September 2021 Work Progress Report: Geo Servers for Ergo, China Crypto Ban
October 1, 2021
Node updates, Ethereum gas price rollercoaster, China crypto use and mining ban, 2CryptoCalc new languages, new API and statistics pages for Ravencoin and Ethereum Classic, geo servers for Ergo mining.
80 000 Miners Online In 2Miners
We are very happy to reach this new important milestone. This September the number of our users surpassed 80 000. Currently, there are more than 82 000 miners online. The most popular pools are Ethereum, Ravencoin, Ethereum Classic, Monero, Ergo, and Firo.
SSL Certificate Verify Failed – How to Fix
On September 30th an important IdentTrust DST Root CA X3 certificate expired. This may cause problems for miners with outdated operating systems who use an SSL connection to the pool.
Usually, you need to update your operating system to make it work. For example, if you use Windows XP you need to install Service Pack 3. Check this post for more information.
This problem could appear while you use different mining software as the software developers could handle the SSL verification in different ways. If your standard mining software doesn’t work please try another one. The complete list of the software for GPU mining is presented on 2CryptoCalc.
Manually select the certification location. Use “Trusted Root Certification Authorities”. Click Ok.
Click Next to finalize the process.
Cryptocurrency Node Updates
We always keep our mining pools up-to-date. This month we have updated Ergo, Cortex, and ZEC nodes.
Ergo v4.0.13
Cortex v1.10.27-stable-11338a91
Zcash 4.5.1
Ethereum Gas Price Problems
Recent Ethereum hard fork with the EIP-1559 implementation should have reduced the transaction fees in the Ethereum Network. Unfortunately, that didn’t really happen.
Some days the gas price was skyrocketing and the payouts from the pool were suspended. At the beginning of the month, we were forced to increase the maximum gas price to as high as 100 gwei while executing the payments. Later it was reduced to 71 gwei.
Since August, our users are free to choose the payout threshold themselves. However, they pay for the transactions. All we could do is regulate the maximum transaction price by setting the gas price limit. We remind our miners that we do not recommend using the low payout threshold values. Current Ethereum fees are quite high and you would spend a huge part of your payout on the transfer fee.
Please find below the screenshot of the gas price record we saw this month.
As you see the gas price problem also brought good news to our pool as we got the crazy high block rewards. For example: 52 ETH per block, 50 ETH, 14 ETH.
China Crypto Mining Ban
The number-one trending topic this month is no doubt the crypto ban in China. This September Chinese government decided to prohibit all cryptocurrency-related activities. All crypto transactions in China are now illegal and the mining process is forbidden too.
The biggest Ethereum mining pool in the World Sparkpool was closed yesterday. The rest of the Chinese mining pools including Beepool and F2pool are planning to suspend their activity in October. A lot of miners are searching for alternatives, obviously. 2Miners is the only pool outside China translated to the Chinese language.
2Miners pool has always been anonymous and transparent. However, our Terms and Conditions state that by using our services you certify that you are abiding by the local laws and regulations in regard to cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency mining as defined in the country or jurisdiction of your residence.
We have Ethereum Servers all over the World: in Europe, America, and Asia. Mining software settings are always available on the How to start page.
Please remember that when you select the mining pool server you should pay attention to the stale shares. We provide the share statistics in 2Miners. You must understand that if there are no stale shares the ping (latency) doesn’t matter: 10ms, 100ms, or 1000ms will not reduce your rewards.
2CryptoCalc in Portuguese and German
We are happy to announce that 2CryptoCalc is now available in 6 languages: English, Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Portuguese, and German. The last two languages were added in September. We would like to thank our miners’ community which helped us a lot to make the accurate translations.
New API for Ravencoin, Ethereum Classic, and Callisto
The new API and statistics pages are ready for RVN, ETC, and CLO pools. The pool was successfully moved to the new server. You may need to clear your browser cache with Shift+Ctrl+R if you couldn’t see the new statistics.
This means that you have the detailed hashrate statistics and share statistics now. You are also able to change the payout threshold for these mining pools.
We keep on working to transfer the mining pools of other coins to the new API system in the nearest time.
Asia and US Servers for Ergo
Great news for Ergo (ERG) Miners. We got US and ASIA servers now available on 2Miners. The server details are always available on the pool help page.
Join our Telegram community and remember to follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
What Is Bitcoin in Simple Terms: From Theory To Practice
September 30, 2021
In this article, we are going to give you a brief and simple rundown of all things related to cryptocurrencies. It’s so straightforward that you can print it out and show it to your grandmother. Our blog contains all the necessary information about mining. All articles are written in simple terms. However, not everyone wants to dive deep into the matter. Moreover, this post also covers other cryptocurrency usage aspects such as investing.
That’s why this article is a real gem. We processed tons of information in order to present it to you in a short and simple manner. Stephen Hawking succeeded in a similar endeavor. He wrote a book about the origin and structure of the Universe without mathematical formulas titled A Brief History of Time. We will try to reproduce his success. Not in physics, but in modern finance, or better yet, in the finance of the future.
Throughout the article, we are going to share links to the articles from the blog, Wikipedia, and lots of other resources. Feel free to dive deep in various aspects of cryptocurrencies that interest you. Some might argue that we oversimplified some things in the article. We are looking forward to your feedback in our 2Miners chat on Telegram.
Bitcoin: the First and the Most Popular Cryptocurrency
There are thousands of cryptocurrencies in the world. The first cryptocurrency ever created is Bitcoin or BTC. For the sake of simplicity, we are going to talk mainly about Bitcoin.
All other cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin clones. They were fully or partially copied and sprinkled with new ideas here and there. It’s no secret that Bitcoin is open-source. Anyone in the world can see how it’s built and how it operates.
If you don’t know anything about programming, don’t worry. It’s worth pointing out that we must accept the work of Bitcoin code creators in good faith. Should we worry about it? Not at all. You don’t know the purpose of every little screw in your car or how its computer works. It’s the same here. Programmers all around the world would be happy to find even a tiny fault in the Bitcoin network operation. So rest assured, if there was a fault, they would have already found it. We simply put our trust in experts that built our car and tested it. Same with Bitcoin. Millions of programmers in the world read and examine the Bitcoin code every day.
What Is Cryptocurrency and Who Controls It? Are Physical Bitcoins Real?
Bitcoin: Digital Currency
Based on the name “cryptocurrency”, you clearly understand that it’s some sort of money. Crypto means that this money is encrypted. What exactly is encrypted and how is irrelevant at this point. Let’s assume that cryptocurrency is digital money.
What does digital mean? Traditional money can be printed (in the form of banknotes) or digital (on bank accounts). When you transfer money from your account to your friend’s account, pay for utilities via online banking, or pay with a credit card in a shop, you don’t actually see your money. It is stored virtually on computer servers. You can’t either see or touch it.
You can use an ATM to withdraw cash from your credit card and put it under the mattress. In this case, your digital, virtual money becomes real. You can touch it, look at it, or hang it on the wall. You can’t do that with Bitcoins. You can’t go to the bank, withdraw Bitcoins in cash, and put them under the mattress in the form of physical BTC coins. Of course, you can exchange Bitcoins for dollars and bring them home. At this point though, they are dollars, not Bitcoins.
