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.
Check the Real Ping To the Mining Pool Server With Stratum-Ping Tool
February 4, 2021
One heated topic in various discussions recently has been related to ping. Here are a couple of words we’d like to clarify about this and its importance for the miners and the pool. Us at 2Miners are obsessed about the stability and performance of our services. This could be good or could be not so good, but that is just the way we are. We are actively working with hashrate providers such as Nicehash as well as with our individual miners in order to support and offer the best we can do.
What Is Ping?
What is ping, anyway? Simply speaking, ping, or latency, is the total time it takes for some data to reach a distant service and for us to receive a response. Ping is usually measured in milliseconds, the lower the ping, the less time it takes for the data to travel between two destinations. Ping is named after the so-called Ping network utility. So what does ping mean for the miner?
First and foremost: ping is very important. Why? The better the connection to your pool is, the faster your mining rig can receive new data and the more iterations on finding the solution it can take. For blockchains with short block time (such as Ethereum), this is particularly vital. If the connection to the pool is not optimal, then the solution your rig may have found may arrive later than it could, resulting in an orphan block or no block at all — which means fewer profits no matter whether you’re on a shared or solo pool.
What Is Ping To the Mining Pool?
Now let’s get to the mistake many people are making: when they talk about “ping to the pool”, they actually think about the standard ping utility (named the same in Windows and Linux), which uses special ICMP packets to measure the particular host response time, but… this is not exactly relevant for a mining pool. Let me explain why.
First of all, ICMP is a different type of protocol that is being handled by the Internet routing machinery differently. While mining, you use TCP/IP. When you connect via TCP/IP to the pool, you’re connecting to the actual software that powers the pool (in most cases for serious mining pools this is proprietary tools that are engineered by professional programmers), and guess what, it may perform differently than a low-level part of the operating system that handles ICMP responses. If the pool server is very busy the pool software may respond slowly but the ICMP pong packets (that’s right, a response to ping is called “pong”) would be sent out immediately.
Second, the actual host you’re pinging on most larger pools is likely not the real machine that processes your mining rig solutions. In most cases, it is either a load balancer that distributes the load across several different physical servers or a gateway that sits in your country and then forwards the traffic to and from the real server located somewhere else. There are commercial and home-baked solutions that do these things and they are widely used to optimize the load and traffic. One commercial example would be CloudFlare Spectrum, but it is not the only one, of course.
By the way, it is quite easy to check whether the pool uses CloudFlare Spectrum. One example would be Ethermine, let’s see step by step how easy it is to check. First, we look up the IP address that is used to connect to the pool by the miner (and not the website address) — for example, for Ethermine EU1 server it is 172.65.207.10 — your actual results may vary as it may resolve in different addresses. Second, we look up that IP address to see where it belongs by entering it into the lookup tool like this one: https://who.is/whois-ip/ip-address/172.65.207.106. As we can see, it shows CloudFlare as an owner of the IP which means you are actually connecting to some proxy server and not the actual pool machine.
So even though the classic ping would show some drastically quick response time, it may take some extra time to transfer the data from the gateway server to the real mining pool server.
Stratum-Ping Tool by 2Miners
That’s why one day we decided to make a tool that measures real ping to a miner server. We call it stratum-ping and it is available on GitHub. How does it do it?
Instead of sending an ICMP packet, it does what a real mining rig does — actually connects to the pool, sends the login command to it using the Stratum protocol, and waits for the valid response, then repeats it several times. As a result, we get an accurate and honest measurement that discards all of the routing trickery and shows how fast or how slow in reality the mining pool of your choice is. In fact, these numbers should look somewhat similar to the numbers reported by your own mining software. For accurate results, it’s best to look at the resulting averages as situational single cases may vary. It is also advised to try and re-run the test at different times of the day.
We purposely don’t want to post any results here and compare them -> it is important that you try and do it yourself on your own Internet provider and connection as the routing may be different. But what we encourage you to do is give it a try, because not every ping is the same.
How to Ping the Mining Pool
We realized that it was too difficult for some of the miners to start using our ping tool for the mining pools. Let’s make it more simple as we like it to be. This is a short guide on how to use the 2Miners stratum-ping tool to ping any mining pool you want. You could use it on any operating system: Windows, Mac, Linux. Let’s see the Windows typical usage.
