Mining Ethereum (ETH) Guide – Profitability and Hardware

Ethereum is a platform that allows you to create decentralized blockchain-based online services that operate on the basis of smart contracts. The Ethereum network also allows you to solve many problems, which Bitcoin cannot boast of. The project was implemented as a single decentralized virtual machine. The founder of the ether is Vitalik Buterin, the launch of the cryptocurrency of the same name (ETH) took place on July 30, 2015. Today it is the second digital currency by capitalization, and also by popularity only the first cryptocurrency goes. Thanks to a team of professionals led by Buterin himself, it was possible to create the so-called “cryptocurrency ecosystem”.

In This Article, we will focus on: how to mine mining Ethereum

Soon after cryptocurrency became popular among crypto enthusiasts, Ethereum mining also became a very topical issue. In this article, we will describe in detail the process of mining the second-largest cryptocurrency by capitalization and all the nuances associated with it.

How to start mining Ether

In this section, we will describe in detail your next steps to start cryptocurrency mining.

I. Select and open a crypto wallet.

Before you start mining any cryptocurrency, you need to decide on the exchange or crypto wallet, since it is where the mined coins will be stored. There are quite good options: Mist, MyEtherWallet, Geth. 
One of the most popular crypto wallets for Ethereum is the MyEtherWaller online wallet. It is very convenient to use and easy to register.

You can also create your own Ethereum wallet, you can find out all the necessary information by reading our article “How to create an Ethereum wallet” .

II. Decide on mining equipment

A very important point, since the mining efficiency and your future income will depend on the choice of mining equipment. Everything will be described in more detail below, however, it is worth noting that the highest performance comes on farms with AMD graphics cards. Unfortunately, specialists have not yet developed specialized miners for Ethereum.

III. Choose a pool for mining

The pool is an association of cryptocurrency miners. Since the complexity of mining increases over time, independent mining (also called “solo mining”) has become unprofitable. As a result of combining the effort, users can quickly generate and close blocks, which is the main goal of production.

IV. Install a special miner program and connect to the pool

At this stage, you need to download and install a special program. It can be freely downloaded on the official portal of the Minergate pool or on any other website on the network. The most common option is Ethminer-Genoil. 
Then choose the right program, pay attention to your operating system and method of extraction.

Ether Difficulty

The concept of “Ether complexity” or “Difficulty Ether” appeared simultaneously with the creation of the network itself. This is such a unit parameter parameter, showing miners the possible level of difficulty in finding hashes in the network.

The constituent elements of the laboriousness of Ethereum mining practically do not differ from the generation of Bitcoin. It should be noted that the indicator of the difficulty of generating the second cryptocurrency by capitalization is above the average, when compared with other crypto assets. The main reason is its crowdfunding policy. After the creation of the ecosystem, a large crowdfunding was conducted, during which institutional investors received a significant portion of the coins. If the company did not give out such a quantity of coins during the initial placement of coins, then today the level of complexity of the ether would be much lower.

Ethereum, like the leader of the cryptocurrency market – Bitcoin, has the necessary indicator called “block difficulty”, many developers know that this is “proof of work” or the consensus of the PoW (Proof-of-work) algorithm. Using the algorithm of the PoW protocol, you can find out the exact laboriousness of generation for equipment. In addition, cryptocurrencies should also know this indicator, since it allows you to determine the correlation of cryptocurrencies.

As a result, we get the following picture: if the size of the generation complexity is high, then the popularity of the crypto asset is high, which allows its capitalization to grow.

Ethereum mining calculator

Calculator is a special online program that allows you to analyze the benefits of mining this coin. In order to get the correct calculation, enter the following data:

• Hashing Power Size (Hashing Power);
• Pool Fees

In case of using your mining rig, you must also enter:

• Power consumption level of the equipment used (Power Usage);
• Electricity cost in kW / h (Power Cost (kw / h)).

After you click the “Count” button, a section with detailed information on income will appear on your screen. 
The indicator “Maintenance Costs” (Maintenance (GH / s per day)) is the price that your mining company spends on maintaining servers (if you want to mine cryptocurrency using cloud mining, otherwise you can skip this column).