How crucial is it? We think not at all. Even most of our grandparents have been receiving pensions on bank accounts. They don’t use cash much.
How Many Bitcoins and Dollars Exist?
According to the Federal Reserve System, $6.1 trillion worth of cash was printed. Plus, virtual, digital dollars are stored on bank accounts. How many? Nobody knows. The same goes for the euro, pound, and any other traditional currency. We don’t know and can’t control its quantity today, tomorrow, or in a year. We can neither control nor predict the issuing of dollars. The government of any country can print banknotes at any time.
Things are much more straightforward with Bitcoins. As of now, there are almost 19 million Bitcoins (BTC) in the world. About 900 new BTC are created every day, but the daily amount of new Bitcoins is decreasing with time. In total, there will be 21 million Bitcoins in the world. The precise amount is 20,999,999.9769 BTC. That’s it. No more, no less.
If the Federal Reserve decides to print 100 million dollars, they just print them. They are not going to ask you or us. It doesn’t work this way with Bitcoins. Their amount is limited to 21 million coins. You can’t “print” a few more BTC at a later time. It’s simply impossible.
Who Controls Currencies?
Traditional currencies are controlled by central banks of respective countries. The US Federal Reserve System controls the dollar, the European Central Bank controls the euro, the People’s Bank of China controls the yuan, and the Central Bank of Russia controls the ruble, etc.
Nobody controls Bitcoin. Bitcoin is an anarchic system. It doesn’t have a boss. The source code prescribes everything that should be happening in the system of this currency. In the next chapter, we are going to see how it works.
How Does Bitcoin Work? Transactions in Traditional Currencies and Bitcoins. What Is Bitcoin Mining Actually Doing?
Dollar Transactions
Transactions in traditional currencies like dollars are controlled by banks. How does it work? Say, you want to send $100 to your grandmother. You have a bank account with the Bank of America, and your grandmother’s is with Chase. You go to the Bank of America app or website on desktop or mobile, enter your grandmother’s account number, the amount you want to transfer, verify with the SMS code if required, and after that, your grandmother receives money to her account.
What’s behind this? You just requested your bank to send $100 to your grandmother. Your bank took $100 from your account and sent them to your grandmother’s bank. Then her bank added $100 to her account.
Can anyone but you and bank workers find out that you sent money to your grandmother? No, nobody knows and can’t find out. Bank account information is not public, that is, it’s not accessible to everyone.
You can’t even track the transaction. Did it go through? Will it go through in 20 minutes or in 24 hours? Your grandmother might say, “I didn’t receive the money.” Your bank would say, “Money is on its way. Please wait.” The system is not transparent.
Bitcoin Transactions
All Bitcoin wallets are interconnected. They communicate with each other all the time sharing information about all cryptocurrency transactions. Here’s an example.
You have 1 BTC, and you want to send 0.1 BTC to your grandmother. Like with traditional money, you have your grandmother’s account number (wallet address). Up until this point, everything is the same with the only difference being that the Bitcoin account number contains more letters and has more symbols overall. A typical US bank account number looks like this: 408178100999, the rest of the World uses IBAN accounts: FR7630006040011234567800289, whereas a typical Bitcoin wallet address looks like this: 32qoXh82StQpvgCwhQdKpxoLTrcAX5EqyG.
You go to the app with your Bitcoin wallet on your desktop or mobile, enter your grandmother’s address, the amount you want to transfer, and confirm. You wait for about 10 minutes, after which the cryptocurrency is transferred from your account to your grandmother’s.
What’s behind this? Your wallet transmitted the information about the transaction to all other wallets. However, simply transmitting the information is not enough. Somebody should execute (validate) this transaction. In the case of traditional money, banks do it. In the case of Bitcoin, a computer or a group of computers do it. The computer gets a reward for the transaction.
However, it’s not easy to become such a computer. It must solve a complicated math problem that changes every 10 minutes in a highly competitive environment. This process is called mining, and we are going to discuss it in the next chapter.
All the data in the Bitcoin system is open to any person. All information about transactions is public. However, this information is anonymous. For example, 0.0138 BTC was transferred from wallet bc1q3hq0rrkzvw48fgs3c9ceyxvjwe9zn5z0y7pkgc to wallet 14o9CArVto8yPfo5W4bMSM7spmEK9E1q3Z on September 21, 2021, at 12:46 am. Any person in the world can verify it. You won’t hear, “I didn’t receive money,” from your grandmother, or, “Today we are closed. Please expect the money tomorrow,” from the bank. You will see for yourself that your money is transferred to your grandmother and is now in her wallet. You can show it to other family members. Everyone can see your transaction details and your grandmother’s balance.
What Is Blockchain
Apart from “Bitcoin” and “Cryptocurrency”, you probably also heard about two other important concepts: “Blockchain” and “Mining”. They are interconnected and serve as a foundation for cryptocurrencies.
We already mentioned that information about all transactions in the Bitcoin system is available to all people. This information is stored on the blockchain. Blockchain literally means the chain of blocks. There is nothing complicated about this term. Blockchain is like a ledger where pages are numbered sequentially, each page contains the data of creation and a list of transactions performed at this moment of time. One page is called a block.
An example of a page in the ledger (block).
Page number: 456701
Time: November 3, 2017, 8:08 am
Address 1CKXsyrhF9zfzizZb1x9zwkHczjxNRc6by transferred 0.065 BTC to address 15pRb5SZDLWNVuQx3PqcueYarHy3u83LdA.
Address 1NuUvBpCSHCa2Ltsj4KEVF1wb1kK6xyZQz transferred 4 BTC to address 17G52MMSn9tadonQKbo2Ch6oB7PygUc6c7.
And so on.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that Jack sent 0.065 BTC to Mary, and Kate sent 4 BTC to Peter. By the way, this data is real. You can find it in the Bitcoin network by following the link.
Similar ledgers have existed since the times of Ancient Rome. However, one thing distinguishes blockchain. As soon as you close one page and open the new one, you can’t make any changes to previous pages. Ever. That’s why it’s called a chain. Such a ledger doesn’t let you paste a page somewhere in the middle. It’s impossible.
Let’s create a ledger, that is, a blockchain, together. We have a notebook with an endless number of pages and start filling out the first page. All wallets in the Bitcoin network communicate with each other. We receive new data.
Gary transferred 2 BTC to Stephen.
Mike transferred 3 BTC to Jane.
Nick transferred 4 BTC to Daniel.
And so on. Of course, we don’t see names like Gary or Stephen. We see anonymous addresses like 15pRb5SZDLWNVuQx3PqcueYarHy3u83LdA.
We record all the data on the first page of the notebook. We keep receiving more information about transactions. We keep recording.
Mary transferred 1 BTC to Sue.
Larry transferred 3 BTC to Mike.
Stacey transferred 5 BTC to John.
We keep recording. Until we turn the page, all these transactions are void. How to turn the page? Only cryptocurrency miners can do it. If we are not miners, there is no way for us to do it. We ask a miner for help, and he turns the page. He also puts time and his name on it. Miners get rewards for their work, which is also recorded on the page before turning and sealing it.
Then we fill the second page with new transactions. To turn it, we ask a miner again. There is no way around it. This process is endless.
