You’ve heard about Chia before – some say it’s the new gold mine, others label it just another shitcoin and move on. Unlike certain sensationalists out there, I took the time to follow and study the project for a bit before I decided to write this review. Hopefully, it will help you to better understand whether Chia is for you. This is going to be part of my Chia series where I will be testing different hardware, and assembling Chia farming and plotting rigs, so if you’re interested in that, make sure to follow me. Chia Network Review What is Chia? The Basics Chia is a new coin that aims to solve some of the issues we have with most of the currently used cryptocurrencies. Namely, the… [Read More...]
NVidia is ‘Nerfing’ the RTX 30xx GPU’s for Ethereum Mining – It Comes with Its Downsides
Recently, NVidia announced in their blog that the company is implementing a new “feature” to their RTX 3060 and future cards. This new implementation will detect mining-related operations and limit the GPU resources, thus reducing mining speed. What’s going on? So far, the only affected cryptocurrency is Ethereum. The hashrate reduction is a solid 50%. According to NVidia, the reason for this ‘nerf’ is to decrease the demand for new-gen GPUs in the mining community, and fight the current gaming GPU shortage. we’re taking an important step to help ensure GeForce GPUs end up in the hands of gamers.Nvidia NVidia however still wants to support the mining community. In order to do that, the company announced the NVidia CMP – a GPU-like card without … [Read More...]
RTX 3080 Mining Hashrate Review
The RTX 3080 is widely praised as one of the best gaming GPU’s to the date. Not only it’s more powerful than the RTX 2080, it’s also cheaper, making it undeniable a better bang for the buck. Since the card is only a few months old, little is known about its mining performance. Luckily for me, one of my friends happened to assemble a monster gaming rig with an Gigabyte RTX 3080 VISION OC 10G, and a new gen Ryzen 5 5600x. That beast of a PC can run Call of Duty Warzone at 240 fps average. The man was nice enough to let me test his GPU on several mining algos. Note: I will be getting my hands on the RTX 3090 soon to benchmark it and test it in my rigs… [Read More...]
How to Host a Storj Node – Setup, Earnings & Reports
Almost three years ago, I have posted my first guide on how to host your own Storj node. Today, I’d like to make a follow up article and share my experience with Storj so far. Why Did I Choose Storj? There are many decentralized storage platforms available on the interwebs. Back in 2017, Storj was one of the most promising projects. Right from its beginning, it had a clear goal, a well-defined roadmap, and a team that was doing work. One of the selling points for me was that Storj was nailing their milestones and delivering exactly what they promised. Storj’s bigger competitor is SIA, a platform I happen to host for, too. If you’re curious to know my results with SIA, check my report here. I’ve… [Read More...]
How To Setup a SIA Host – Windows Tutorial
Sia Hosting Tutorial for Windows SIA is a decentralized storage network that allows renters to keep their data safe and 100% private. Some of its main selling points is that SIA offers very competent prices per stored Terabyte of information due of its decentralized nature. All transactions within the network are done using the SIA coin and there are three ways of getting your hands on it: By mining it (can be mined with GPU and ASICs) By hosting data (more details on this article) By trading it SIA Hosting vs Mining Mining supports the decentralized nature of the SIA blockchain. Just like, say, Ethereum, SIA needs a lot of hashpower to stay decentralized and reliable. That’s why it’s performed using GPUs and ASICs (though as of… [Read More...]
Nvidia GTX RTX 3080 Leaked – Twice the Hashrate of an RTX 2080 at the Same Price
GPU mining might finally be back. Nvidia announced the release of the RTX 3000 series that feature a massive 50-80% performance over their RTX 2000 counterparts. Best part is, the price point is the same – the card is available on September 17, starting at $699 for the Founders Edition. Mining Performance Nvidia leaked some hashrates for Ethereum (DaggerHashimoto) mining. The RTX series are based on the new Nvidia Ampere graphics architecture that features better raw performance and power efficiency. Compared to the RTX 2080 Ti (54 MH/s top), the RTX 3080 outputs 75 MH/s with factory settings and up to 93 Mh/s when overclocked. My only concern is power consumption, with the 3080 having a 28% higher TDP than the 2080 on default settings, and up to 60% higher when overclocked. GTX… [Read More...]
Storj v3 Network Update – Everything A HDD Miner / Farmer Needs to Know About
Storj, a decentralized file storage network is getting ready to launch Tardigrade – a new and more reliable version of the Storj network aimed to be use by enterprises. The devs have been working hard for the past two years and now they seem to be very close to stepping the game up. Once the transition is complete, the network is expecting to receive petabytes of information from companies in a matter of a few months. By the way, if you are planning on using Tardigrade, you can join the wait list and get 1TB free for 30 days at production launch. As Storj CEO Ben Golub said in one of his official talks, there are numerous companies interested in migrating their data to Storj. He said we… [Read More...]
