March 2021 Work Progress Report: MEV Extra Rewards for Ethereum Mining
April 1, 2021
50 000 Miners in the pool, new languages, MEV extra rewards for Ethereum, Monero minimum payout reduction, GRIN, and MWC problems.
Pool Website Translated to 20 Languages
This month we’ve added 2 new languages: Arabic and German.
We understand that it is not always very easy to make a translation. Some words like “share”, “pool”, “uncle block” etc. could be translated or could be kept in English. Every language is different. We kindly ask you for help. If you see any error please don’t hesitate to contact us. We will fix that.
50 000 Miners Online
We’ve reached another important milestone. More than 50 000 miners are currently mining in our pools. We are thrilled to have you here. We are doing our best to provide the highest level of services to our miners.
Ethereum MEV Extra Profit
2Miners has announced its Miner-extracted Value (MEV) profits strategy. Archer DAO has been chosen as a strategic partner for the MEV extraction. Let’s describe MEV in simple terms. The specialized software is watching the incoming transactions in the blocks to seek opportunities to step in the middle of a chain of token exchanges and profit from the exchange rate difference.
That means you could reach the minimum payout 10 times faster now.
GRIN and MWC Updates
GRIN developers found a problem in their code on March, 18. This was an official GRIN devs message: “We identified an invalid BP rangeproof on the main chain about 8 hours ago. We expect to release a fix that would invalidate those 8 hours. Please consider halting further mining until then.” Because of that some of the GRIN blocks were rejected and the miners lost their rewards. Our GRIN pool was completely stopped for 2 days. Now they are back online.
Just 2 weeks before that network issue (at the beginning of March) gate.io exchange upgraded its Grin wallet and started to support slatepack addresses for Grin. The address was absolutely the same for everybody. The exchange gave a special memo number for each of the users. You could not deposit any amount of Grin you want. You needed to deposit the amount ending with your memo number. The Grin address on gate.io was always grin1n26np6apy07576qx6yz4qayuwxcpjvl87a2mjv3jpk6mnyz8y4vq65ahjm. Let’s say your memo was 456789. That means you could only deposit 100.456789 Grin or 345.456789 Grin etc. Read more
Unfortunately, after the recent GRIN problems, the deposits on gate.io are closed again but we hope they would be re-enabled in the future. You still needed to mine to Grin++ wallet as it is the best solution for GRIN network.
MWC is a fork of GRIN so they had exactly the same problem. The only difference is that miners lost not hours of mining rewards but days! At the moment the MWC network is operating fine. The pools are working too and the hotbit exchange is receiving the deposits without any issues.
Cortex News
Great News for Cortex (CTXC) Miners!
We’ve reduced the reward confirmation time in the 2Miners pool from 10 000 to 500 blocks (from 2 days to 2 hours).
Overclocking is a very important and popular topic in all our chats and media. Thanks to our miners we’ve prepared a couple of posts with overclocking basics.
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.
2Miners MEV Strategy: More Profit for Miners with Help of Archer DAO
March 26, 2021
2Miners is striving to be on the edge of innovation and is always in search of improving the experience and the income for its miners. Let us tell you about our partnership with Archer DAO, the innovative platform (and the team behind it!) that brings Miner-extracted Value profits to our miners.
Miner-extracted Value (MEV) has been a hot topic more and more lately, especially with the future adoption of EIP-1559 which would make the miners’ profits lower (as there will be no high-priced transactions in the blocks). Therefore, each and every mining pool is seeking opportunities to make up for the decreased revenue — and we are no exception.
How does MEV work? In essence, it is an automated process when some additional income may be made by arbitraging certain transactions — mostly for the p2p exchange platforms when the funds swap is done without a centralized exchange. Specialized software can watch the incoming transactions in the blocks to seek opportunities to step in the middle of a chain of token exchanges and profit from the exchange rate difference. For this to work, the intercepting transaction has to be executed early in the block so it takes over the exchange process and gains an advantage.
As you may guess, this requires two sides of the story — first, a miner (or a mining pool) with a high enough hash rate that could execute the insertion of the transaction, and second, a sophisticated algorithm that seeks for such exchange opportunities and prepares such transactions for the mining pool.
Of course, 2Miners has been closely following the topic for quite some time now, and now there are several different solutions available for the MEV integration for the miners — the most known, perhaps, is FlashBots. However, the most known does not necessarily mean the most profitable or smart. Therefore, we have been carefully surveying the scene to find the MEV partner for our pool to work with.
For several months already we have been closely working with Archer DAO, our chosen partner for the MEV extraction, and are deeply impressed by the algorithms they carry and the agility of the team behind it. As you’re reading this, we are already including some of the MEV transactions in our blocks, bringing the increased revenue for the miners. Of course, like any emerging technology, there are still questions to be solved to make MEV mining at 2Miners be up to par with everything else we make — transparent, useful, and totally open, but please be assured that by the time EIP-1559 lands, we will be making every effort in having our miners benefit from each and every MEV transaction executed through our pool — with no additional work required to be done by individual miners.
MEV rewards are already being distributed among our Ethereum miners. Ethereum Pool Blocks tab shows now MEV-rewards if they were included in the block. These extra rewards are distributed like the normal ETH rewards according to the PPLNS-scheme.
Please follow our blog in the coming months as we keep improving the reporting and unveil the way for our miners to see and track the additional MEV profit. With the help of Archer DAO we are also working on adding the new MEV-providers to our blocks right now.
If you have not yet tried our pools, today is a great opportunity to try and see why we are the platform of choice for thousands of loyal miners — from relatively big enterprise farms to hobbyists with just a couple of GPUs. They value us for great monitoring options, transparency, live support in Telegram, and more.
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 Mining Profit Is Down. What Happened and What to Do?
March 23, 2021
The title of this article is the most popular question miners ask the 2Miners pool tech support and all mining chats. The only question that’s even more popular is the discrepancy between the profit and the calculator estimate. But this is a different story. In this article we are going to explain why Ethereum mining rewards change daily and why all mining calculators are lying.
What Affects ETH Mining Profitability?
Let’s get straight to the point. Say, you have a mining rig that operates 24/7. It doesn’t cause you any issues, doesn’t freeze, and has a stable hash rate. The rig size doesn’t matter. It can be an enormous factory or just one GPU in a gaming computer. All the factors that we are going to discuss affect all mining rigs regardless of their size.