Blockchain is open to all people at all times. You can open any page of the so-called ledger and see who made a transfer, to whom, when, and how much. You can also see the balance of any wallet in Bitcoin. You won’t see a name like Mary or Peter. You will only see addresses, but all the information is public. If you want to see it for yourself, you can go to blockchain.com.
Easy, right? Now that we know how blockchain works, let’s talk about mining. We are sure that now you too want to become an important person that everyone needs to close a new block on the blockchain (i.e., to turn the page in a ledger called Bitcoin). Plus, they say you get paid well for it.
What Is Mining
Bitcoin mining is the process of solving a math problem using computing equipment. The problem is the same for all the computers in the world. A miner that solved the problem turns the page in Bitcoin’s “ledger”, that is, he creates a new block on the blockchain. By doing so, he validates all the transactions recorded since the closure of the previous block. Once the problem is solved, another problem appears. The whole world starts working on it. It’s important to be the first to solve the problem, otherwise, you don’t get the reward.
Too hard? Let’s try again.
All the computing equipment engaged in Bitcoin mining is solving the same problem.
Users record all transactions on an open page of the “ledger” called Bitcoin blockchain: Gary transferred 2 BTC to John, Larry transferred 3 BTC to Rachel. However, these transactions are void. They are simply piling up for now.
Then a miner solves the problem.
All recorded transactions are validated.
The miner gets a reward.
The miner puts his name (his wallet address) into the block solved just now.
The whole world, including the lucky miner, starts looking for the solution to the new problem for the next page of the “ledger” (block).
How often do problems change? Bitcoin source code is written in such a way that it takes about 10 minutes to solve a problem. It is enabled through a simple algorithm. The more miners are working on the problem, the more difficult it is. And vice versa: less miners would be solving an easier problem.
Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies Use Cases
Unlike traditional currencies, cryptocurrencies are anonymous but completely transparent. Ironic but true. It means that you can find any Bitcoin transaction at any point of Bitcoin’s existence. Senders and recipients are identified with wallet addresses instead of names, like the gibberish we already mentioned above: 1CKXsyrhF9zfzizZb1x9zwkHczjxNRc6by.
On the one hand, it guarantees full anonymity. On the other hand, if you match a real person with his Bitcoin address, you can see all his transactions: how much he transferred and to which addresses. The number of Bitcoin wallets a person can have is endless, but it’s not always possible to remain completely anonymous.
One important thing that distinguishes Bitcoin from the dollar or euro is that nobody regulates or safeguards Bitcoin in any way. Here is a simple example.
If you transfer $100 to a stranger instead of your grandmother, what would you do? You would contact your bank and file an application. It is almost certain that you will get your money back.
If you transfer 0.1 BTC to a stranger’s address instead of your grandmother’s, it is very likely that you will never get your money back. There is no mechanism that would let you get your money back. You can’t contact the recipient to ask him to give the money back. There is no Bitcoin police. You don’t have any leverage at all.
In this case, cryptocurrencies are like cash. If your cash gets stolen, you won’t be able to get it back. Storing cryptocurrencies is as unsafe as storing cash. The only difference is that banknotes are pieces of paper, and you can only stash a limited number of those. On the contrary, an unlimited number of Bitcoins can be stored on a flash drive, or even in a tiny file on your computer.
Keep in mind the important difference between transactions in cryptocurrencies and traditional currencies. When you transfer Bitcoins and the transaction gets sealed on the blockchain, your money has already left your account and reached the recipient. It can’t be changed. Any person in the world can verify it. When you transfer dollars from one account to another, they may be already gone from the sending account but only reach the recipient in a day or two, or they may get lost due to the negligence of the bank.
Where and How Can You Use Cryptocurrencies?
Cryptocurrencies are mainly used for the following purposes.
Investing. You can buy cryptocurrencies to make a profit from their price increase.
Paying. You can pay for goods and services with cryptocurrency. Sadly, few sellers in the world accept cryptocurrencies at the moment, but there are more and more of them each year. El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. You can buy cars and property with Bitcoins. Even PayPal lets the US and UK citizens buy cryptoassets.
Mining. You can earn cryptocurrency by using the computing powers of your equipment. Simply put, you have mining equipment, and you make a profit by making it operate.
You shouldn’t confuse mining with investing. A person can be engaged in both activities, but there is a difference. Mining brings immediate profits, whereas investment brings profits in the long run.
How to Store Bitcoins
Regardless of how you are planning to use Bitcoins, you need a wallet. Choosing the right wallet is important. You are responsible for the safety of your cryptocurrency. Remember that if your cryptocurrency gets stolen or lost, nobody will be able to restore it. Whichever wallet you choose, there is a risk of losing your Bitcoins. Depending on the wallet and type of storage, the risk may be higher or lower.
If you are not planning to store large sums of money or you are only starting out, we recommend one of the multicurrency cryptowallets. They are available on desktop and mobile. For example, Coinomi or Trust. Make sure to secure your passwords and recovery phrases as recommended by wallets’ creators.
Hardware wallets offer a higher level of security. They are special flash drives that you connect to your computer. In the case of such wallets, avoid buying used wallets or wallets from unverified sources. Hardware wallets must be new and bought directly from the manufacturing company.
If you plan to store large sums, you need more secure storage. For example, you may want to buy a separate computer and a few flash drives to store cryptocurrencies.
There are plenty of scammers and hackers. When you use cryptocurrencies, it’s up to you to protect yourself against them. Don’t expect anyone to help you.
How to Pay For, Buy, Sell, and Exchange Bitcoins and Other Cryptocurrencies
There are special cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms that let you buy, sell, and exchange Bitcoins for other cryptocurrencies. Most of them require registration and ID verification. You can still find some exchanges that operate anonymously.
In any case, exchanging one cryptocurrency for another is much easier than exchanging cryptocurrency for dollars. All you need to do is to go to one of the exchanges with multiple exchange options. The most popular exchanges in the world are Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, and Binance.
Is Cryptocurrency Legal?
The regulations differ depending on the country. Some countries legalized cryptocurrency, others didn’t. In some countries, it’s still not regulated in any way.
Mining
Mining is not as hard as it may seem at first glance. You may have already heard of a “cryptocurrency mining rig”.
A computer graphics card. It’s the same graphics card used for computer gaming. To maximize performance, miners usually build special computers with an open case for better cooling and install not one but multiple graphics cards to one computer.
Bitcoin is mined exclusively on ASICs, while Ethereum is mined on GPUs.
Keep in mind that both ASICs and GPUs consume a lot of power and tend to heat a lot.
Is it Hard to Mine Crypto?
Mining difficulty is extremely high today, so it’s mostly possible through so-called mining pools. Mining pools are servers that connect miners. Miners work together and get a reward. Mining pools distribute the reward fairly and pay out the earned cryptocurrency to each miner.
If you have a desktop gaming computer with a graphics card, you can start mining even today. Go to 2CryptoCalc and check which cryptocurrency is the best for mining on your graphics card. Then follow the instructions of a mining pool. You will need to install a special mining software and a wallet for the cryptocurrency you are going to mine.
If you want to mine Bitcoin, a graphics card won’t do. You can only mine it on specialized ASIC devices. As of now, one of the most advanced devices is the Antminer S19 Pro by Bitmain. It consumes 3.5 kWh and makes as much noise as an airplane. You can’t keep such a device at home.