Download and unzip the latest release of the stratum-ping tool from github.
Run ping-2miners.bat file to ping 2Miners Ethereum mining pool server.
Edit ping-2miners.bat with the notepad and change the pool server and port to the desired mining pool. Save the bat file and run it.
What should be considered as a good result?
We think that if your ping to the mining pool is less than 100 ms it could be considered as a good result. It doesn’t mean that 200 ms is always bad for example. You could be located far away from the mining pool servers so there is nothing to worry about. However, for SOLO mining it is always good to have as low ping as possible to reduce the Uncle and Orphan block rate.
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.
January 2021 Work Progress Report: RaveOS Partnership, Grin Hardfork
February 2, 2021
Aeternity, Cortex, and Firo under attack, Ethereum pool updates and record block, EIP-1559, Grin hardfork, 2CryptoCalc update.
Mining Software in 2CryptoCalc
We’ve upgraded 2CryptoCalc mining profitability calculator. We’ve added the mining software pages for the most popular GPU and CPU mining programs. Best Cryptocurrency Mining Software provides you a comparison of all programs presented in the service.
Each mining software page has such information as:
Mining software description
Supported algorithms
Developer fees
Sample Settings (bat file)
Extra Settings
Let’s say you need to disable a single GPU or set a fan speed. Now all information is available in one place.
Ethereum Mining Pool News
We’ve slightly increased the share difficulty in ETH PPLNS pool to 8.72G. This has been done to comply with the latest Nicehash DaggerHashimoto mining difficulty requirements. This could also improve pool performance. What is a share difficulty?
We’ve increased the number of PPLNS shares from 50 000 to 100 000. We plan to increase this number again in the nearest future. This should help the small miners with a single video card to participate in a larger amount of blocks. How does PPLNS pool reward system works?
Record of the month was registered in 2Miners ETH SOLO pool. 35 ETH for a single Ethereum block mined. Is your hashrate enough to mine Ethereum in SOLO mode? Check on 2CryptoCalc.com
EIP-1559 is still considered by Ethereum developers. We are hoping the ETH devs would listen to miners as they promised while working on this update. Obviously, all the miners are against this EIP as “miner revenue will decrease under 1559”. Our miners are against this EIP and we support them of course as always stand for our miners.
Aeternity Mining Pool News
AE network was under 51% attack again this month on January, 8. Some blocks were rejected. Unfortunately this attack and previous ones have caused the delisting from Binance exchange.
Hopefully, later this month Aeternity developers have released the new node software with implemented 51% attack protection. 2Miners pools have already updated the nodes. We hope all the exchanges will resume AE deposits and withdrawals asap. Now you could safely mine AE in 2Miners pool.
Cortex Mining Pool News
The attack has been performed on CTXC Network recently on January, 11. 8465 blocks have been declined (starting from block 3 140 005). Right now the attack is over and the blockchain has been re-synchronized. 2Miners pool operates fine but we have increased the number of block confirmations required to 10 000.
Unfortunately, all the crypto exchanges have suspended withdrawals and deposits of Cortex coin. As far as developers do nothing to protect the network the attack could be performed again.
Grin Mining Pool News
Grin v5.0.0 network upgrade (Hard Fork 4) has happened at block 1 048 320 (January, 15).
Https protocol is no longer supported. We’ve paid out all the balances exceeding 1 Grin to https-type wallet users. Grin miners could use only TOR addresses now. Grin++ wallet is a great option. We do not know which of the crypto exchanges would support the new addresses. Most of them used the old https address format. Grin Community has released the crypto exchanges list that are active now.
Only Tradeogre supports Grin trading and withdraw/deposit.
Cuckarooz C29 algorithm was terminated. Only Cuckatoo C32 also remains at the moment.
Firo Mining Pool News
Firo (Zcoin) network was attacked on January, 20. Payouts were stopped for a short period of time. Crypto exchanges have suspended the deposits and re-opened them later. For devs have blocked the attacker funds and published a post mortem of the 51% attack. They are also asking users to weigh in on what should be done moving forward.