Clearly we assume that a rig works without failures. If your graphics card disconnects every two hours or your rig reboots for an unknown reason, make sure to solve these problems before getting to mining profitability.
What affects Ethereum mining profits?
Ethereum network difficulty: the higher the difficulty (that is, the competition with other miners), the worse.
Ethereum blockchain load: the more contracts and transactions are executed in the ETH network, the better.
Let’s get into more detail about each.
Ethereum Network Hash Rate and Difficulty
The average block find time in the Ethereum network is 13.2 seconds. It may take you one second or one minute to find a block, but the average time is 13.2 seconds. This is the most important parameter in ETH network. The network always monitors it and makes sure that it stays at 13.2. The more miners there are in the Ethereum network, the higher the network difficulty. Higher difficulty means that the network is giving miners more difficult problems that they need to solve to find a block. And vice versa. The fewer miners there are in the network, the easier the problem.
In other words, once the number of miners in the network increases, they find blocks more often, and so the network increases the difficulty. When there are not enough blocks found and there are few miners, the network lowers the difficulty.
Since the average block find time stays the same, the number of blocks found daily stays the same as well. The reward “pie” is the same every day. There are 6500 blocks found by all Ethereum miners daily. Say, your hash rate is 100 Mh/s and it always stays the same. Clearly if the hash rate of all miners in the world is 1000 Mh/s, you get one tenth of the “pie”. If the hash rate of all miners in the world is 10000 Mh/s, you get one hundredth of the “pie”, and so on.
The more miners there are in the network, the higher the competition and the fewer ETH you mine daily.
Luckily Ethereum network hash rate is so high at this point that another hundred miners would barely affect the hash rate. But if you consider the network hash rate growth on a yearly basis, you could notice a 2.5x increase. You can always find the current and lifetime Ethereum hash rate on this chart.
Transactions. John sends 1 ETH to Mary, Sara sends 0.3 ETH to Jack, etc.
Smart Contracts. This could be anything: crypto kitties and other NFTs, decentralized finances like trade exchanges, etc.
For each found block in the Ethereum network miners get 2 ETH. This is a standard reward that encourages miners to mine. Miners will get rewards even if users are not executing any transactions.
Each network user wants their transaction or smart contract to be executed as fast as possible as nobody likes to wait. The more active the network users, the higher the fees for transactions and smart contracts. Miners are smart. And so first of all they include in blocks transactions with the highest fees to maximize their profits.
When we say "miners", we mostly mean mining pools. Ethereum solo mining is almost impossible as it requires too much power.
A mining pool gets 2 ETH for each found Ethereum block plus fees for transactions and smart contracts included in the block. On a not very busy day transactions can account for an additional reward of 1 ETH. Add it to the standard reward of 2 ETH, and the pool gets 3 ETH per block. On busy days fees within a block can reach 7 ETH, 8 ETH, 10 ETH, etc.
Here is an example. The block reward is 24.88 ETH, out of which 2 ETH is the reward for the found block and 22.88 ETH is the fee for transactions within the block. So the 2Miners pool got 24.88 ETH for one block and then distributed the reward among their miners.
If you want to see what the fees are at the moment, you can go to the Found Blocks section of the 2Miners Ethereum pool. Look at the Reward column. The bigger the blocks, the better for miners and the worse for regular Ethereum network users as they have to pay higher fees.
Smart contracts load the network much more than regular transactions. If you see that the network is overloaded, the cause is smart contracts, that is DeFi projects, various exchanges, kitties, etc. If you want to understand how ETH network fees are measured and learn about the gas and its price, make sure to read: What is Gas in Ethereum? Ethereum Transaction Fees.
The more the network is loaded by transactions and smart contracts, the more ETH you mine daily.
In July 2021 Ethereum plans to implement the EIP-1559 network upgrade. It will lower the fees for Ethereum users, but also lower miner rewards. How much lower will rewards be? It is still unclear, but we will update the article as soon as we have more details.
Why Do Mining Calculators Lie?
Mining calculators can’t predict the future. They work with past data. A calculator is just a tool that helps you estimate mining profitability. A calculator doesn’t know what the network load is going to be in an hour or what the mining pool luck is today, tomorrow, etc. Nobody knows.
Here is an example.
The network is filled with crypto kitties. Everybody is selling them. Or a certain project promises free tokens, and everybody is rushing to send a request to get them. Fees in Ethereum network increased, miner reward doubled. You open the calculator and see that at the moment your GPU is going to bring you $5 daily. You happily start mining. But on the next day it turns out that you only made $2. Why did this happen?
When we started mining, the kitties frenzy had ended and free tokens had already been given away. The network load went down. The total block reward decreased from 6 ETH to 3 ETH. Plus, the Ethereum rate went down, and the pool wasn’t lucky on that day. This is how $5 can turn into $2.
And vice versa. A calculator may estimate your profit at $2, whereas in reality you would get $10. It also happens.
Remember that in the calculator you should estimate your profit in the cryptocurrency you are going to mine.
Mining Profitability: Dollars vs ETH
Miners often look at their profit in dollars or their national currency. It makes sense as they are mining to maximize their profit in dollars or another currency by using their mining power. It’s completely normal.
But they are often puzzled by the same question: why did mining profitability go down? The answer is quite simple: the Ethereum price went down. If you look at the profit in your national currency instead of ETH, make sure to check the current Ethereum rate before looking for problems with your hardware or pool.
Why Did Ethereum Mining Profit Increase?
The 2Miners pool team rarely gets this question. When miners get more than they should, they usually keep their joy to themselves and don’t share with anyone. But if you are wondering why the calculator estimated 0.1 ETH per day while you actually got twice as much, make sure to re-read this article thoroughly.
You are likely to find the factor that triggered the increase in profit in your case. Usually you might need to consider ETH network load and then the network difficulty. You may also consider the pool luck on the last day. And if you estimate profits in dollars, then the first thing you should do is to look up ETH exchange rate. Who knows, It might have skyrocketed making you a millionaire.
Remember to join our Telegram chat and follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible.
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.
Nvidia RTX 3060 Mines Ethereum without Restrictions. GPU Test Results
March 22, 2021
The RTX 3060 release has become the most memorable of the Nvidia releases. The green brand reduced the hash rate of Ethereum mining on its new graphics card so that it’s less desirable to miners. It was working as intended at first, but now the restriction is removed. We tested the RTX 3060 and measured its hash rate. Keep reading to find out the results.