ASIC / FPGA Miner Silencer Box
ASICs and FPGAs are the modern way of mining cryptocurrency. Newest models like the BlackMiner F1 (check profits), Imperivm V2 (check profits) and the Innosilicon A10 ETH master (check profits) can look pretty tempting (especially if you have cheap electricity) and some of you are probably consider getting yourself one or two units – after all, you buy one of those bad boys, plug them in and the income starts flowing into your wallet. No headache, no issues. The problem? Those of you who saw an ASIC or FPGA board in action know how noisy those things are. Mining is supposed to be something everyone can do at home, however in reality you don’t want to have that thing anywhere close to your living space. Over the… [Read More...]
Bitcoin Halving: What Happened and What Does It Mean for Miners
As a miner, you have already noticed how your profit from mining was reduced by half yesterday. Your hashpower, as well as the network’s remained the same however the reward per mined block dropped by 50%, from 12.5 to 6.25. What happened is that yesterday May 11th, the 630,000th block was mined, which led to a planned halving of reward per block. Over its 11 years of existence, Bitcoin experienced three halvings. The first one happened in November 2012 when the reward went from 50 to 25, and the second one happened in July 2016 when the reward decreased to 12.5. The halving takes place every 210,000 blocks mined, and it’s purpose is to create deflation. In other words, to reduce the creation of new tokens to keep the cryptocurrency economy healthier. On paper, this will… [Read More...]
How to Mine Monero RandomX with CPU & GPU
Monero just forked as planned and switched from the previous Cryptonight V8 algorithm to the new RandomX. RandomX is pretty unique in a way so far, it’s best mined with CPUs and not GPUs. The change is pretty huge; CPUs now offer between 100-1000% better value for the money compared to GPUs. What the Fork? Or why is Monero Forking Every 6 Months: A Recap Initially, cryptocurrency mining started as a way to allow people like you and I help the blockchain remain decentralized. If the hashrate comes from a million small CPU and GPU miners, each belonging to a different person, there is no single weak link or node that could be attacked to compromise the network. That’s the definition of decentralization. The introduction of ASICs affected… [Read More...]
Best CPU to Mine Monero RandomX – Building Your Own Rig
As for today, RandomX is the newest and most profitable CPU-minable algorithm. It has been designed to repel ASICs, FPGAs and even GPUs. As the name suggests, the algorithm is based on random code execution and memory-hard techniques. The main idea behind a CPU-minable coin is to improve decentralization by getting as many different people into mining. You’ve heard it right, different people, not a handful of people with a gazillion mining rigs stacked in a farm. So far, this coin probably the most profitable to mine on an already existing mid-high tier gaming rig. Any gamer out there can quickly and easily install the miner and use their PC to hoard cryptos at night. The simplest way to start mining Monero RandomX… [Read More...]
A New RX 570 16GB Is About to Hit the Market! – Sapphire Launches New GPU for GRIN Coin
RX 570 16GB Mining GPU Overview We know that only GPUs with 8GB or more can mine Grin – a new and very popular privacy coin that is being developed by the community. Such a high VRAM requirement considerably limits the array of cards that are compatible with the coin. While this means that Grin is harder to mine than most other coins, the project is getting a lot of attention lately, at the point that Sapphire Technology, a leading manufacturer and global supplier of components and commercial solutions, launched today a GPU oriented specifically to mine this coin. By “oriented” I mean that the RX 570 16GB card was designed to mine this specific coin in mind, however it can also be used to mine other cryptocurrencies too… [Read More...]
Innosilicon GRIN ASIC Miner Announced!
Innosilicon, one of the lead ASIC manufacturers for most of the modern popular cryptos announced few days a go, January 25, that they are working on their first ASIC for GRIN. According to the manufacturer, the new ASIC will be launched early summer this year. Innosilicon is happy to announce that our world class engineering team is currently designing a very cool Grin Asic miner to support the Grin community. We are going to launch our best-in-class miner early summer this year. — Innosilicon Miner (@Inno_Miner) January 25, 2019 Innosilicon is a China-based giant that is known for being one of the most important Bitmain competitors. The company is one of those who take part in the chip dice reduction race in ASICs and we could speculate… [Read More...]
