Quick Overview of some Ethereum Mining Choices

Quick Overview of some Ethereum Mining Choices

I researched what was ethereum mining and would like to share what I’ve learned so far.

In January 2016, there were many documents and videos showing 6 easy steps for ethereum mining.
One such video I watched was by Digital Decrypt called How to Mine Ethereum on a Windows PC — 6 Steps . Here are two other websites guides which are likely more detailed than mine:
CryptoCompares and 99bitcoins .

Mining using Geth and Ethminer

1. Get Geth
2. Run Geth (from cmd window type geth account new) Need an account to mine.
3. Activating Geth (cmd window type geth –rpc ) Start communicating with others
4. Get ethminer (CUDA or Genoil )
5. Configuring ethminer
6. Beginning to Mine (in command window type for GPU ethminer -G or for CPU etherminer)

Here is a short glossary of what you just downloaded.

Geth: Geth (implemented in the programming language Go) lets one create fully connected node to Ethereum. With Geth, you can connect to the Ethereum network which is necessary for mining.

ethMiner :(written in C++) This is the mining program. It will utilize your machines CPU/GPU to run the hashing program (EtHash)

EtHash: This is Ethereum’s proof of work algorithm.

Mist: the Go client GUI and web3 browser

From Oct 2016, I found a platform where one can mine called MinerGate. MinerGate is a mining pool which has fourteen currencies listed to mine including ethereum. Go here for the exact ones in case they change.

Mining with MinerGate:

1. Create an account with minergate.com
2. Download the MinerGate software and install it to your computer
3. Just go to the top tab Miner and click Eth. If you want MinerGate to do its job, stay at the top tab Smart Miner to proceed that way.
4. Start mining and don’t be worried when MinerGate create a DAG file onto your machine. That’s normal.

Miner with ethMiner and Genoil miner

1. Create an account with minergate.com
2. Download your miner software ie (ethMiner or Genoil miner)
3. Within the command window, you’ll type the below commands to mine the individual types.

For EthMiner, the pattern is below

CPU mining:


Ethminer.exe -C -F http://eth.pool.minergate.com:55751/YOUR_EMAIL --disable-submit-hashrate


For Genoil, the pattern is below. Note the difference between OpenCL and CUDA is the first parameter after ethminer.

OpenCL

 

setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

ethminer -G -S eth.pool.minergate.com:45791 -O YOUR_EMAIL

CUDA


setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

ethminer -U -S eth.pool.minergate.com:45791 -O YOUR_EMAIL

Few difference between Ethereum versus Bitcoin mining

One major difference that I can see is that Ethereum blocks occur every 10-15 seconds on average while Bitcoin occurs every 10 minutes. The reward for Eth is 5 ETH while the current reward for Bitcoin is 25 BTC.

Another is that there is a different hashing algorithm to bitcoin so the ASICs developed for Bitcoin are not usable for Ethereum. Ethereum is ASIC resistant since Ethash has a memory hard algorithm. This means while GPU would help against CPU, ASICs should not work.

There seemed to have been a weird ETH ASIC scam going around some of the forums Steemit Ethereum and Ethereum.org Forum like 8 months ago (Aug 2016). Key takeaway was to watch out because it was a SCAM.