First, let’s see what happened. In the second half of February before the launch of the RTX 3060, Nvidia announced that Ethereum mining performance for the new graphics card will be restricted. There were two reasons for it. The first is to resolve the short supply issue that Nvidia was having with the RTX 30 series right after the launch. The second reason is that Nvidia was promoting a new device for Ethereum mining called Nvidia CMP.
The restriction worked. In the first seconds of Ethereum mining the RTX 3060 was giving out 42 MH/s, but then the hash rate was going down to 24-26 MH/s. Clearly, this made the new GPU less desirable for miners, so the Nvidia plan to tackle the short supply seemed to be working.
Everything changed at the beginning of March. There were rumors about the release of the special mode that removed hash rate restrictions. The information seemed fake at first, but eventually, the author shared more screenshots and proved that it was true.
Now, a week later, everything has changed. The new driver for the RTX 3060 removes Ethereum mining restrictions and it’s available to all users. We tested the update and can confirm that it’s working. The test results are below.
Nvidia RTX 3060 Ethereum Mining Hash Rate
Nvidia accidentally removed restrictions. The company released Nvidia Dev 470.05 Beta developer drivers. Miners tested the new software and noticed that it allowed the RTX 3060 to mine Ethereum at full capacity.
At first Nvidia added the drivers to the official website. But when they found out what the update could do, they deleted it. The webpage now says that the drivers are currently not available.
Luckily, miners uploaded the file to the cloud storage. You can download Nvidia Dev 470.05 Beta here.
The 2Miners pool team tested the drivers on the MSI RTX Gaming X 3060 12 GB. We were testing on Windows 10. The graphics card was connected to the external X16 riser. The test on Ethash lasted for about 40 minutes. No issues with the hash rate were detected. Additionally, the monitor was off throughout the whole test.
It’s important to note as according to the source mining was only possible with the monitor turned on. It turned out that the monitor is not a necessary condition.
As we found out later, the RTX 3060 12GB can maintain the hash rate only when connected through the PCI-E x16. So for mining with multiple graphics cards you need a motherboard with a lot of x16 ports. It's usually a server motherboard.
Regardless of the details, the test results are great. The RTX 3060 gave out 48 MH/s at the consumption of 120 W according to GPU-Z v.2.37.0. We used the T-Rex v.0.19.12 mining software.
Overclocking is set up through MSI AfterBurner v.4.6.3 Final. The core clock and voltage are set at a fixed Curve of 1150 Mhz and 850 mv. The memory is set at +1150.
We took more measurements. At the consumption of 105 W, the RTX 3060 gives out 44 MH/s. The temperature doesn’t exceed 50-55 degrees.
On other algorithms the hash rate is significantly lower. Ravencoin and Zcoin hash rates lag behind by 1-2% in comparison with the result of the Nvidia v.461.72 driver.
Nvidia RTX 3060 Profitability
Considering new facts, the 2Miners team adjusted the data in the 2CryptoCalc mining profitability calculator so that the information corresponding to the correct hash rate. You can expect to get $4.79 from mining Ethereum with one.
Once you adjust the profit for electricity costs that differ from miner to miner, the result will be slightly lower.
Here are the results of the RTX 3060 Ethereum mining for different time intervals. The graphics card can bring you $143 per month.
The situation is comical as Nvidia reassured everyone multiple times that the RTX 3060 mining block is secure but in the end it was them to give miners the possibility to get rid of the restrictions. So the current situation on the market is unlikely to change. New graphics cards will still be in short supply, while models in stock will be available at a much higher price.
Remember to join our Telegram chat and follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible.
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.
Definitive Guide: How to Create and Sell NFTs. 2Miners Crypto Art Collection
March 17, 2021
The major cryptocurrency trend at the beginning of 2021 is digital art with the use of blockchain. Blockchain properties guarantee the authenticity of NFT-based works of art and allow users to make unique collections of pictures, animations, and songs right on their computer. 2Miners unique pictures are now listed as well. Let’s see how we created them and how to buy them.
Artists use NFTs because the blockchain is invariable and transparent. Each user can verify the authenticity of a certain work of art and be sure that it can’t be counterfeited. Plus, such tokens allow artists to make a profit even after they sell their works. It motivates them to create and share their collections.
The hype around NFT reached world-famous auction houses. Last week Christie’s sold the most expensive NFT in the world called EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS. The work was estimated at $69.3 million and looks as follows.
Now collectors and mining enthusiasts can get 2Miners pool brand pictures. Here is how we created them.
Selling NFTs example
We chose OpenSea, one of the most popular platforms.
Its popularity is confirmed by Ethereum Gas Tracker that shows which smart contract in the network used most gas. OpenSea is on the third place after Uniswap decentralized exchange and USDT, the main stablecoin in the cryptocurrency industry.
You will surely need a MetaMask wallet to work with NFTs. You install it as a browser extension and it allows you to interact with different platforms within the Ethereum network.
You should transfer ETH to the wallet to pay for the account registration on Opensea. We spent 0.0726 ETH at the current gas price of 172 Gwei. Gas price can change at any moment so we recommend adding at least 0.1 ETH to the wallet to avoid problems and make sure that registration is successful.
It is equivalent to $175–$180 at the current exchange rate. This sum is enough to sell ANY number of items on the platform. The good thing is that you are charged only after you list your first item.
Go to OpenSea and click Create -> My Collections.
Choose Create New Collection.
Add your token name and description, then choose Create.
That’s it, you created your collection. Choose Add items to add items to your collection. In this case they are our pictures.
Click Edit to edit your collection. You can change the cover image of your collection by choosing a pencil icon in the upper part of the page.
Add a Featured Image, which can be the same as a Logo, and different links to your resources.
Choose the fee amount that you will get every time someone buys your picture. You can also leave it at zero. Then indicate the wallet address where you would like to get payments.
This address can be different from the wallet address on Metamask that you use to create a collection. This way you can get payments to your cold wallet which is a more secure way to store funds.
Then you can choose the item layout in the new collection and add other collection creators.
Now that the collection is ready, we can add the first item. Click Add New Item.
It can be any media file up to 100 MB. Add a description. You can also add a link to the page that describes your work.
It’s also possible to add Unlockable Content. It is additional information that will be made available to the buyer. You can only add text here, but you can add links to any file, article, etc. 2Miners content includes a bonus: a unique creation date and drafts from the creator.
