How to Mine Ethereum

Ethereum is a revolutionary discovery in the world of cryptocurrency. Developed by legendary Vitalik Buterin this ecosystem has displaced other rivals to take the second position in the race of crypto titans, right behind Bitcoin.

The coin remains popular around the world and even exceeds its “elder brother BTC” in China. There are several reasons for that kind of fame. In contrast to BTC, Ethereum solves multiple tasks within one network. Due to faster transactions and smart contracts, the ether coin stays at the top of miners’ wishlist.

Why is it Worth Mining Ether?

Ether is an open-source platform based on blockchain and developed to create decentralized applications. Immediately after Ethereum presentation, Microsoft and IBM, the giants of software development, have been interested in and a lot of miners have switched to ether.

It is easily explained. Ethereum has a great potential:

• Accessibility of the system. Almost all banks and exchanges, which deal with cryptocurrencies, have an access to Ethereum. You may buy Ethereum using PayPal or a bankcard without prior money conversion in BTC.
• Unlimited emission of ETH. A number of coins have no limit. Users may earn this currency endlessly. The developers of Ethereum have taken such measures to guarantee a stability of the platform. The value of the coin will soar, if users stop mining it.
• Market capitalization. ETH capitalization exceeds $1 trillion at the time of the article writing. And that is a real competition to Bitcoin.
• Fast transaction processing. The flexible system processes transactions within approximately 14 seconds, which is significantly less than a famous BTC.
• Total security. The Ethereum system has been hacked not once since the greatest DAO exploit of 2016. But all the user’s funds have been saved.

Despite a lot of experts predict a bright future to Ethereum, mining guide of the coin has a number of nuances. Initially, it has been possible to mine Ethereum Classic or Ethereum with a PC. Today, it requires much higher computational capacity. It is getting harder to solve blocks, but a reward for each of them is less valuable. Only high powerful farms may reckon on a stable profit.

Crypto society expects Ethereum updating to 2.0 version to the year 2022. The main reason of such a transformation is the need of the system scalability. A record capacity of the platform to verify up to 15 transactions per second impresses, but it is not enough to serve a huge number of users. Due to updating, the system will process about 1000 transactions. Another reason is a change of algorithm. Working at the same protocol as Bitcoin, Proof-of-Work (PoW), Ethereum commits transactions in blockchain with the usage of miners’ computational power. To bear a higher load, the network needs more miners. So as to mine cryptocurrency is becoming more expensive and difficult, the number of miners are reduced.

Transferring to the Proof-of-Stake algorithm there will be no need in an expensive equipment. Validators will commit transactions. As the result, the very idea of mining may become unprofitable. But no matter how controversial it is, Ethereum is still in value and worth to take part in.

How to Mine Ethereum?

Ethereum mining is going to roll on, and all you need is to have a powerful graphic card and a few ploys. There are three ways to mine ETH:

• Cloud mining
• Solo mining
• Pool mining

In spite of the first two approaches are not recommended, they are deserved to be mentioned.

Cloud Mining

A process of a cryptocurrencies mining through a remote server is called cloud mining. You rent the equipment, and a mining company earns coins instead of you. With a reservation: when you gain reward, a share of it should be paid to a company as a percentage. Your own hardware may be less profitable than rented power. Though this approach seems to be a little bit dump, there are still a number of users who prefer to reap the benefit while others work.

The next six services for cloud mining are considered to be the best ones:

• SHAMINING
• ECOS Mining Company
• Bemine
• IQ Mining
• HashFlare
• Genesis Mining

This way is more expensive but you don’t need to waste money to buy pricy equipment and spend hours building a farm, resolve the problems with overheating and noise. But you can’t control this process and be sure in transparency of the platform’s reports.

Solo Mine

Solo mining may seems to be an extremely lucrative business. You don’t need to pay a commission to pool’s owners, block reward is fully yours. However, only owners of powerful farms may cope with a difficulty of hash searching and hope on such a reward.

There is a short guide how to solo mine Ethereum:

Equipment

The process itself has a lot in common with mining of other cryptocurrencies. There are high requirements to video cards (or ASIC), as a size of the DAG file is continuing to increase.

• A graphic card should has at least 6 Gb of storage capacity and DDR 5 of memory speed. It is a standard with a balance of computational capacity and energy consumption.
• An application-specific integrated circuit or ASIC is more cost-effective way to mine ether. In comparison, a video card produces about 30-50 MH/s hashrate, 80 MH/s at best, while hashrate of ASICs may exceed 200 MH/s. But this comes with great investments, high risk and unbearable noise in the apartment.
• Cooling system is another important detail of your rig. Radeon and nVidia show a wear-resistance and good productivity.

It’s preferred to choose hardware and consider the energy cost in advance. Mining itself is not a cheap business regarding the electricity consumption. Be sure to estimate a mining efficiency through a special calculator on the site. In case of home solo mining, use farms with the AMD video cards, a power unit and a cooling system. The other thing, you should be prepared that it will be noisy. For these reasons, a solo mining is not recommended.

What parts do you need to “build” an efficient farm?