These numbers are based on the current value of the ETH-USD pair and the difficulty of mining. The program will provide the calculated data with profit for every day, every week, every month or for a year and will show the period (number of days) that will be necessary for the payback of the cost of the contract or equipment.

If you want to independently analyze whether it is profitable for you to mine Ethereum, you can use the online calculator.

Ethereum mining equipment

To start mining Ethereum, first of all, you need to have equipment with such minimum characteristics: 

• 1. A video card (GPU) with a good performance indicator, modern (minimum 2-3 years of production) and not budgetary, because the more expensive the equipment, the better the quality of production. The ideal option is to have about 5 video cards to create one farm; 
• 2. A computer, system unit or farm that will run on the Windows X64 operating system (X32 is definitely not suitable, you should not even try it). You also need to remember that one PC can run one miner program. Many people ask how to run mining on multiple computers? Today it is almost unrealistic;
• 3. Your system must have at least 4 GB of RAM, and the video card must have 2 GB. If Linux is used, then 1 GB is enough; 
• 4. Ethereum mining requires large capacities, the minimum size is 10 MH / s, but a larger quantity is recommended. Consider this when choosing equipment; 
• 5. Since you need to mine online, you need the Internet. Do not worry about high speed, as 4 megabits/second is enough for you. For work, you can even use a 3G or 4G modem. But be sure to pay attention to ping, it should be good. The best option is to connect via cable. 
• 6. It is desirable to have a good monitor for more convenient process control. Once you have acquired all the necessary equipment, you can choose the pool where the mining will take place. Then you need to select a program and configure it.

How to mine Ether with a video card

Extraction of ethereum by a video card is a fairly common method today. To produce this cryptocurrency, you need almost the same equipment as for the extraction of other crypto assets.

First of all, you need to choose the right video card. The size of its memory should be above 3 GB, and preferably 4 GB, since the size of the DAG file is growing all the time. If you provide yourself with a card with such a volume, then your performance will be very effective and the costs will quickly pay off.

The memory speed should be standard DDR 5, because it allows you to balance the performance and power consumption. As for the bus, 256-bit is best, because video cards with a 128-bit bus have low performance and the same low cryptocurrency mining speed.

You will also need a video adapter with at least 2 GB of memory.

Be sure to pay attention to the cooling system, which is an integral part of efficient production. According to many experts, the best option would be the manufacturer Radeon. Their designs show a high level of wear resistance. If you have difficulty finding this system, the 10th generation of Nvidia is also recommended.

The last, but not the most important parameter, is overclocking the video card. There is a possibility of increasing it from 20% to 40% of the original GPU capacity, but you will need to sit over additional settings.

Ethereum mining with an AMD graphics card has features in the settings. Now we will describe in detail how to configure the miner for Ether – Ethminer – for a 64-bit Windows system.

Setting up a computer for Ethereum mining may take some time. For this, the system variable in the form of “setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100” should be set first. To do this, you must open the bat-file. It is noteworthy that setting up Ethminer on Linux is practically no different, the only thing you need to do is run a script variable.

The process of setting up the Ether miner on a 64-bit Windows system is as follows: 

• 1. You need to download the file. 
• 2. Then you need to open the folder and create a bat-file or change the payment address in Windows to extract Ether in an existing file in the following form: eth_pp_ua-ocl.bat. 
• 3. Then you need to register ethminer -G -F. Be sure to specify the actual value.

Remember: -G is a variable for an AMD graphics card, and -U is for Nvidia.

There are also several tricks and tricks for more correct assembly and equipment setup. 
If we add the variable “cl-local-work 128 —cl-global-work 16384” to the bat file, then we can add several mega-caches at the same time.

If you have a video card with memory less than 2 GB, then you need to use certain miners that can split the DAG. —Cl-chunks 430 — The numbers show the number of megabytes in each part. This variable is suitable for PCs with AMD 1.5 GB ethminer -G -F graphics card.