Click Create.
Add all remaining items. From time to time as you are adding or editing elements you might see a notification from MetaMask to the right asking you to give consent. Nothing to worry about here – you can give consent. You will not be charged at this stage.
Our collection is ready. You can check out our collection and buy unique items here.
After you create a collection, the pictures you add are truly yours. Any blockchain user can verify it.
Now it’s time to list our works for sale. Click on the picture and click Sell in the upper right corner.
There are three selling options.
Fixed price, or dutch auction with a declining price.
Auction to the highest bidder.
Selling a bundle of items. Works only through an auction to the highest bidder.
We chose an auction with an initial bid of 0.1 ETH to sell the picture with Vitalik. You can choose the currency. Available options are ETH/DAI/USDC. It’s important to note that there is a Reserve Price in the settings that can’t be less than 1 ETH and can’t be disabled.
It means that if nobody bids at least 1 ETH for your item, the auction will end without selling. This way the platform protects itself against wasting money on gas needed to sell an item and going in the red.
Click Post Your Listing.
For the first listing the platform asks you to interact with the smart contract that requires you to pay 395 317 GAS. Even though you don’t transfer ETH, you use your funds to execute this smart contract. Depending on the current network load it might cost you a lot. You can find the current gas price on EthGasStation.
You can try making a transaction with a lower gas price and hope for the best, or you can wait till the network gas price goes down. However, this might not happen in the near future considering the rising popularity of the decentralized finance industry.
Click Confirm and keep the page open. Wait for the smart contract to initiate your account.
As soon as it happens, the platform will ask you for permission to spend your wETH. This time the amount will be much lower. Click Confirm and wait.
The platform notifies you that this action needs to be done only once for each account. Then Metamask will send you another message asking to authorize the transaction.
The listing is ready.
Now let’s list Trump. This time we will set a fixed price of 0.5 ETH. Then we set the Ending Price of 0.5 ETH. It means that we are not going to use the auction with a declining price. We set an expiration date to 14 days.
Click Post Your Listing. Metamask will ask you to “sign” the listing. This time it’s free. The good thing is that all further listings will be free. If you manage to sell your item, the platform takes a fee from the money you make from selling.
As you can see in the screenshot below, we listed two out of ten items in the collection.
Transforming your artwork, photo or song into an NFT is quite easy. You just need to have access to the work itself and a certain amount of cryptocurrency. Also, don’t forget to take into account the value of a picture. This will maximize your chances to sell it.
We believe that the hype around unique tokens and digital art will keep growing. Christie’s auction house has joined the industry which means it has potential. It is possible that in the future most works will be sold using this model with cryptocurrency.
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 Overclock Nvidia and AMD Graphics Cards on Different Algorithms
March 12, 2021
Cryptocurrencies have gained a lot of traction this year. Bitcoin is at 58 thousand, while smaller coins are also setting new all-time records. At the same time, mining experiences the upsurge in popularity. At the end of November 11 thousand of people were mining cryptocurrency in the 2Miners pool, whereas now there are over 44 thousand. If you are also thinking about cryptocurrency mining and you are planning to use Nvidia graphics cards, this article is for you. We’ll explain how to overclock graphics cards to maximize profit and do it right for different algorithms.
The article was prepared by Denis Trushin, Head of the Advanced Technology Department at ADM Techno.
Miners provide protection to cryptocurrencies against the potential attack or cancelation of a transaction. More miners in the network ensure better protection and make attacking the network more difficult or even impossible due to the lack of necessary mining equipment in the world (that is, an attacker can’t rent enough graphics cards to cover 50% of the network hash rate).
All PoW networks (Proof of Work) pay miners with their coins for this job. They either issue coins or take them from transaction fees. When miners find a new block in the cryptocurrency network, they get a reward plus transaction fees included in the block
What to Mine in 2021
At the end of 2020 – beginning of 2021, Ethereum has been the most profitable coin in mining. It is known as Ethereum or ETH. Miners also call it Ether.
To mine efficiently in 2021, you need a GPU with at least 5GB of RAM.
The graphics cards that can’t mine Ether anymore are relatively good at mining Ravencoin RVN (we’ll discuss it later).
Nvidia and AMD GPU Overclocking Settings for Ethereum Mining
If you are not willing to get into the setup details and just looking for final values, you can find them in the tables below. We still recommend reading the whole article so that you understand how GPU overclocking and setup for mining work. The article will help you apply more precise settings to your GPUs, get a higher hash rate, and decrease energy consumption, thus maximizing your profit. But if you need it asap or you don’t feel like getting into details, use our table. To set up GPU overclocking, you need to install MSI Afterburner.
We found the best GPU overclocking settings for Nvidia and AMD and put them on the table. The columns contain a model, core clock, memory clock, power limit, and expected performance. Here are Nvidia’s overclocking settings.
Here are AMD overclocking settings.
If you want to learn more about the overclocking process and GPU settings for mining, keep reading.
How to Overclock a GPU for Ethereum Mining
It's important to note that as you are overclocking and testing, always monitor the GPU temperature. You can only mine Ether safely if the core temperature is below 65 degrees. If it's higher, you are mining at your own risk.
The basic GPU setup for Ethereum mining is quite simple.
First, we should identify the max memory clock at +25 MHz intervals. Find the clock value that makes the GPU driver crash (reload), and move 50 MHz down to the stable area.
Find the core voltage that will give you the desired GPU energy consumption. Lower voltage results in lower consumption, but also in a lower max hash rate. The relationship is not proportional. When you lower the consumption by 20–25% from the standard, the speed decreases only by 10–15%.
Find the max stable core clock (at +25 MHz intervals), move 25 MHz down from it.
Fine-tuning would give us an additional 2–6% of hash rate or 2–4% of energy efficiency. We will not go into more detail in this article.
The instructions above are good for any AMD GPU. It's a bit trickier to set up high-efficiency mining for Nvidia, so we will look at each series separately.
Mining with Nvidia on Windows (P2 and P0 States)
There is an issue with Nvidia graphics cards on Windows. The GPU memory at a standard clock commits a few errors that are not critical when rendering images in games, but they may be critical when making exact calculations. So for CUDA, Nvidia designed a special lower memory clock state (P2).
GPUs switch to this state automatically, but miners often try to maximize the hash rate by overclocking memory significantly to +700, +1000, or even more. We have a situation where P2 lowers the clock, while a mining device increases it at the same time. The mining device keeps working, but when you turn it off, P2 switches back, while manually added overclock remains. This leads to clocks that GPUs can’t manage. As a result, the driver crashes when you turn off or restart the mining software.