However, it’s quite easy to set up. You just need to open your ASIC settings to add the mining pool address and your Bitcoin wallet address, connect your device to the Internet, and plug it in.
Putting Theory into Practice
So you think you’ve had enough of theory, and you are ready to start. In this small chapter, we will show you the two most common ways people become part of the cryptocurrency world.
You Decided to Become a Cryptocurrency Investor
You saved $1000 and want to spend it on Bitcoins.
You should install a wallet. For example, Coinomi. You can do it right on your smartphone.
Choose the cryptocurrencies. For example, Bitcoin.
Make sure to back up your wallet. Keep your secret phrase in a safe place. Any person with this phrase could have an access to all your cryptocurrency.
Go to the Receive tab. Here you will see your wallet address.
Now buy Bitcoins for $1000 on any of the Crypto Exchanges and send to your wallet address displayed on the Receive tab.
Congrats! You are now a cryptocurrency investor. Now you just have to wait until 1 Bitcoin reaches $1 million.
You Decided to Become a Cryptocurrency Miner
You have a computer you use to play GTA, so why not make full use of it?
The computer has an Nvidia 1080 graphics card. Go to 2CryptoCalc.com and choose your graphics card to see which cryptocurrency is the most profitable for mining.
Turns out, it’s Ethereum.
You should install a wallet. For example, Coinomi. You can do it right on your smartphone.
Choose the cryptocurrencies. For example, Ethereum.
Make sure to back up your wallet. Keep your secret phrase in a safe place. Any person with this phrase could have an access to all your cryptocurrency.
Go to the Receive tab. Here you will see your wallet address.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
What Is Happening with Ethereum Mining: Answering Burning Questions
September 22, 2021
On August 5, 2021, Ethereum’s hard fork called London introduced fee burning. ETH miners weren’t enthusiastic about the update, considering that in theory it could cut their profit. In reality, it turned out the other way around. However, as their profits grew, other problems arose. The 2Miners team reveal them in this article.
The 2Miners pool experts share their thoughts in a simple and clear manner. The article is mainly for those who activated mining rigs that work and bring money. We don’t use complicated terms like “gas”, “Gwei”, etc. With that being said, even professional miners will gain a lot of value from this article.
Gas Price in Ethereum Network. Payout/Transaction Issues
At the beginning of August, the Ethereum network got updated. As a result, some part of ETH that used to go to miners is being burnt now disappearing from the network forever. Another change is that pools can no longer include any transactions they want in their block. Before the update, pools could issue payouts to their miners while paying the minimum fee, but this is not an option anymore.
We already discussed many times how it affected mining profits, and we keep discussing it daily in our Telegram chat.
Simply put:
Miners started earning more. Even though profits in ETH fell, the cryptocurrency exchange rate grew significantly. As a result, the overall profitability in US dollars increased.
The payout issue turned out more complicated than everybody thought. Pools have to take care of all miners at the same time, but they want different things. Some want to get the reward asap and are ready to pay anything for it, others prefer to wait and avoid high fees.
The problem seems easy to solve, but it’s not. A pool has only one wallet. All transactions with the Ethereum network go through it. Pool rewards come to this wallet, and the pool then pays to miners from this same wallet. The Ethereum network operates in such a way that transactions from one wallet must go in a strict order, one after another. No exception.
What does it mean? The pool can’t give miners the possibility to choose the fee amount during payout. Say, Jack is one of those who don’t want to pay high fees. He set the fee as low as possible and is waiting for the Ethereum transaction fee to go down. He can wait for an hour, two hours, a day, or a week. Other pool miners are waiting too. Until Jack, who is 3rd in line, gets his payout, the pool can’t send any other payout to the 4th, 5th, 6th, etc.
What happens then? Clearly, other miners get annoyed with Jack. Best case scenario, they wait for their turn despite the annoyance, worst case scenario, they leave the pool forever. We surely don’t want that, so we have to come up with a solution. As of now, payouts are set in such a way that miners pay no more than $5.
Please note that if you use an exchange address, payouts may cost you more. Some exchanges use smart contract addresses instead of regular ones, and payouts to such addresses require more gas. As a result, the fee is higher. We recommend using direct Ethereum addresses. It's worth pointing out that not all exchanges use contract addresses. You can check it here.
What should Jack do if he is not happy with the high fee? The only thing he can do now is to adjust the payout threshold every time. Say, he has 0.021 ETH. In this case, he should make the threshold higher, for example, 1 ETH. This way the payout won’t come through. He should wait until fees in the Ethereum network decrease. Then he can set the payout threshold under 0.02 ETH, making it lower than his available balance so that the payout can come through.
Jack might say: “What a pain!” And he would be right. Whose fault is this? We think Ethereum developers are the first to blame. They broke the system that had been working for years. But hey, they are developers, hopefully they know better.
How do we adapt? At the moment, we are working on the smart payout system that is supposed to satisfy all miners. The release date is not set yet, but we hope to roll it out in a month or two.
Will ETH Shift to POS This Year?
“I’ve read that Ether mining will be dead by December”, “They say POS is already ready”, “And I saw …” That’s what we hear every single day. Honestly, nobody knows when Ethereum mining ends. Here is what we think.
Ethereum has been shifting to POS for years now. Beginning miners are terrified by rumors around Ethereum all the time. Nothing has really changed since then. Of course, there is some progress but nobody knows when the shift is going to happen. Think about AMD, Nvidia, and other companies that sell mining equipment. Do you really think they will simply give up a significant part of their income? Unlikely.
Also, remember that the developers are planning to launch some sort of a hybrid system combining POS and mining first.
Again, we don’t know the exact launch date. However, we believe that Ether mining will not end in 2022.
You might ask then: “Should I buy graphics cards?”
Well, that’s a tough question. The cryptocurrency world is highly volatile. Exchange rates fluctuate, mining difficulty changes. The only thing we can do is to give advice.
Ethereum is mined on GPUs. If about 30 million GPUs around the world are mining Ether right now, what could change in a year? Let’s say, all old suitable GPUs are already mining. Nvidia and AMD production capacity is limited. They can’t build a billion new graphics cards in a year. How much can they produce?
Hard to say. Try looking for their reports. From what we saw, Nvidia can produce about 40 million chips in a quarter. How many of them can be allocated for mining? Apart from mining, there is also gaming, heavy computing.
Look at the Ethereum difficulty chart. If the price doesn’t fall, the difficulty can grow twice in the next year.
Guessing the exchange rate is not really worth it. So it’s up to you.
Use 2CryptoCalc to calculate profitability, think about how it might change. What is the depreciation value of a graphics card? If mining dies or profitability plummets, how much can you expect from selling it? Think about all these questions before you make a decision. We surely discourage you from getting a loan or spending your last money to start mining.
Ethereum Difficulty Bomb Postponed Till December
The “Difficulty Bomb” also called the “Ice Age” was developed a long ago in 2015. The idea of the Ice Age process is to gradually increase the mining difficulty and therefore block time in Ethereum Network which is currently a little higher than 13 seconds and it remains fixed.
Obviously, the Difficulty Bomb is bad for miners as they start getting fewer rewards. After activation, Ethereum block time will grow five times in 5 months. Therefore miners are expected to get 5 times fewer rewards.