• A motherboard. Choose a motherboard according to the amount of your video cards. Some of them support only 4 graphic cards, but some are designed to 8 or even 12.
• Riser cables. Special riser cables with additional power are need to connect your 4 or more video cards.
• A processor. Obsolete models will hinder a process. Choose a modern, not expensive variant.
• Core memory. 8 GB is a well-minded choice, which doesn’t hit your pocket or hinder Windows.
• A power unit. Don’t scrimp on a power unit, a heart of the whole farm. Due to it is going to work 24/7 at maximum load, calculate a power of the module with 20-30% ample of power. If it is totally fried along with the video cards, the whole your mining system will reduce to the dust. Stock up on cables 6+2 pin with a sufficient length and power to supply the PC.
• A frame. All these parts couldn’t place on a standard frame, otherwise will provoke problems with overheating. In order to avoid potentially disastrous consequences, such systems are mounted in open frames made of wood or aluminum. The cost of that assembly is pretty cheap, and risks to fire up a “gold mine” reduce.
• Operating system. The biggest part of miners prefers to use Windows 7 or 10 of 64 bit. But these operating systems tend to be unstable to viruses and hacker attacks. In order to avoid such a problem, a number of expert users recommend to work with Linux. It identifies up to 19 graphic adapters, consumes less electricity with a higher hashrate. You may download a distribution kit with programs and drivers using a flash drive of 8 GB and more without set-up. But mining on the Linux OS causes problems for users who have never used open-code systems.
• Mining software. Often a stumbling block for mining is not hardware, but programs for coins earning. It is preferred to opt for multifunctional services with the possibility to make calculations, control a rotation of computer’s fan, operating temperature and hashrate.

Operating System

The guarantee of steady, efficiency and operational reliability is operating system. Windows and Linux offer a wide range of possibilities for adjusting and remote control.

Both systems perform overlocking operations efficiently. A strong suit of Windows is in the following:

• No problem with drivers for video adapters
• Supports a steady work of 8 GPU (one producer) and up to 16 GPU (different producers) node
• Simplicity and easiness of settings and a user-friendly interface

The minuses, for its part, lie in failures with Update Service. Utilities may be identified as hazard programs, and drivers need to be installed sequentially to every video card. A lot of miners share the same opinion that the Linux mining is more profitable, due to reaching a higher hashrate through a less consume of electricity. More ambitious projects require HiveOS, Awesome Miner or RaveOS, based on Linux.

HiveOs is the best one. It is not overloaded with extra functions and has advantages:

• Access from the other PC via ssh
• Support of all GPUs and CPUs
• Work with flash drives with a size of 8 GB

The GMiner, T-Rex and lolMiner miners are integrated in the system. It allows to use any video cards with 6Gb+ memory to mine ETH.

Awesome miner is a solution for large scale mining which supports ASIC and GPU/CPU mining on Windows and Linux. The essential function is automatic overlocking without usage of third-party operating system. Settings are suitable for AMD as well as for nVidia, that simplifies setup of a farm.

Mining Programs

As stated previously in our easy mining guide of Ethereum, you may use 2 OS: Windows and Linux. The previous generation of miners has actively used such programs as CG Miner, BFGMiner, EasyMiner, Claymore’s Dual, which now are obsolete.

It would be preferred to choose the next mining platforms:

• GMiner. Developed by Russian group of specialists in 2018 GMiner has received a warm welcome. Now it is maintaining the leading positions amid mining programs. It focuses on nVidia and supports the popular algorithms Ethash, ProgPoW, KAWPOW, Equihash, CuckooCycle. You can run the program through a command line in Linux or .bat file in Windows.
• T-Rex. Soft works with nVidia and helps to mine cryptocurrencies on more than 30 algorithms. It maintains the unique functions as auto-updating and configuration through API.
• LolMiner. The miner with focus on AMD cards is available for Windows and Linux and works with a big amount of the crypto algorithms.

Wallet

Regardless of a registered wallet, it is assigned a single identification number consisted of 40 or 44 letters in the modern Latin alphabet. It is your payment details for further coins earning.

These 3 apps may generate the Ethereum wallet:

• Mist. An official local wallet from the platform founders. The devs of the Ethereum ecosystem have given a hand in this service creation, which rules out a risk of system breach. This wallet may seem sophisticated to beginners. If you chose this variant, download a proper version, run an application and save a folder with blockchain. After installation enter a password and back it up.
• MyEtherWallet. A browse online wallet of the platform. Despite it represents not a kind of an ether vault but just a service to get an access to coins of your PC, it is in demand of many users. All the access key to the vault are held by a miner and are not transferred to an outsider service provider. To open it, switch to the website MyEtherWallet.com and enter a password of 9 characters. After saving a key the system offers to save a digital key in order to avoid its loss. The Ethereum wallet has requisite details or ETH address. Its interface is simple to use for a wallet replenishment or coins transfer. The whole process of registration takes a few minutes.
• Jaxx and Exodus. Multi-currency wallets for the PC and smartphones users. Jaxx is accessible on the website jaxx.io with plugins for Firefox, Chrome and apps for Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. Except ETH, it supports Bitcoin, Dash, Zcash and other cryptocurrencies. The benefits to users, beyond a simple work, could be a high rate of transferring and exchange coins for another currency directly in the wallet interface. Among the gaps, there is a need to pay an excessive fee when transferring.
• Poloniex, Bittrex, YObit. Wallets on the cryptocurrency exchange. There you may buy coins at the weaker price ratio than at money changers. In contrast to other customer interfaces, all of exchanges don’t give a private access key and may freeze access at any moment.