It's important to note that switching from P2 to P0 doesn't make a hash rate higher. It just enhances stability when you turn your mining software on or off and reboot it.
The best thing to do is to disable CUDA P2 state through the nvInspector tool (more specifically, through its nvProfileInspector subtool). Find the CUDA Force P2 state parameter, disable it, and launch your miner.
Another important thing is that Force P2 state is restored anytime you install a new Nvidia graphics card, so make sure to double-check.
Ethereum Mining on Pascal (GTX 10xx Series)
The 10xx series wasn’t designed for mining, so in 2020 miners with the 10xx cards experienced a drop in hash rate when mining Ethereum. Miners had to increase energy consumption to maintain the hash rate which affected energy efficiency.
It's important to note that with each new Ethereum epoch (they change every four days) energy consumption of Nvidia GTX 10xx graphics cards will increase by a bit until it reaches the GPU max power limit. It can happen approximately in 1.5 years.
Nvidia decided not to update the 10xx GPU driver for Windows 7, so you can’t mine Ether efficiently on Windows 7 using the 10xx GPUs. The problem was fixed for the 16xx, 20xx, and 30xx. If you want to mine Ether with the 10xx, use Windows 10 or Rave OS.
Ethereum Mining Overclocking on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB), 1070, 1070Ti
These GPUs have GDDR5 memory, so their overclocking algorithm is the same.
Turn on the mining software without overclocking. Start raising the memory clock little by little at +50 MHz intervals. Find the clock value that makes the GPU driver crash (reload), and move 50 MHz down to the stable area.
Start lowering PL little by little, by around 1%. The GPU starts consuming less power and the temperature goes down. At some point, the speed will start falling. Stop at 5% of the speed decrease.
Start raising the core clock little by little. Find the clock value that makes the GPU driver crash, and move 25 MHz down to the stable area.
The speed lost at Step 2 must be fully restored now. If it’s not fully restored, you could raise the Power Limit by a bit, but in this case, energy consumption would also go up.
Ethereum Mining on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 and 1080Ti
The 1080 and 1080Ti feature high-timing fast GDDR5X memory that initially wasn’t as good at Ethereum mining as GDDR5. However, after the release of ETHlargementPill-r2 that lowers timings for this type of memory, they started mining Ether quite successfully.
The pill makes memory less stable and lowers max overclocking potential. For the earliest GTX 1080 card revisions (Rev.A) the pill is unstable even at standard clocks, so to ensure GPU stability you have to lower the memory clock.
If the mining software is still unstable after that, you should use the soft alternative to the pill for such GPUs. It’s the –mt parameter in t-rex that goes from 0 to 6. The higher you set this parameter, the more it lowers timings but also stability.
After you successfully activate the pill or apply the –mt parameter, follow the same overclocking process as with the 1060 and 1070.
Ethereum Mining on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 16xx and 20xx
These GPUs can easily place large volumes of data in the memory and have powerful cores.
The overclocking algorithm is simple.
Lower PL to the min value.
Start raising the memory clock little by little at +50 MHz intervals. Find the clock value that makes the GPU driver crash, and move 50 MHz down to the stable area.
Check whether higher PL leads to a higher hash rate.
If it does (which it does for some 2080 and 2080Ti models), find the max hash rate you can obtain by raising PL. Do the following steps next.
Start lowering PL little by little, by around 1%. The GPU starts consuming less power and the temperature goes down. At some point, the speed will start falling. Stop at 5% of the speed decrease.
Start raising the core clock little by little. Find the clock value that makes the GPU driver crash, move 25 MHz down to the stable area.
The speed lost at Step 2 must be fully restored now. If it’s not fully restored, you could raise the Power Limit by a bit, but in this case, energy consumption would also go up.
ETH Mining on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 30хх
The 3070, 3080, and 3090 are the trickiest Nvidia cards in terms of overclocking, so let’s get into detail. The 3060 and 3060Ti overclocking is the same as with the 20xx series.
Ethereum Mining on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
When you are overclocking the 3070 and other older GPUs of the 30xx series, it’s important to understand what the card is missing. The graphics card normally gives out 60 MH/s, you can get 63-64 MH/s by overclocking. The card has a powerful core, which is quite useless for Ethereum mining that doesn’t require more than 700-800 MHz. So make sure to limit your GPU appetite.
The 3070 is easy to overclock. The first step is to overclock the memory to the stable maximum. Then lower PL.
Start raising the memory clock little by little at +50 MHz intervals. Find the clock value that makes the GPU driver crash, and move 50 MHz down to the stable area. The effective memory clock in MSI Afterburner must be 8100–8400 MHz.
Start lowering PL by 1%. The GPU starts consuming less power and the temperature goes down. At some point, the speed will start falling. Go back by a few percent.
At some point when you lower PL, the core clock may start fluctuating, going below 1 GHz from time to time and then going back in a second. It means that the graphics card doesn't have enough Power Limit.
This effect is called throttling. It’s important to note that t-rex and other mining programs may display a high hash rate, but in reality, it is 4-5 MH/s lower than the displayed value.
When the card heats and fans are overclocked, make sure to raise PL a little. Nvidia includes the fan power consumption into PL, so the core may start lacking power.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't over-constrain PL. The 3070 normal consumption for mining is 130 W at the hash rate of 63 MH/s.
You will get the best result on Windows 7 by setting the core voltage at 713-725 mV and lowering the core clock. With good memory you will get a hash rate of 64.6 MH/s at the consumption of 121 W. It’s t-rex unadjusted for the devfee.
By using -forcePState:0,0 command in the Nvidia Inspector you can get 61 MH/s at the consumption of 107 W, or 570 MH/s per kWh. In this case first you need to restore the operating mode after reloading, and only then activate mining. Otherwise, the driver will crash periodically. It makes no sense to save 10 W per GPU.
Ethereum Mining on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080
When you are overclocking the 3080 and other older GPUs of the 30xx series, it’s important to understand what the card is missing. The 3080 core is excessively powerful for Ethereum mining, so you should limit it as much as you can first, without throttling. Then you can overclock the memory.
Windows overclocking.
Bring the memory clock to a minimum. Set the core voltage at 750 mV using MSI Afterburner, save, and check the memory clock. It should be around 7500 MHz.