The Ice Age has been already delayed multiple times: in 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021. The recent EIP-3554 postponed the Bomb until the first week of December 2021. Does it mean that this was the last time Ethereum developers put this idea on hold? Absolutely not! Most likely the Ice Age would be postponed again or maybe even removed in the future. Currently, the Ethereum gas prices could be very high. Could you imagine the gas price growth while there would be fewer blocks each minute and fewer places for the users’ transactions?
What happens when Ethereum shifts to POS?
In brief, POS will put an end to ETH mining on GPUs. What will happen to miners? Nothing good. Only 10% of GPUs in the World mine other cryptocurrencies, while 90% mine ETH. Now imagine that ETH mining gets deactivated. Everyone will start mining other cryptocurrencies. Mining profitability will be 10x lower. Will mining be profitable then? Unlikely.
But if someone asked you whether 1 ETH could cost $30 thousand or whether 1 BTC could cost $500 thousand, what would you say? If you’d say yes, then mining might survive. If all cryptocurrencies skyrocket, mining will still be profitable, even after ETH shifts to POS.
We hear a lot of theories about the increase in price of such coins as RVN or ERGO after all ETH miners shift to them. We think it’s wrong. There is no connection here. The number of miners doesn’t affect the price at all, be it 10 or 20 thousand people.
Remember to join our Telegram chat and follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
August 2021 Work Progress Report: Ethereum Hardfork, New Payout Model and New API
September 1, 2021
Ethereum hardfork, new Payout model and new API, 2Miners and 2CryptoCalc new translations, new Telegram chats.
Ethereum London Hardfork Effect
Ethereum’s network upgrade happened at Block 12,965,000 on August 5th. Ethereum Hardfork, no doubt, was the most important event of August, or even of the 2021 year. The controversial EIP-1559 was implemented which should have changed a lot in the Ethereum network. Did it really change? Let’s find out together and explore the EIP-1559 impact on the Ethereum network and the Ethereum miners.
Transaction fees were expected to fall down. This was one of the major hardfork goals. Unfortunately, this did not happen. We still see the gas price going to the moon. The last week, for instance, the gas price is rarely going below 50 gwei. We could observe it going as high as 100-200 gwei more often. Sometimes the transaction fees are literally astronomical.
Could we say that EIP-1559 solved the problem of expensive transactions in the Ethereum network?
No, it did not! Things are even worse now than before.
Ethereum Deflation, ETH Gets Burned
Starting from this August with almost every block in Ethereum Network some ETH coins are being burned. These coins before were included in miners’ rewards, now they just disappear from the network. According to Watch The Burn 362 715 ETH were created since the network upgrade and 156 740 ETH burned (almost one-half of newly mined coins). So we could say that the emission of new ETH coins is now half as fast.
On one hand that is bad for the miners, as they get fewer rewards now. On the other hand, The Ethereum Foundation finally did something significant in recent times. The ETH investors are happy and the coin price goes up. Burned Ethereum causes coin deflation that could also help the coin price to grow. As you see ETH is now traded close to its all-time high price.
Was EIP-1559 successful in terms of ETH Price?
Most likely “Yes”!
Mining Pool Payment Model
Before “London” the mining pools were able to include in the blocks whatever transactions they wanted. 2Miners Ethereum mining pool was paying its miners without charging them any fees (We were paying the fees ourselves). All these transactions were included with the gas price of 1 gwei. After EIP-1559 that is not possible to do anymore. All transactions must be included only with the “market” gas price, not less. That means that the price of 1 transaction is now at least 50 times higher than before. Because of that, we have implemented the new payout model.
Now miners pay the transaction fees themselves when the payments from the pool are executed. They are able to choose the payout value though, not to spend too much on the network commissions. All the pool could do is to limit the fee by setting the maximum gas price for each payment. In the beginning, we set the maximum gas price to 51 gwei so each payment doesn’t cost you more than $3. Ethereum network gas prices was extremely high in recent days. The payouts were delayed. We always want to save your money and maintain the transaction price of about $3 but we were forced to increase the maximum gas price to 71 gwei. Now the payment costs $4.5 as a maximum. However, we hope this is just temporary.
Before the fork, each block was bringing about 3 ETH to the pool on average. Now with ETH being burned the block rewards rarely go higher than 2.5 ETH. However, some exceptions to the rule still exist, which is good for miners. This month we have seen blocks as big as 28 ETH or 42 ETH.
The rewards of the miners are also quite high thanks to the MEV (Miner Extractable Value). This month we have seen MEV as high as 4 ETH per block or even 26 ETH per block. You could always check the MEV distribution on the Ethereum pool Blocks page.
Are miners getting fewer rewards from ETH mining?
Yes, they are, if we consider the rewards in ETH coins. However, if we check the USD rewards, they are still quite high, thanks to the recent ETH price spike.
Ethereum Pool New API and Statistics
2Miners Ethereum pool now has the detailed hashrate and share statistics. It is much easier now to identify the overclocking or internet connection problems.
The so-called reported hashrate is now also shown on the pool website. This is the hashrate you see in your mining software window. Please pay attention that not all the mining software sends these values to the pool. If you see this field empty that doesn’t mean that something doesn’t work properly, don’t worry. That just means that your mining software doesn’t send this data to the pool. Btw. all the ASIC devices are not sending reported hashrate to the pool.
The payout value was fixed to 0.05 ETH in the Ethereum pool before. Now every miner could set the payout threshold him- or herself. Any value could be chosen from as low as 0.005 ETH to 10 ETH. That could be done on the “Account Settings” tab of your statistics page. This action requires you to get your external IP address. This process could be tricky sometimes and we wrote a special post to help you How to Modify Payout Threshold on 2Miners Ethereum Pool: Detailed Guide
2Miners and 2CryptoCalc New Languages
2Miners Translation and Proofreading
We are fortunate to have such an awesome multinational community of miners on 2Miners.com. We have talked about this numerous times, but guys, this website is done thanks to your help and it wouldn’t exist without you. Thank you very much! You always support us in trouble and in joy. We really appreciate that and we always listen to your advice. Currently, we have more than 78 thousand miners in the pool. That is an amazing result.
This month we have fixed all the minor translation errors in many languages. We got 20 languages on the 2Miners website. All the translations were done by professional translators (not google translate). Our miners have helped us to proofread the translations to many languages as well. We thank you all!
2CryptoCalc New Languages
Our mining calculator 2CryptoCalc.com is now available in Turkish and Spanish.
New Telegram Chats
We always had the international chat for English speakers. Finally, this month we added 2 new chats for local communities: Spanish and Turkish. These chats are not well organized yet. We are still searching for admins to help us to maintain them. As you know our chats are free of spam, advertising, “when moon” stupid talks, etc.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
Dear Ethereum Miners! The London Hard fork happened at block 12,965,000 and the controversial EIP-1559 was implemented. We described the changes in the Ethereum Network in simple terms on the blog post Ethereum London Hardfork – What Does EIP-1559 Change?