To ensure safety of your coins, it is recommended to keep money only on private wallets and use the greatest possible tools for documents verification. For example, exchanges and wallets offer the opportunity to confirm your account using a password, e-mail as well as texting or Google Authentificator.

Once you have bought hardware, set up a farm, download programs, create a wallet and start mining.

Solo mining is a lottery: you find a block or never gain a reward even spending months. To mine Ethereum on your own is difficult and cost process. Complicity of solo mining depends on the amount of miners and increases when new users enter a game. A new block adds to blockchain every 14 seconds affecting competition but not a reward. To find a block while solo mining of Ethereum or its elder brother, Bitcoin, may take years.

Do you want to earn coins in this way? It’s better to switch to altcoins on PoW.

How to earn Ethereum in that case? To join a pool.

Pool Mining

If you don’t want to spend an enormous amount of time and fortune, welcome to a pool!

A mining pool is a server which allocates tasks among a number of miners. Their total number may rise to hundreds or even thousands of users. Once one of them solves a block, the server distributes a reward between all of its users prorated to their input, which is expressed in shares. The pool has its owner, who charges a fee for coins mined. As a rule, a commission varies from 1 to 3% of the reward received.

Pools are future of mining business because it has some advantages:

• You may take part in a cryptography key searching using basic hardware
• Block solving becomes less time-consuming
• All participants get benefits
• Even a newcomer just connected to pool may count on a reward
• It is an easier way to mine Ethereum as well as other coins than do it alone

Before choosing the best Ethereum mining pool, some features are taken into account:

• Hashrate of a pool. Websites have statistics about the power, hashrate of each server and its share in the world rate. Joining a lucky pool with a large number of miners and a higher hashrate you may count on smaller but regular payouts. And vice versa, small pools bring you more coins, but they are less likely to solve a block, and you receive Irregular payments.
• Fee of service. It’s easy to determine your share of a common reward: the higher commission is withdrawn, the higher your earning is. Also it is worth to pay attention to the regularity of payments. It’s better to choose a pool allowing to get mined coins immediately after a block find.
• Control and reliability of service. No one pool could guarantee a 100% continuity of work and protection from hackers. But the best ones may boast a record level of efficiency maintenance. Make a short test plugging in a few different pools and observe their work over the course of days.
• Profit accounting. Each server offers its own approach to repay a reward which is needs to be noticed. There are 5 methods. Due to the Prop or proportional method, the system allocates reward between all participants appropriate to their shares. PPS or Pay per Share provides a fixed pay for each unit of power capacity. A miner will gain coins, regardless of his productivity. PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares) is similar to the previous method, but in the case of a miner’s efficiency, profitability may increase or decrease by 30%. HBPPS (Hour-Based Pay Per Share) considers an amount of successful operations of a node within 60 minutes. You will get coins after server confirms a block finding.
• Repute. Check real feedbacks to make sure in conscientiousness of a mining pool. There are some services which indicate a false hashrate or make payments at a bad time. Except an “official income” for fee charging pool, owners manipulate shares extended.

The algorithm of pool creation is simple. At the first step, developers write a code or use a ready-made template making the appropriate adjustments. To create an efficient pool, they rent server or buy a head-end equipment with a high productivity and fault tolerance. The final stage is the promotion of a pool to attract miners.

Throughout history, a lot of mining pools have bow out, but those who have managed to rise above others are giants of crypto world today. It is a cost business characterized with high competence, which is useful for miners, not for pools owners.

K1Pool.com is a team of fans, who don’t want to waste time and aim to make a fortune. It is a convenient base with its strong suit:

• Dual mining
• Mining with or without registration (anonymously)
• A common wallet for all coins
• Regular payouts
• Transparent and credible statistics
• Safety and two-factor authentication
• Switch to another coin with one click
• A multifunctional personal account

You have known yet what you need to mine: a productive video card or ASIC, a digital wallet and a steady pool. Now you may join an Ethereum mining pool using a stepwise instruction:

1. To install mining program. You may choose any of them: GMiner, T-Rex or LolMiner. They work with our pool.
2. To set up mining pool. Once you have found pool server data on pool's main page, enter it in a mining program. All of them have a similar principle of setting up. After downloading you should zip out a folder and find a file called “start” with *.bat extension. Open it in Notepad and copy data for plugging from the pool site changing on your wallet address and on your farm’s name.
3. To start making real money.

Ethereum remains to be a perspective cryptocurrency, but it is starting to shift gradually away from GPU mining. The best way to knock up a fortune is to set up a productive farm and join a mining community. While technology of mining sticks to a classic script, this coin remains relevant.

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