Start setting the voltage in the lower range (743 mV – 725 mV — 713 mV — 700 mV). Find the value that brings the memory clock down to 5000 MHz (P3 state), and make one step up from it. Make sure that the memory clock is now above 7000 MHz.
Lower the core to the min value. Activate mining.
Start raising memory clock little by little at +50 MHz intervals.
Then you have two options.
Find the clock value that makes the GPU driver crash, and move 50 MHz down to the stable area.
Then you can raise the clock a little and check whether the hash rate is growing. If it is, keep raising the clock until you reach the limit.
Find the limit after which the core starts fluctuating and falling below 1 GHz. We have a GPU with a weak power supply, so we stop here and enjoy the hash rate above 90 MH/s.
Ethereum Mining on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090
The 3090 overclocking is identical to the 3080. Just keep in mind that the 3090 acts as the excessively overclocked 3080 with a weak power supply.
AMD RX 5ххх and 6ххх Overclocking for Mining
Let’s see how to overclock AMD graphics cards from its new and quite effective series. Unlike Nvidia, these GPUs don’t have special smart states at the BIOS level.
So Windows doesn’t help you get a better hash rate. Furthermore, it lowers stability. It’s not surprising that most “red” miners (AMD logo is red) prefer more stable Linux-based solutions.
Such systems make overclocking easy.
Overclock the memory to 900+ MHz.
Set the core at 1350-1375 MHz.
Lower the core voltage little by little at intervals of 5 until it remains stable. You can go as low as 800 mV for sure and you can try going lower depending on your graphics card.
Lower the memory voltage. You can set 800 mV for sure, but if you go lower, make sure to check stability.
As a result, you maximized your hash rate and minimized consumption.
The AMD RX 5600 user provided us with overclocking instructions.
The core is from 1100 to 1200, and the memory is from 950 – lower until the graphics card becomes stable that is, up to 900 at intervals of 5. You can try bringing the core and memory voltage to 740. However, stability is important to me, and my setup had been working for 18 days without crashing.
Here are the results for the RX 5600.
As for the AMD RX 5700, you can set the core at 1300-1325-1350-1375 and bring the memory to 930 and then lower at intervals of 5. If they are not stable, go down to 900. The voltage is 780.
Here are the results for the RX 5700.
Nvidia Mining on Kawpow
Kawpow algorithm with RVN as the main cryptocurrency entered the mining industry with a boom. The Ravencoin hash rate table below demonstrates the growth in popularity. The hash rate in the 2Miners pool has increased 5 times in a month.
At the same time, the RVN price increased by 500% in 40 days. On February 20, 2021, it set the record of 28.5 cents.
The algorithm works even with 3GB GPUs, adjusts well (many GPUs that are problematic on other algorithms work well on kawpow), and speed correlates to GPU PL. Furthermore, RVN is featured on many major exchanges.
If you look at all the factors, the algorithm comes second best in terms of prominence and profitability in GPU mining after Ethash.
Windows 10 requires GPUs with at least 4 GB of RAM. For Windows 7 and Rave OS 3 GB of RAM is still enough.
GPU Overclocking for Kawpow
Setting up GPUs for Kawpow is quite easy.
First, we should identify the max memory clock at +25 MHz intervals. Find the clock value that makes the GPU driver crash, and move 50 MHz down to the stable area.
Find the core voltage that will give you the desired GPU energy consumption. Lower voltage results in lower consumption, but also in a lower max hash rate. The relationship is not proportional. When you lower the consumption by 25–35% from the standard, the speed decreases only by 15–20%. This gives us a unique opportunity to schedule GPUs to overclock automatically at the best time for multi-rate meters.
Find the max stable core clock (at +25 MHz intervals), move 25 MHz down from it.
Fine-tuning would give us an additional 2–6% of hash rate or 2–4% of energy efficiency. We will not go into more detail in this article.
Make sure to check out our Telegram chat for more tips.
Energy Efficiency in Mining. Operating modes
Any GPU can operate in power-saving mode, but overclocking allows you to maximize the hash rate. At the same time, energy efficiency suffers.
Not all rigs work well with any algorithm, so every expert user must test their GPU operation at maximum and minimum capacity and choose the optimal mode, considering operating temperature and electricity costs.
You can save the results as links to 2CryptoCalc that allows you in just a few clicks to evaluate whether your algorithm is better or worse than alternatives in terms of the current mining profitability specifically for your rigs.
Electricity costs and current profit are crucial when you are choosing an algorithm and rig operating mode.
Max Energy Efficiency and New Rigs
Sooner or later, all miners end up estimating the max hash rate per 1 kW of a rig power due to either electricity cost or the limit of “free” power.
Here are the max hash rates adjusted for the dev fee per 1 kW of utility power with Platinum PSUs for the 10xx, 20xx, and 30xx series.
* – The 30xx series stats are up-to-date as of December 25, 2020.
As you can see the 20xx series has a marginal benefit per 1 kW 1.5x higher than the previous one. It’s mainly due to the enhanced memory access algorithm. For algorithms that mostly use the GPU core, the result is less impressive – 33%.
Energy efficiency deteriorates with each new Ether epoch.
PS
This year we expect a lot of new GPU releases. So the balance of power may change with new GPUs and mining software entering the market. Who knows, we might even see new mining algorithms. The article is up-to-date as of the beginning of March 2021. We will update it as we get the new data.
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.
February 2021 Work Progress Report: Stratum-ping Tool, New 2CryptoCalc Features
March 1, 2021
Ravencoin and Ethereum pool updates, ETH mining software testing, 2Miners stratum-ping tool, and new 2CryptoCalc features.
Ravencoin Mining Pool News
We have decreased the minimum payout on Ravencoin (RVN) pool from 50 RVN to 10 RVN due to the constant demand and the recent RVN price growth.
That means you could reach the minimum payout in about 1 day with an average GPU. Please remember that we cover the payout fees. No extra fees are charged.
We’ve also increased the number of PPLNS shares from 20 000 to 100 000 for Ravencoin PPLNS. This will not change your daily reward anyhow. This should just help the small miners with a low hashrate (for example a single video card) to participate in a larger amount of blocks.
There are more than 21 500 miners constantly mining in our Ethereum mining pool. The pool hashrate has grown significantly in February. That’s why we’ve increased the number of PPLNS shares for the ETH pool from 100 000 to 300 000.