Unfortunately, the situation with the Ethereum transactions is much worse than we expected. Everybody expected the fees in the Ethereum network to be low and transactions to be cheap. The opposite has happened, the transaction price is as high as before. The ETH is now burned as expected by the coin developers but the Ethereum users are still paying the same high price for the transactions. 🤷♂️
Moreover, the pool couldn’t send the transactions using low gas prices as before. We must send the payouts with the so-called base cost of gas. Currently, it is higher than 40 gwei. We are forced to change the payout model of our Ethereum pool. All the details are revealed in this post.
Default Payout Value Is 1 ETH
No panic if that is too high. You could always adjust this value. We take care of our miners and we don’t want you to receive the payout of 0.005 ETH with 0.003 ETH fees paid to leave you 0.002 ETH only. We see these situations happening in other pools every day.
Payouts Are Covered By The Miners
UPDATE: Currently the maximum gas price is set to 80 gwei so the maximum fee is $5.5.
From now on the miners would pay the fees for the payouts they receive from Ethereum Pool. We set the gas price to 51 gwei so the maximum fee is just $3 (if ETH price is $2,800). That means that if the gas price is very high the pool will wait until it gets lower to execute the payment. Let us give you an example.
Currently, Ethereum’s price is $2,800. Each transaction always costs 21,000 gas. There are different scenarios depending on the current gas price (Base Fee Per Gas).
The gas price is 10 gwei.
The miner pays 10 x 21,000 x 2,800$ / 1,000,000,000 = $0.588
The gas price is 40 gwei.
The miner pays 40 x 21,000 x 2,800$ / 1,000,000,000 = $2.352
The gas price is 80 gwei.
The miner should pay 80 x 21,000 x 2,800$ / 1,000,000,000 = $4.704
That is higher than $3. So the pool will wait until the gas price becomes lower and then execute the payout. If Ethereum’s price is $2,800 the pool will execute the payouts if only the gas price is lower than 51 gwei.
Payout Value Is Adjustable
You could set the payout value on the Account Settings tab. It could be set in the range from 0.005 ETH to 10 ETH. Your mining rig IP address is required to apply the settings. Please be patient after you adjust the payout value as it could take a couple of minutes before it is shown on the statistics page due to the website cache. If you couldn’t find your IP address (How to find my IP address?) please feel free to contact our Helpdesk. We would be glad to adjust your payout value manually.
Please remember that you pay the payout fee so if you set a very low minimum payout then a big percent of the coins would be spent to cover the payout itself. Let’s assume the current gas price (Base Fee Per Gas) is 40 gwei and you set the minimum payout to 0.005 ETH.
That means that the transaction will cost you
40 x 21,000 / 1,000,000,000 = 0.00084 ETH
That is almost 17% of your payout and you receive only 0.005 – 0.00084 = 0.00416 ETH at your wallet.
What Is Base Fee Per Gas and Where To Find It?
The Base Fee Per Gas is the base cost of gas, a fixed value, smoothly changing depending on the network load. If the expected transaction numbers are high, the base cost increases and vice versa. This value substitutes the gas price used before. It could be found on Etherscan.io for example.
Just click the last block mined and search for the “Base Fee Per Gas” value.
New Statistics Pages
Thanks to the London hard fork situation we’ve upgraded the Ethereum pool API and statistics pages.
Now you could see:
Detailed statistics of your workers
Share statistics (valid, invalid, stale)
Adjust the payout value
Why Some Unpaid Balance Is Left In The Pool?
Gas Price Is Not Predictable
Gas price is always different. As mentioned before the new Ethereum transaction system (so-called Type 2) uses the base fee per gas value. Before the payout is executed the pool doesn’t know the gas price which would be used. All we could set at the pool as a transaction sender is the maximum gas value. Currently, it is set to 51 gwei so each payout costs less than $3 to the miner.
The pool blocks 51 gwei x 21,000 gas to execute the payout to the standard ETH address. If the base fee required to execute the transaction was just 30 gwei then 21 gwei x 21,000 gas is returned back to the unpaid balance of the miner.
Please find the approximate calculation below
21,000 * 21 / 1,000,000,000 = 0.000441 ETH ($1.23 if ETH price is $2,800) is returned to the unpaid balance of the miner.
Payouts to Different Ethereum Address Types
The payouts require a variable amount of gas. A standard ETH address to address transaction uses 21,000 gas. A smart contract could easily use 30,000-50,000 gas or even more (Smart contract wallets are usually used by cryptocurrency exchanges). Our pool gas limit is 55,000 gas. We highly recommend all the miners use standard ETH addresses to receive the payouts e.g. Coinomi, Trust, MEW, or Metamask. They require only 21,000 gas. It saves your money!
The first payout to the miner the pool reserves 55,000 gas at the miner account. There are 2 possible scenarios.
The Miner Address Is a Smart Contract
If the transaction used 35,000 gas for example, then 20,000 gas is credited back to the unpaid balance of the miner. The address is marked as a smart contract. For all future payouts, the pool will reserve 55,000 gas at the miner account. At the moment there is no workaround to avoid that. Ethereum network has no functionality to predict the gas value required by the smart contract before its execution.
Let us give you an example.
The miner has 0.61 ETH of the unpaid balance. He set the payout value to 0.6 ETH. The payout process has been triggered.
Let’s say the Ethereum price is $2,800, the base fee per gas is 20 gwei, and the miner uses an address generated on the crypto exchange. For example it requires 40,000 gas.
55,000 gas is reserved at price 51 gwei -> 55,000 * 51 / 1,000,000,000 = 0.002805 ETH ($7.85)
40,000 gas at price 20 gwei was required to execute the payout 0.0008 ETH ($2.24)
0.002805 – 0.0008 = 0.002005 ETH ($5.61) would be credited back to the unpaid balance of the miner
The Miner Has a Standard Address
If the transaction used just 21,000 gas, unused gas is credited back to the unpaid balance of the miner. The address is marked as a standard address (not a smart contract). For all future payouts, the pool will not reserve any additional gas at the miner account. 21,000 gas would be used. That means that if you use the standard Ethereum address the amount blocked at the pool is always less compared to the smart contract address. Starting from the second payment from the pool, all the coins would be sent to the miner except the 21,000 gas x (difference between the 51 gwei and base fee). This amount would be credited back to the unpaid balance of the miner as discussed above.
We apologize for any inconvenience we could have caused you. Unfortunately, the current situation was created not by us but by the Ethereum developers. We don’t see any positive sides of this Ethereum update currently. The only thing is that every minute almost 4 ETH is burned creating deflation that according to the ETH developers is going to lead to the coin price increase.
Remember to join our Telegram chat and follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
Ethereum London Hardfork – What Does EIP-1559 Change?
August 4, 2021
Probably all those who are involved in cryptocurrency mining in one way or another have heard about the upcoming change in Ethereum: the so-called hard fork codenamed “London”, which activates changes from EIP-1559. Let’s look at this update.
There has been much controversy surrounding this change – on the one hand, it aims to expand block capacity so that in situations where a large number of transactions are published to the network, a long wait to send a transaction can be avoided. It also offers a simple solution to calculate the cost of gas when publishing transactions.
However, the latter change has generated a lot of controversy among the mining community. But before describing the problem in more detail, let’s briefly recap what the gas is on the Ethereum network and what its cost affects.