How to mine Ethereum on a processor

Many novice “miners” ask one question: “What is better to mine?”. Indeed, in order for cryptocurrency mining to become truly profitable, you need to decide on the equipment. Most experts are inclined to believe that it is better to mine Ethereum on a processor.

For efficient coin mining, you should purchase the latest equipment.

Modern processes allow you to mine almost every cryptocurrency. However, do not forget that there are certain processors, the development of which was carried out directly for certain digital currencies, so they will show higher mining performance.

Before you start mining ether, it is worth calculating whether it will be profitable for you to do this, taking into account the cost of electricity and equipment. If you purchase the latest processors, they will cover the cost of electricity and in a short time you can expect to get a net profit.

After you have purchased a new processor model, you need to create a cryptocurrency wallet. Crypto wallet for Ethereum can be downloaded on the official website. We also wrote earlier that all the necessary information can be found in our article “How to create an Ethereum wallet”.

Then you need to synchronize the system with the installed crypto wallet. Since the program will be installed on the PC hard drive, you should have enough free memory for it. Then you register your account and get an individual address.

The next step will be to choose a miner program. A properly selected program will increase the efficiency of cryptocurrency mining. The program is designed to work with algorithms, or rather, it decrypts the algorithms. When choosing a program, pay attention to the type of processor installed and the type of digital currency, in our version it is Ethereum.

Pool selection

The choice of pool is very important, since it will be about the effectiveness of the whole process. Next, we will give a brief overview of the top Ethereum pools for 2019:

• ETHpool. It became the first ether mining pool. ETHpool is known for not accepting new users at the time, since it already had a high workload, and therefore worked exclusively with old users. The pool power level is approaching 20% ​​of the total system capacity, and the number of participants is almost 900.With ETHpool, users can get solo ether without downloading blockchains or launching nodes. It works together with Ethermine, together they form a single pool with almost 25% of capacity and 63,000 participants. Thanks to the new mechanism, users have the opportunity to mine coins in the pool, however, they receive payments, as with self-mining. As a result, the participant performing most of the workflow in each round gets all the rewards for the block found.
• Minergate. A very popular pool among users, since it is a multi-currency. This means that participants can mine various coins, including Ethereum. Minergate is also the largest cryptocurrency mining service that offers comprehensive functional services for earning digital currency through your computer.It has a fairly simple site with a clear interface. You can register one account and use several computers during the mining process. The main feature of this pool is the presence of the “smart mining” or “Smart Miner” mode. Using this mode, the program will be able to independently determine which cryptocurrencies you need to mine at a certain moment on the basis of greater profitability.
• Nicehash. NiceHash is both a pool and a capacity selling service. It provides the ability to lease computing power while earning digital currencies just from your home. The service acts as an alternative to cloud mining with short-term contracts.This pool is also multicurrency, as it allows you to mine multiple cryptocurrencies. NiceHash program is very easy to install, settings should also not complicate the life of even a novice user. Moreover, she independently chooses the most profitable algorithm, automatically increasing your income. The user will always be able to track statistics on graphs, this really allows optimizing the production process.
• ETH Nanopool. This project is quite young, but very ambitious. Already, ETH Nanopool is the third largest pool, with more than 13% of the total network hashrate and more than 38,000 members. Their feature is a low commission fee of 2%, and the size of the commission for withdrawal is – 0.005 ETH. The only unpleasant side of the pool is the policy of the administration of the service, according to which participants are warned that if problems arise with a technical or other component (for example, loss of funds), they do not bear responsibility for this, so no compensation should be expected.
• Ethereumpool Like the previous pool, Ethereumpool is a young project that provides its services to users and at the same time is in the process of development. At the moment, it has modest indicators: 1.8% of the total network capacity with a speed size of about 6 gigahashes per second. However, the service is in the list of top Ethereum pools due to its reliability and luck. He regularly pays a reward for each block, while the pool has not received any negative reviews from the participants, this is his main feature.
• WeiPool. A fairly new project with a convenient program and simple interface. The number of participants is small, and part of the total network capacity is about 2%. Commission fee is at the level of 1.5%. However, a pleasant bonus for new members is a zero rate in the first week of work. Rewards are paid every day.
• ETH Supernova. The least popular service from our list, but quite well-known among altcoin miners. The program requires mandatory registration, but instead offers a simple and intuitive interface with a high level of security. Participants respond well to the pool, noting its reliability, good profit and quality service.