The more Ethereum Network is loaded, the more fees the ETH users pay, and the more rewards the miners get. This February we’ve seen just insane days with 8-10 ETH per block on average. For example, this single block 11917348 found by our pool has brought as much as 26.93 ETH. Thanks for the PPLNS system everything has been paid to our miners.
2Miners Stratum-Ping Tool Release
This February 2Miners Team released an awesome tool that lets you check your connection to any mining pool. It is called stratum-ping and it is available for free on github. This tool works on Windows, Linux, or Mac. Our post Check the Real Ping To the Mining Pool Server With Stratum-Ping Tool contains the guide on how to use this software with detailed examples. Give it a try and remember that not all the ping is the same.
2CryptoCalc Updates
Our mining profitability calculator 2CryptoCalc is constantly updating. This month we’ve added new GPU’s like Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060. This is the first Nvidia GPU for which the manufacturer has intentionally reduced the hashrate. This has been done to prevent the miners from buying the card to let the gamers finally upgrade their computers.
Mining software comparison page has been updated in 2CryptoCalc as well. Now you could check if the software supports AMD or Nvidia GPUs for each of the algorithms.
It is really easy to use this table. Green is for Nvidia, Red is for AMD 😉
Choosing the Best Ethereum Mining Software
This February we’ve done a new test to define the best Ethereum mining software. The last time when we tested mining software T-rex and Gminer were the best for Nvidia, while TeamRedMiner and lolMiner were the best for AMD. This time we repeated the testing with some improvements.
We’ve started the special pool for testing purposes with a low share difficulty. 3 hours in this test pool equal 408.75 hours (17 days) in a real pool. We’ve talked about the confidence level of this experiment as well.
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.
Stratum Discard Flag: How 2Miners Improves Your Miner Performance
February 8, 2021
Frequent restarts of the mining software solution search could cause the loss of hashing power and lower the possibility of finding the block. In this post, we talk about the stratum innovation called discard flag and how could its usage increase the hashing rate of the miner.
We live in a modern world where innovations happen very frequently and the crypto mining scene is not an exception. With the number of new things out there it’s often hard to keep track of what new is happening around you. Moreover, the amount of work required to keep a mining pool hosting several different coins is actually much more than one could think: daily, new splits are happening on various coins’ networks, there are various security and feature updates coming out that require the updating and testing of the infrastructure and of course, there are dozens of support request from our fellow miners, seeking answers of advice.
In such a world it is still important to pay attention to the smaller things that may sound insignificant to many but that actually do a noticeable impact on the miners’ daily income and performance — and many other pools don’t do that as things “just work” without it. One of these smaller things is the so-called discard flag, and 2Miners are making full use of it.
What Is a Discard Flag?
Let’s step back a little and do a quick review of how mining works in general. The cryptocurrency node is forming a new block that the solution has to be found for. The solution is a special hash number that “signs” the header of the newly formed block and aligns it against the previous block — this is a base principle of how the blockchain works and maintains its integrity. Then the pool software (there are some open source and freely available ones, yet most major pools, 2Miners included, are running on their own proprietary solutions) takes the newly formed block and distributes the “work orders” to all of the connected miners.
The miner software by itself is a giant number-crunching machine that takes the “work order” and distributes it among its computing cores — this is usually the GPU in the mining graphic cards or special ASIC chips. Then the mining computing cores try billions of combinations of different numbers until it arrives at the right solution that matches the “work order”, or, if it couldn’t do it until the next “work order” came in, discards the computations and starts anew.
Naturally, the blockchain is a living thing and new transactions get added to the pending pool every second or so. When this happens, the cryptocurrency node adds these to the new pending block and broadcasts the update to the connected pool software indicating that the block has changed. But the trick here is that often while the block did change, the actual “work order” did not! Yet the pool blindly rebroadcasts the new (and as we know, not-so-new) work order to its miners, causing their computing powers to scrap what they have been doing and start the search from the beginning with the newly arrived data.
NiceHash, the most known resource that allows people to sell and rent the hash power, is well known for proposing innovations and suggestions to the mining protocol that powers communications between the pool and its miners — Stratum. One of their proposals was a so-called “discard” flag that gives the connected miners a hint whether the arriving work order is completely new or if it is an update to the previous one.
Discard Flag Usage
Smart mining software (such as Gminer or Lolminer) take that into account and can make decisions whether they should call a “full stop” to their connected computational powers or if they could allow searching further, without causing a harsh abort.
As you can easily guess, frequent restarts of the solution search cause the loss of hashing power and lower the possibility of finding the correct solution. But it turns out that most mining pools out there are not utilizing this at all, blindly relaying what the cryptocurrency node has told to its miners. In the contrast, we at 2Miners are making full use of the modern proposals and use the “discard” flag gracefully to let the miners know whether they can continue searching or not. This increases the miners’ hash rate output by a noticeable number.
In a modern world, even small things matter. It is the attention to detail and a strive for excellence that makes our pool stand out from the crowd. Thanks for continuing to work with us and together we’ll be driving the world to a better future!
Remember to follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible and join our Telegram chat with more than 3000 active users.
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.
Last time when we tested mining software T-rex and Gminer were the best for Nvidia, while TeamRedMiner and lolMiner were the best for AMD. Three months later we decided to repeat testing with some improvements.
Why compare ETH mining software?
Clearly, any miner would like to know which mining software is the best, the most reliable, and has the highest hash rate. It’s important to look at the hashrate reported by the pool rather than by mining software. Pools pay you for shares received from mining software. Don’t be fooled by the hash rate displayed in your rig console as it’s completely irrelevant.
So-called reported hashrate has nothing to do with your profit.
We regularly see debates about the best mining software on Youtube, Reddit, Telegram chats, and on forums. “T-rex is the fastest, Phoenix overstates its hashrate, Gminer is the best of all, lolMiner is the most reasonable option, nothing compares to TeamRedMiner, you can’t figure out NBMiner if you’re not Chinese” – that’s what we hear all the time.
What is wrong with our old experiment and why are we holding the new one?
There are new software versions available.
The old experiment lacked precision and we figured out how to fix it.
Ethereum price is at its record high and you’ve got to make the most of your mining hardware.
Test Conditions
We tested the best ETH mining software to see which is the best of the best. How do you detect the best? Simple. The more shares mining software sends to the pool, the higher the reward it gets. It doesn’t matter whether a pool uses PPLNS, PPLNT, PPS, or PPS+ as a reward system.
