the network, you’re entitled to the full block reward. This is a lot more than you would receive if you were mining in a mining pool, although pool rewards are far more consistent.

Solo-mining is generally far less profitable than pool mining, unless you get lucky. Because the hashing power of your machine is so low compared to the hashing power of the entire network, the chances of you actually finding and mining a block yourself are incredibly small.

In most cases you’ll just be using up electricity, rather than striking it rich. Solo-mining can still be fun and rewarding however, and it’s a great introduction to cryptocurrency mining in general.

To get started on your Monero solo-mining adventure you’ll first go to the official Monero website and download their GUI Wallet. They make it easy in that all the major operating systems (Windows, OS X and Linux) are supported. Click the appropriate link to download.

After downloading you can install the wallet, which will generate your seed and address. (Note: You may need to run the installer as administrator)

After generating a seed and address, you’ll want to click on the Advanced tab, then on Mining.

Source: GetMonero.org

From here, you have the ability to change the number of CPU threads (cores) to mine with (#1), as well as the option to enable background mining (#2). You can also start (#3) and stop (#4) mining. The more cores you enable, the more hashrate you will be contributing. Be sure to have sufficient cooling if you plan to enable mining on all of your processor’s cores.

Two other things to take note of before you begin mining Monero. First, you must wait for the daemon to finish synching (you can see the status in the lower left corner of the wallet). And secondly you can’t enable more cores than your processor actually has, or the wallet is likely to begin to act strangely.

So, once you have the wallet installed and running, be sure to go back and launch monerod.exe to start the daemon and allow your wallet to synch to the network, otherwise you will get an error and will be unable to mine.

Once you’ve installed the wallet, let it synch and started mining. That’s all there is to it. It should be noted here that the only way to solo-mine like this is through the official Monero wallets.

Pool-mining Monero with XMR-Stak

While pool mining doesn’t have you making a contribution to the network security of Monero, it is more profitable than solo-mining. There were several very good pool mining software packages, but since the hard fork many of them no longer work, and are no longer supported by their creators. It’s a shame, but there is still a good option in XMR-Stak, which you can download from Github. It supports the newer CryptoNoteV7 and is recommended by the official Monero site.

This open-source software supports all the major operating systems and allows for mining on both CPUs and GPUs of all the major manufacturers. This is a tradeoff because the performance is somewhat worse than other software that supports specific hardware, but at this time there aren’t many other options, and XMR-Stak has the benefit of being quite easy to install and use.

I should also note that XMR-Stak is preconfigured to donate 2% of hashing power to the developer. You can change that if you like by editing the donate-level.hpp file before you build the binaries.

Go ahead and download XMR-Stak.

Once your download is complete you’ll want to go ahead and run/set-up XMR-Stak. To do that look for the xmr-stak.exe file in the downloaded folder and double click it to run. You may get a warning from your anti-virus program, but it’s a false positive and you can go ahead and run the program.

The setup for XMR-Stak runs in the command line, but is easy to follow along with. The first question you’ll be asked is if you want to use the http interface. This allows you to see your hashrate right in your browser. If you want to use this feature enter an unused port number (I used 2018), otherwise enter “0” to disable this functionality. Next it will ask which currency you’d like to mine. Type “monero7” and hit ENTER.

Now you’ll be asked for a pool address. Here’s a handy list of Monero pools you can use when pool mining. You want to choose a pool that has servers close to your location, and in my case that’s MoneroHash in the USA section. Simply click the button that says “Go to Pool” for your chosen pool and then find the “Getting Started” section of the mining pool’s website.

This is where you can find the list of ports associated with that pool. You’ll choose your port based on the quality of hardware you’re mining Monero with.

For example, on MoneroHash:

If I were going to mine on this pool with both a high end CPU and GPU, I would choose port 5555.

So, go ahead and type in the pool and port and then press ENTER. Next you’ll be prompted for a Username. This can be either your wallet address or your pool login. It is recommended that you use your wallet address here. This will send all your pool earnings directly to your Monero wallet.

I recommend using the official Monero wallet, which can be downloaded here. If you prefer a web wallet you can use MyMonero, but understand that a web wallet is not as secure as a desktop wallet, since you have to enter your private every time when accessing the wallet.

Next you’ll be prompted for a password and you can leave that blanks and simply press ENTER. XMR-Stak next asks if your pool supports TSL/SSL. This will be dependent on the port you’re using. As you can see from the screenshot above, with MoneroHash port 9999 does support TSL/SSL, but none of the other ports do. If you’re in doubt, or if your pool doesn’t explicitly state that it does use TSL/SSL you can enter “n” here. After that you’ll be asked if you want to use nicehash, followed by a question if you want to use multiple pools. You can type “n” for both.

That’s all there is to it. Your miner should be started and mining away!

You can check several stats from the command line as follows:

• “h” for your hashrate
• “r” for results
• “c” for connection

All of the settings you entered during setup can be easily changed by editing the config file in your XMR-Stak folder. Simply open the file using Notepad or your favorite text editor.

Source: Youtube

If your miner seems to continually crash, you may need to reduce the number of threads it is using on your graphics card. That can also be easily changed by editing either the nvidia.txt or amd.txt files (depending on the manufacturer of your graphics card).

Source: Youtube

You can set the GPU thread amounts to 0 in the file if you don’t want to mine with your graphics card at all. XMR-Stak will try to mine using all your hardware (GPU and CPU), so if you disable GPU mining you’ll still be mining with the CPU.

If you have more than one GPU you will see configuration information for each card in the GPU config file. If you don’t want to use all of your CPU cores, you can also modify the cpu.txt file, however this won’t be necessary for most people as XMR-Stak will leave one core free.

Source: Youtube

Conclusion

The recent hard fork of Monero has made the coin even more privacy focused, and has likely sent the message to the ASIC mining folks that Monero will do whatever is needed to remain ASIC free.

This makes it ideal for individual miners, who can be certain that ASIC rigs won’t dominate the hash power on the network. Monero also remains a very in-demand coin, and there is a good likelihood that the price will continue to increase as more cryptocurrency users become interested in privacy coins.

The recent hard fork has also decreased the difficulty of mining Monero, making it a very good choice right now. While solo-mining can be fun, using a mining pool will almost certainly be more profitable, and the XMR-Stak software is about as easy as it gets when it comes to setup and configuration.

Once you’re comfortable with mining like this, you can even think of exploring other options, such as adding more GPU cards to your PC for increased hash rate, or setting up a machine that is dedicated to mining – but that’s a subject for another tutorial.

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The post Start Mining Monero at Home with These Easy Steps appeared first on Coin Bureau.