Pool Characteristics

You can also mention another pool – Dwarfpool. It is known to many experienced miners, since it was created back in 2013. The pool does not oblige registration, as it was developed as an anonymous site. Ethereum has a commission of 1%, and the minimum withdrawal is 0.05. The main advantages of Dwarfpool are support for all existing programs, high pool power and a simple configuration system.

Where is it better to mine Ether? In our opinion, it is better to opt for ETHpool or Minergate.

Many popular pools advise novice members and provide assistance in setting up programs for cryptocurrency mining. When you decide on the pool that is suitable for you, select the “Help” tab, which will contain the “Ethereum mining setup” instruction.

In the instructions you will find information with the settings of the miner, bat-file and how to connect them to the pool. You will also be provided with separate mining instructions for Nvidia, ATI and the central processor.

To start the production of ether when using the pool, you must perform the following steps:

Step 1. Register; 
Step 2. Create a crypto wallet; 
Step 3. Download the miner; 
Step 4. Configure miner and bat-file; 
Step 5. Run the file.

Programs for mining Ether

Before you start mining cryptocurrency, you should figure out which program for ether mining is best suited. Below you will find a brief overview of the options.

• Claymore’s Dual Miner. A special program for cryptocurrencies, including Ether, using the GPU. The program is adapted to work with many modern video cards Nvidia and AMD. A feature of the program is the ability to simultaneously produce Ethereum and one of 4 coins, Decred, Siacoin, Lbry, Pascal, without compromising the speed of extraction of the first;
• EthMiner. According to participants in most pools, this is one of the best programs for Ether production, which runs on an NVidia graphics card based on CUDA chips. The main advantage of this program is an increase in the hashrate of video cards of past models in order to bring the process to profit;
• CudaMiner. A program that is designed for mining Ethereum. This software does not have a graphical shell; instead, the command line is used. The program is based on Cuda technology, so it works exclusively with Nvidia graphics cards. This program is suitable for experienced users who expect high speed and high level of performance;
• CGMINER. It is considered one of the most effective programs in terms of productivity and is a console client for the production of Ether. The software also lacks a graphical interface, so beginners are unlikely to be able to figure out the settings and use it in the future. However, CGMINER can provide really good opportunities to make high profits from mining;
• Minergate. Minergate is a special program for Ethereum mining, many experienced miners really speak highly of it. Compared to previous programs, it has a nice and intuitive interface. Moreover, the program is also suitable for beginners, since any user can use the “Smart Mining” mode, which will independently choose the most profitable currency for mining at a certain moment.

Ethereum mining profitability in 2019

To calculate the profitability of Ethereum mining in 2019, many factors must be considered. Firstly, at the moment when opening the block, participants can get three coins. Whereas a couple of years ago, the miners received two or three dozen coins when they found one block of the blockchain. Each month the level of difficulty in finding increases, so in today’s realities the use of small capacities is no longer enough to extract ether.

Secondly, if the miner has good equipment at his disposal, then his profitability will be high. It is also necessary to consider that after the increase in demand for Ethereum, many users began to search for powerful processors. This led to the fact that modern manufacturers began an even greater struggle for the consumer, which affected the cost of equipment and purchase conditions. Most companies have begun to produce high-tech equipment that consumes less and less electricity.

As for the prospects for the production of Ether, it is worth noting that Ethereum developers are thinking about switching digital currency to the POS system. In this case, the network will be serviced independently, and participants will not be able to mine new coins. The system will charge a reward for finding a large number of coins on one crypto wallet, a mechanism similar to a deposit in a bank. In this scenario, miners may begin to look for alternatives.

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