How Transactions In Ethereum Are Executed
Any transaction on the network (whether it is a simple transfer of tokens or funds or a smart contract operation) is a set of operations in a special machine language developed specifically for Ethereum and executed by its EVM virtual machine. Each operation has a price; the more complex the code to execute, the more “expensive” the transaction is for the computer checking it in the blockchain (usually a mining pool that forms new blocks by including these transactions in them). To compensate for machine time, the concept of gas, and its cost, was invented. What is Gas in Ethereum? Ethereum Transaction Fees. The unit cost of gas for a transaction is set by whoever sends the transaction. The higher the cost per unit of gas, the more likely the miners are to include your transaction in the upcoming blocks.
In situations where the network was too overloaded with too many transactions waiting to be sent, senders had to set a higher and higher cost per unit of gas to get their transactions into the new blocks sooner and sooner. This gave rise to a cascading effect, with each successive new transaction being posted at a higher unit gas cost than the previous one.
Of course, miners liked that very much – the higher the cost per transaction, the higher the profit from each mined block (remember, that’s 2 ETH basic reward per block plus the sum of all fees for the transactions included in that block).
But it was inconvenient for ordinary users – not only that they had to overpay for sending a transaction in situations of network congestion (and these happen more and more often due to the increasing number of smart contracts and popularization of the coin in general), but also it’s not clear what exactly the cost of gas should be, to make sure that your transaction will be sent soon and not just hang for hours in the waiting list (not to mention that sometimes users were mistaken by an order of magnitude, manually entering gas cost when trying to push through a transaction, and sent, for example, 1 ETH with 10 ETH commission).
EIP-1559 – The New Transaction Concept
The response to the high and unpredictable transaction fees in Ethereum was EIP-1559. It introduced a new concept – the base cost of gas – a fixed value, smoothly changing depending on the network load (if the expected transaction numbers are low, the base cost smoothly decreases, as soon as there are more of them – smoothly increases). From now on, whenever a new type of transaction is sent, the base cost of gas multiplied by the amount of gas spent is always used for calculation, no more and no less. This eliminates the possibility of errors with sending transactions with disproportionately large commissions, and it is easier for the wallet programs to calculate the cost of commissions, as they are formed according to a fairly simple and predictable scheme. The new type of transaction is called a “type 2 transaction,” and canonical transactions are called a “type 0 transaction” – and don’t ask what happened to type 1 transaction 🙂
However, in addition to the above, it was proposed to “burn” commissions formed in this way (i.e. coins spent to form transactions will disappear irrevocably) – this will create a deflationary model, which in theory can make ETH value higher in the future (as the number of coins in circulation will grow slower than now). However, it also means that miners will stop making profits from the number of fees, being left with only the basic reward per block (2 ETH). That was the reason for heated debates, and to sweeten the bitterness of the parting, the notion of a “tip” was also added – some small amount on top of the standardized commission to make it more interesting for miners to include your transaction into a block (but the math is done in such a way that a very small amount is enough to make sure the transaction will get into one of the next blocks – so no significant amounts are involved – they are expected in the range of 1 to 9 gwei). In any case, it was still decided to accept EIP-1559 and run it in a hard fork process called London at block 12,965,000.
How The Miner Fees Are Burned?
The total gas amount of all transactions included in the block is taken, multiplied by the base gas cost for that block, and then that amount is destroyed irrevocably. For Type 2 (new) transactions, this will be exactly the total amount of fees per transaction (not counting tips, if any). For older transactions, since the cost of gas for them is much higher, it will mean only a fraction of the total amount of fees.
At first, the reduction will not be too noticeable, since most wallets and other software will continue to send transactions of the old type, the commission for which will not be burned in full.
Let’s have a look at the Ethereum Ropsten (Testnet) block 10,774,793.
This block contains just 2 transactions. The first transaction is Type 0 and the second one is Type 2.
Base Fee Per Gas was 10 wei (0.00000001 Gwei).
The block contained 2 transactions 21,000 gas each so 21,000 x 10 x 2 = 420,000 wei were burned in this block or just 0.00000000000042 Ether. Not a disaster, right?
How The Mining Rewards Change?
What does the EIP-1559 implementation mean for us as miners? First, the revenue generated from Ethereum mining will gradually decrease – the more Type 2 transactions hit the block, the more fees will be burned, consequently reducing the revenue from each block found. Thanks for Eden Network (formerly Archer DAO) we will try to keep miner rewards as high as possible with the so-called Miner-extracted Value (MEV) profits.
Secondly, as the number of Type 2 transactions in the network increases, we will have to switch to them as well, accordingly, all payments to miners will at some point be made at their expense (by taking away the cost of the transaction from the amount to be paid).
Currently, 2Miners leaves everything as it is (payments to miners at the expense of the pool), but in the future we will closely monitor the network and make a corresponding announcement, additionally introducing new pool features (it will be possible to specify the minimum payment amount individually, so as not to lose money on frequent payments).
Miner since 2017, the 2Miners pool co-founder. Became interested in cryptocurrencies at the dawn of the latest bull run and bought his first graphics cards. After having built and set up a few mining rigs, he realized that existing mining pools didn’t satisfy him – that’s how the idea of creating the 2Miners pool was born.
John published a series of articles about the basics of cryptocurrency mining. He gave valuable tips on how to buy ASICs and GPUs from abroad and then shared their mining performance. On the website, you can find early articles about cryptocurrency mining, blockchain in general and mining pool operation principles. The readers gave positive feedback on John’s practical guides, such as building an Ethereum mining rig and Nvidia 1080ti overclocking.
ERG pool is constantly growing. We already have almost 300 miners online and 5% of network hashrate.
At the first moment, only Nbminer and lolMiner were working at the pool. Thanks to the T-rex and Teamredminer developers we’ve updated the pool and all the mining software is now operating perfectly without any issues.
At the end of the month, both PPLNS and SOLO ERGO mining pools have been switched to the new version of the 2Miners API system. That provides new features to the miners such as share statistics and rig statistics. You are now also allowed to change the minimum payout for ERGO payments.
New API and Node Updates
These cryptocurrency nodes were updated
Nervos CKB 0.43.1
Cortex v1.10.25
Ethereum node would be updated very soon as the London hardfork is expected at the beginning of August.
We are still working on the migration of all our mining pools to the new API system. 2 new servers have been deployed for these purposes. Ethereum and Ethereum Classic databases were transferred to them so we expect the new statistics to be implemented for ETH and ETC very soon.
New Mining Software
Quick start archive with the mining software has been updated. These are the new mining software versions available
gminer 2.62
t-rex 0.21.4
lolminer 1.31
Ergo bat files have been added.
The archive password is 2miners
Remember to join our Telegram chat and follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
How to Mine Ergo: A Detailed Guide for Beginners and Miner Setup
July 23, 2021
In May 2021 Bitcoin and its Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism attracted criticism. The reason was Elon Musk’s statement where he called BTC mining unecological. As a result, the cryptocurrency market went down, and some cryptocurrencies even transitioned to new mechanisms like Proof-of-Stake. Ergo is not one of them. It holds a special view on miners and ensures that cryptocurrency mining will always be stable. Let’s get into it.
What is Ergo
As you can see on the official website, Ergo positions itself as smart money. According to the website, Ergo builds advanced cryptographic features and radically new DeFi functionality on the rock-solid foundations laid by a decade of blockchain theory and development.