Should you Pre-Order an Obelisk GRN1 ASIC for GRIN? – Pros and Cons
Obelisk, a fairly new ASIC manufacturer based on the US, announced the pre-sale of their first ASIC for GRIN Coin. During the pre-sale, the company charges $3,000 USD per unit. Once the pre-sale ends, the price will rise to $6,000 USD per unit. The estimated performance of the miner is 100 GPS at 800 W, which equals to the performance of 50 Nvidia GTX 2080 Ti cards, while requiring the power of roughly 6 said GPUs. The money raised during the pre-launch will go to support the development of said miners. The development of the main mining chip is estimated to be completed may of this year. The first units should be shipped to the end user in October of this year. Is GRIN a Good Coin to… [Read More...]
How to Mine Beam With Nvidia and AMD GPU
How to Mine Beam An Introduction to the Scalable Confidential Cryptocurrency Note: This is NOT a sponsored post. As always, I only recommend you to mine cryptocurrencies that have the potential to become something big. Pumping and dumping is no longer a viable strategy for GPU miners in 2019. Nowadays, it’s all about investing your hashing power in a good project that has future and stick to it long enough to reap the benefits. Beam is one of those coins that might have a bright future, and hence might be good to mine. Let’s take a look at it. What is Beam? To receive the latest updates follow me on social media! facebooktwitterFollowgoogleyoutube Beam is a new crypto that aims to combine scalability and anonymity by implementing innovative… [Read More...]
How to Mine Grin Cuckatoo31+ on Windows 7 / 10
Two of the biggest miner software for Grin, Bminer and Gminer, received an update few days ago. In this tutorial, we will walk through how to mine with Gminer and what benchmarks (as well as bugs) to expect. (Check this article if you wanna know more about Grin and why it might be a good idea to mine it) First, let me clarify something to avoid confusion. Grin can be mined by using few different algorithms. Cuckaroo29 is the official GPU-friendly ASIC-resistant algorithm and it will become less relevant as times goes by until be completely replaced by an ASIC-friendly algorithm in about 2 years from now. Cuckatoo31+ is the ASIC-friendly algorithm that will be relevant for few more months until being replaced… [Read More...]
Obelisk SC1 Slim Gen-2 SIA Miner – SCAM or Hidden GEM?
Obelisk, an ASIC manufacturer founded by SIA Storage, announced a new batch of SC1 Slim miners for sale. Here’s the catch. According to the official website, virtually nobody buys these units lately. Does that mean that the units are not worth it or are we about to find a hidden gem? Let’s find that out. Is Mining SIA a Good Idea? The first reason why people might not want to buy an ASIC is because the coin it is made to mine is dead. Could this apply to SIA? As for today, SIA is a coin with a $86,572,943 USD market cap and a $793,575 USD daily volume. While these past 12 months haven’t been too forgiving for the coin (it has been a pretty rough time for… [Read More...]
BlackMiner F1+ Review – FPGA Miner
Note: Hashaltcoin sent me this FPGA miner for me to review. While I truly appreciate this partnership, I am making this review as unbiased as possible. The BlackMiner F1+ is a new FPGA miner developed and manufactured by Hashaltcoin. The unit comes with three boards and can mine a wide array of algorithms, most of which are traditionally considered GPU-only. The official specs state that the F1+ hashes like three or even four x6 GTX 1080Ti rigs (depends on algorithm) while having the power consumption of one. Not only that – unlike three rigs that require three sets of components (motherboards, RAM modules, etc), as well as in-depth tweaking, the F1+ comes as one plug-and-play unit. Is this too good… [Read More...]
What’s Up With ProgPoW? Benchmarks & Addressing the Criticisms
ProgPoW is a new algorithm that was proposed to replace Ethash and therefore make Ethereum ASIC-resistant. The idea is being debated since August 2018 and apparently, we are coming to the point when we as a community have to make the final decision – do we want ProgPoW to be implemented or not? The idea was also discussed during January 4 ETH Core devs meeting and it seems that the majority of the community and the developers team members are leaning towards the adoption of this new algorithm. In this post, I will briefly go over what ProgPoW is and then will address the criticism this idea is being receiving. Again, as a community, it’s our duty to be aware of what is going on and to actively… [Read More...]
My New Pool Is Up! Mine with 0.5% Fees on 1stMiningPool
Hello friends, I’m excited to announce the 1stMiningPool – a pool created and ran exclusively by the 1stMiningRig team. The goal was to make a pool the right way – we are all expert GPU miners, we’ve been mining since day one and we’re thrilled to be able to now support mining decentralization on a new level. The pool is running on very low fees, just enough to support the pool itself and 1stminingrig. Our personal GPU rigs are mining on that pool, and we invite you to join us there Pool Address: https://m.1stminingpool.com/ Supported Coins: Denarius Lux Ravencoin Suqa Verge xdna Vertcoin (new) Gin (new) Veil coin (new) Upcoming Coins: Nexus SIN Callisto + Contact me if you want any special coin being… [Read More...]