More shares mean more money.
The developer’s fee is completely irrelevant to us. We counted only those shares that reached the pool and appeared in the miner balance. It doesn’t matter how long mining software is mining to the developer’s wallet. The experiment lasted 3 hours, so a developer’s fee was mined multiple times.
We chose two configured rigs for the experiment: one with 9 Nvidia 1660Ti graphics cards, and the other with 4 AMD 5700 graphics cards. They mine Ether in the 2Miners ETH pool 24/7, we didn’t change settings for any specific piece of mining software. Rigs were operative for 3 hours for each program. The experiment starts when mining software launches.
We created an Ethereum pool with a low share difficulty.
Current share difficulty in the Ethereum pool is 8.72G. We set it at 64M for the test pool, which is 136x lower so that we get a lot of shares and don’t have to keep the experiment running for months. It is an optimal value to maximize the number of shares and make sure that mining software handles the load and the processor doesn’t slow down testing.
3 hours in this test pool equal 408.75 hours (17 days) in a real pool.
How Pools and Mining Software Calculate Hashrate
We agreed that the number of shares in the pool at the end of the experiment is the most important parameter. Plus, the final table features two types of hashrate:
Real (from the pool). It’s an average hashrate obtained during the 3-hour experiment.
Hashrate from mining software, that is what you see in the program when it’s running.
We took it from the miner log at the very end of the experiment. It was the last hash rate value before closing the software.
Hashrate in mining software is pretty straightforward. The program goes through millions of block solutions per second. Make sure to read: What Is Mining? Mining Luck. The software calculates how many solutions it already went through, and it doesn’t matter whether they are good or bad. Every new solution adds +1 to the count.
Say you see 200 MH/s in the miner window. It means that your mining software uses your graphics cards to go through 200 million solutions per second.
On the contrary, hashrate in the pool needs to be calculated. Each share sent to the pool has a difficulty no less than 64M (share difficulty is set by the pool). Say mining software sends 1200 shares in 10 minutes. So the average number of shares it sends per second is 1200 / 10 / 60 = 2. We multiply 2 shares by a share difficulty of 64M and get a hashrate of 128 MH/s.
In cryptocurrency mining everything can be explained and calculated. Blockchain remembers everything.
Best Ethereum Mining Software for Nvidia. Test results
Gminer came first. T-rex came a close second. It’s worth mentioning that the two became winners in the previous experiment as well. The only difference was that Gminer came second at that time.
How accurate is mining software hashrate? We think it’s quite accurate. 285 MH/s in the miner window vs 282 MH/s in the pool – the difference is caused by the developer’s fee.
Mining software developer’s fee is charged this way: for a short period of time, the software is mining to the developer’s wallet. Usually less than a minute every hour.
The only open-source mining software Ethminer came third. It doesn’t charge a developer’s fee, so hashrates in the program and in the pool are almost identical with a 0.01% difference. As you can see, if mining software is free, it doesn’t mean that you get more profit. If you choose Gminer or T-rex, you gain more.
LolMiner came fourth. LolMiner released its Nvidia mining software just a few months ago, but it already surpassed the most popular mining software Phoenix in terms of efficiency.
Phoenix and NBMiner came last. Both have much higher hashrates in the miner window than in reality. As to Phoenix, we already established last time that we should look not at its Eth speed, but at its Eth: Effective speed. This time Effective Speed was 276.86 MH/s which seems accurate and corresponds to the number of shares in the pool. Phoenix shows hashrate in 3 ways: speed, average speed (5 min), effective speed. We think you should only look at effective speed.
Example from the miner log:
Eth speed: 284.577 MH/s
Eth: Average speed (5 min): 284.557 MH/s
Eth: Effective speed: 276.86 MH/s; at pool: 276.83 MH/s
Sadly, NBMiner hashrate in the miner window turned out to be higher than in the pool. Hashrate reported by NBMiner was higher than that of other mining programs. We checked the log and didn’t see any rejected or stale shares.
It means that Phoenix and NBMiner overstate their hashrates which is in no way beneficial to you.
Testing AMD Mining Software
Mining rig used for testing:
Motherboard: MSI Z270 A-pro
Processor: Celeron G3930
RAM: 4 GB
SSD: 120 GB
PSU: Cougar CMX 1200W
4 GPUs: AMD Power Color RX 5700 Reference with Micron memory, flashed into XT
Best Ethereum mining software for AMD. Test results
TeamReadMiner came first just like last time. This time it’s even more distant from its competitors with a hashrate 5% higher than that of the runner-up. TRM hashrates in the miner and in the pool are almost identical (it is possible that TeamRedMiner doesn’t count the dev fee when it calculates hashrate).
Phoenix and lolMiner came second and third with a tiny difference. Phoenix hashrate was too high as always, while effective speed was extremely accurate: 214.58 MH/s.
We remind you to look only at Effective Speed if you use Phoenix Miner.
NBMiner came fourth lagging behind TeamRedMiner by a margin of 10%.
We wanted to test GMiner with AMD video cards as well but it failed to start most likely due to the high memory overclocking. We’ve sent a bug report to the GMiner developers and we hope to see this mining software in our future AMD tests.
Confidence Level and Future Testing
This time our experiment was 5 times more accurate than last time (we tested 5 times more shares). It is still not enough to hold a highly accurate experiment. TeamReadMiner shared their thoughts about comparing mining software. They say that it’s important to consider mining as a Poisson process with all consequent measurement errors.
In our experiment with 50 thousand shares we have a confidence level of slightly less than 99%. If you look at the results, it’s clear that 1% could make a huge difference.
If we want to have a truly accurate experiment, mining software should send 10 million shares each. It means that testing for each piece of mining software would take a month! Way too much. By the time we finish such an experiment, developers will release upgrades and the experiment will become useless. With that being said, we do want to hold new experiments in the future, with upgraded mining software and higher accuracy.
It’s worth mentioning that if mining software developers report their hash rate honestly and don’t have errors in the code, you can trust the hashrate in the program when you are choosing mining software.
Our experiment is supposed to help you, but don’t take it as absolute truth. It would be wrong to say that Gminer and TeamRedMiner are always the best, and NBMiner is the worst. You may get different results depending on your GPUs, overclocking settings, and rig configuration.
Remember to follow us on Twitter to get all the news as soon as possible and join our Telegram chat with more than 3000 active users.
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.
