Ethereum mining

[Alan]

Ethereum mining is a process that began in 2015 with the advent of cryptocurrency. Over the past two months, the value of Ethereum has increased six times, which has attracted people's attention to the mining of this type of cryptocurrency.  

Ethereum Mining Features

The peculiarity of the process lies in the youth of the cryptocurrency and a large number of prospects. At this stage, it makes sense to start the mining process with solo mining without specialized equipment. To earn Ethereum, it is not necessary to purchase several PCs or video cards. The negative side of the process is the difficulty of working with the command line, as well as with the withdrawal of the extracted money to an electronic wallet. Ethereum mining occurs with the involvement of video cards, a processor, or both pieces of equipment.

Equipment selection

You can use any video card for mining, even your own, without additional installations, provided that you have at least 2 GB of free RAM. It is important that the load on the processor does not exceed the possibility of earning. To increase the efficiency of a PC, two video cards can be combined using the CrossFire technique.

It is believed that such types of video cards are suitable for mining Ethereum, such as:

• AND Radeon R9 -280x;

• Radeon Rx 480;
• Radeon RX 470 Ethereum Mining;
• Radeon Rx 480;

• Radeon HD 7950.

Such devices can be bought and connected to a home PC. And also on the cryptocompare website, you can compare all video cards and see how many days the equipment will pay off.

Choosing software for mining

There are several programs that allow you to connect to pools or do solo mining:

1. Ethminer is the most popular currency program;
2. Claymore's Dual Ethereum+Decred - using a video card, you can mine one or two currencies at the same time at high speed. When mining ether, you need to pay a commission of 1%.

Pool selection

A pool is a server that evenly distributes work between connected PCs. They have special calculation techniques that allow you to evaluate the individual contribution of each equipment to the solution of the code or block. According to this ratio, the miners make a profit. To mine ether more efficiently, you can connect to such pools as:

• Open Ethereum Pool;
• EthPool - the very first pool in the system, the number of participants in which reaches 400 people;
• CoinoTron;
• DwarfPool;

You can choose younger pool projects like Ethereumpool, WeiPool or ETH Nanopool.

How to mine ether on video card

There are a number of requirements for the process, namely:

• The presence of Windows 7 or higher;
• The amount of memory on the video card is at least 2-3 GB, the optimal figure is 4 GB;
• Video card drivers must be updated;
• You can install multiple video cards if the PC motherboard allows;
• An ethereum wallet is started, and a pool or solo mining is also selected.

Setting up a video card consists in specifying the power of the system or each of the cards. If you accidentally or intentionally exceed the capacity, then the device will idle, then the pool will fix inconsistencies between the entered and valid data, which will cause a refusal to issue the currency. You can not use overclocking when working with the ether.

Ethereum Industrial Mining

The complexity of the cryptocurrency mining process lies in the fact that independent mining loses its effectiveness with the development of the cryptocurrency. Solo mining is inefficient due to the appearance of a large number of competition and blocks in the process. When a block appears, one PC with high power will not be able to solve it and receive cryptocurrency. Therefore, several PCs are combined into pools, and there is a joint industrial production of ethereum.  

Ethereum Mining Calculator

The calculator helps to calculate the profitability of mining online. With it, you can track the quotes of Ethereum, as well as find out the time it takes to decrypt the block. The most popular calculator service is cryptocompare.

Difficulties and possible network problems

Problems in the network may arise with pools, as well as with currency withdrawals to the wallet. When solo mining, blocks often appear that overheat the video card excessively and prevent the computer from deciphering it.

Where to store Ether?

You can store cryptocurrency on wallets in electronic form:

• Ethereum official representative;
• MyEtherWallet;
• Litecoin wallet;
• Dash Wallet
• Ripple wallet.

You can choose a wallet depending on your needs, as well as the convenience of the interface.

Advantages and disadvantages

The advantages of mining Ethereum are as follows:

• Convenient and easy to understand the process yourself.
• Fast software update for mining.
• Maximum security of the procedure and its transparency for miners.
• The system is available and inexpensive.
• Constant improvement of the indicators of the calculator for Ethereum.
• Protection of users from external attacks.

The currency is promising and continues to gain popularity among miners. But it has a number of shortcomings, namely the instability of the exchange rate. Ethereum has a high rate of volatility, so the direction of currency movement often changes.