The developers outline six main components that make the project stand out against others in the crypto niche. They are vision, consensus, light clients, survivability, economy, and applicability.
Vision of Ergo Developers
According to the website, Ergo was created in response to stagnation in the blockchain area. As a result, the developers implemented various technical and economic ready-to-use ideas that add value but do not reduce the known advantages of blockchain systems.
Ergo’s primary focus is to provide an efficient and secure way to implement financial contracts, which are the most widely used application of blockchain technology. Unlike the traditional financial system, no bailouts, blacklists or other forms of discrimination should be possible on the core level of Ergo protocol.
So they want to implement something similar to what Ethereum looks like today. It's important to note that Ergo works on a separate blockchain.
Ergo Consensus Algorithm
Autolykos, Ergo consensus protocol, is based on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm. PoW was chosen because it’s widely studied and has high security guarantees.
However, Autolykos has several meaningful differences from Bitcoin’s PoW. For example, you can mine Ergo’s native token ERG with just 3GB of RAM, which makes the niche much more accessible. Ergo also has storage rent to reclaim lost and forgotten coins.
Ergo’s Light Clients
The developers are making an example of Bitcoin Core full chain wallet: it takes a few weeks to sync and load all the data. This is highly frustrating, so Ergo enables light clients (i.e. programs that let you interact with the network) to synchronize with the network by downloading less than a megabyte of data. Thus, a regular user with any device can join the network and start using Ergo.
Thinking Long-Term
Ergo is prepared for the changes that might be expected in the future. For example, miners can vote to increase or decrease maximum block size, storage fee factor, etc.
For more fundamental changes Ergo is going to follow a soft-forkability approach. If an overwhelming majority of the network accepts a new feature, it is activated. Old nodes which vote against the new feature continue to operate normally. Thus hard forks should not be required in Ergo.
Ergo’s Economy
This is the most curious part of the project. What makes Ergo special is the storage fee for outdated coins. If a cryptocurrency remains in the state for 4 years without being moved, a miner may charge a small fee for every byte kept in the state.
It is similar to cloud storage services when users pay to store their documents, music, and other files outside their devices.
It gives Ergo several advantages. First of all, ERG mining will always be stable. On the other hand, Bitcoin’s max supply is 21 million which means that transaction fees will be the only source of income for miners after the last coin is issued. In this case, Ergo miners will have an additional source of income.
Secondly, state size growth becomes controllable and predictable reducing hardware requirements for Ergo miners. And lastly, by collecting storage fees from outdated boxes, miners return lost coins to circulation. It helps prevent a drastic decrease of circulating supply due to lost keys.
Ergo Applicability
The developers want to make the Ergo network a popular place for smart contracts execution. Ergo’s script is Turing-complete which means that the functionality of Ergo-based apps is unlimited.
Ergo’s Price
On July 22, 2021 ERG costs $4.98. It’s a 5100% increase compared to the minimum of $0.09 registered on March 13, 2020. But it’s also a 83% decrease compared to the maximum of $29.58. This price was registered on April 27, 2018, according to Coingecko.
You can't see this leap on the chart, but ERG reached $5-6 in April 2018.
Ergo’s local peak in 2021 was registered on May 19. Back then the price reached $18.
ERG increased by 1775% over the last year. This is more than the yearly growth of Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Where to Buy Ergo
Ergo (ERG) is traded on several popular crypto exchanges: Coinex, Waves, and Gate. According to Coingecko, Waves offers the best liquidity. You need more money to move the ERG exchange rate by 2% in either direction.
Wallet for Ergo
Ergo offers two options: Ergo’s official wallet and Yoroi. The former is a fully functional desktop wallet, whereas the latter works in the web browser. Ergo wallet offers a wider range of options. It has a multi-signature feature that allows you to perform crypto transactions on the wallet only by mutual consent of several people.
As we already mentioned, requirements to mine Ergo are reduced. GPUs with 3GB of RAM would suffice, similarly to the popular Ravencoin cryptocurrency.
To start mining on 2Miners pool, you need to create a wallet (one of the mentioned earlier) or use a crypto exchange address. Then download the mining software. We recommend lolMiner which we already covered here, nbminer, TeamRedMiner and T-rex.
lolMiner and nbminer work with both AMD and Nvidia GPU. TeamRedMiner works only with AMD cards, while Nvidia is suitable only for Nvidia GPUs.
You can find all mining software in the archive linked here. The password to the archive is 2miners, no spaces or dots at the end.
After you download the files, edit the bat file. You should replace the wallet address with yours, the one you created before. You can also change the rig name and replace RIG_ID with a new name containing only Latin letters, numbers, and symbols “_” and “-“.
nbminer -a ergo -o stratum+tcp://erg.2miners.com:8888 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_ID
Here is TeamRedMiner setup to mine Ergo:
teamredminer.exe -a autolykos2 -o stratum+tcp://erg.2miners.com:8888 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_ID -p x
Here is T-Rex setup to mine Ergo:
t-rex.exe -a autolykos2 -o stratum+tcp://erg.2miners.com:8888 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_ID -p x
Ergo Mining on Miningrigrentals and NiceHash
Hashpower rental is possible for Autolykos2 algorithm. Please find below the settings for the most popular rig rental services: Nicehash and Miningrigrentals.
Custom pool name: 2Miners ERG
Algorithm: Autolykos
Stratum hostname or IP: erg.2miners.com
Port: 8888
Username: YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS
Password: x
All the settings are always available on How to start page of the pool. If you know what is SOLO mining and if you want to go SOLO for Ergo join follow these simple steps.
Remember to follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
June 2021 Work Progress Report: New Ethereum Servers, New Pool API
July 1, 2021
New Ethereum servers, Aeternity, Beam, Flux, Zcash node updates, new pool API.
New Servers for Ethereum Mining Pool
Despite the decreasing ETH price this month 2Miners Ethereum pool hashrate has exceeded 20 TH/s on average.
Due to the high demand, we needed to add more servers to the Ethereum PPLNS pool system to keep the service going at the same high level. In June we released 2 more servers in Europe, 1 in Asia, and 1 more in the US. So there are 7 servers for Europe, 3 for Asia, and 3 for the US in total right now.
New Pool API
We are still developing the new pool API and the new statistics dashboards. This June we successfully released it for the Expanse (EXP) pool. The same dashboards would be available for Ethereum and other coins very soon. If you are curious about how is it going just go to EXP pool and choose any miner you want. All the statistics are transparent as always.
This process takes a little more time than we expected as we are constantly improving the code and implementing new ideas. Next month we expect the new API and statistics to be available for many more pools on 2Miners. Expanse is just our testing ground.
Node Updates
All the mining pools require constant monitoring and upgrading. In June we updated the nodes of multiple coins.
Aeternity Node 6.1.0 – bug fix
Beam Fierce Fermion 6.0.11647 – hotfix
ZCash 4.4.1
Flux (ZEL) 5.0.2
New Mining Software
New mining software has been released so we’ve updated our Quick Start Archive. The archive password is 2miners
gminer 2.57
t-rex 0.20.4
teamredminer 0.8.3
We’ve also updated the Firo bat files.
Remember to join our Telegram chat and follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