Seems the plan is to return the attacker’s funds to the exchanges (that is a reasonable solution). Please pay attention that the Binance exchange has updated the coin ticker from XZC to FIRO.
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 on RaveOS: Detailed Guide and Mining Setup
January 28, 2021
Mining requires a lot of your attention. You should know how to choose the most profitable coin, as well as monitor such parameters as current hash rate and potential mining software reboot. RaveOS makes your life easier and helps increase your profit from cryptocurrencies. RaveOS features an intuitive dashboard that boosts efficiency and lowers downtime and energy consumption. Let’s get into it.
What Is RaveOS
According to the main page of the RaveOS website, RaveOS increases hash rate performance and stability with less downtime and power consumption.
RaveOS is an operating system that allows you to configure, monitor, and administer your rigs and ASICs. The platform supports a wide range of graphic cards. You can manage 3 devices for free.
Here are key RaveOS features that every miner needs:
Advanced monitoring. The system displays hash rates, power consumption, errors, and much more. RaveOS has a built-in watchdog that tracks errors and reboots the miner or the whole rig. You can also have multiple user accounts for monitoring, each with different access rights.
Easy system installation. Simply burn the image to a disk or USB flash drive and connect to the rig. The system will automatically detect your hardware, apply settings, and display the settings on the control panel. It also allows you to set up firmware and overclock cards.
Mobile app. It will help you monitor your rigs. You’ll receive important notifications when a card overheats or gives out a low hash rate. Plus, the mobile app allows you to reboot a rig, change the cryptocurrency wallet for rewards, and change the coin to be extracted.
Referral program. The system allows you to get passive income by bringing in new people. The more people you invite, the more you earn.
How to Set Up Mining on RaveOS
Before you start using RaveOS, make sure your device matches the system requirements. You can check them on the installation page.
Here are the minimum system requirements.
Intel® Core™ 2 / AMD am2+
4GB RAM (for ETH mining on RX Vega 56, RX Vega 64, Radeon VII, RX 5700 you will need 6GB RAM)
If your device matches the system requirements, download the installation file. To do that, you need to create an account and log in.
We were testing on MacOS, but the setup process is the same for all operating systems.
Once you are logged in, you should add a new rig. Indicate a rig name, description (we recommend adding your GPU models here), choose a password and specify the number of GPUs.
Then go to the System Info tab and copy the Worker’s token. On the screenshot below it’s at the bottom.
Download RaveOS image. The file size on MacOS is 1.68 GB.
Go to the file manager, find the mining system folders and go to the config folder.
Open token.txt and paste the Worker’s token.
Then boot the rig and go to the dashboard that has all the information.
The next step is to add your cryptocurrency wallet address where you want to receive rewards. Go to Wallets in the menu on the left to do that, then choose a coin, mining pool (we recommend 2Miners), and the wallet address.
Click Save.
The next step is Tuning. You can choose clock, voltage, temperature, and fan activity.
Then go to Console and enter login and password.
The system will display available commands.
Enter miner-show to get all the information about your rig: hash rate, temperature, etc.
You can also look up the information about GPUs on the website. Here’s what it looks like.
Users also have access to stats.
And system information.
RaveOS Pricing
RaveOS is free for up to 3 running devices. Plus, users get access to the basic online support.
If you have more than 3 devices, you pay $2/month for each. Users get all their devices running and can fully access system functionality.
RaveOS also offers special business conditions for users with at least 100 devices. Conditions are discussed individually.
It should be noted that another mining platform HiveOS is free only if you mine in their Hiveon pool, but that charges a 3% fee.
Conclusion
RaveOS is a great tool for miners that want to control mining processes from anywhere in the world. The system is easy to set up, auto-detects mining hardware, and even knows mining pool settings. You are guaranteed to spend little time on learning the system functionality as it’s super easy.
You just install the system on your rig and add your mining information. And then you can enjoy the process and make corrections as needed.
Remember to 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.
Unofficial Release of Innosilicon A11 for Ethereum Mining: ASIC Features and Setup
January 23, 2021
Ethereum price reached an all-time high the other day surpassing the previous record of $1,420. In the meantime, Bitcoin not only hit a new record, but doubled the previous one in the first half of January. This led to the growing popularity of ETH mining, and so higher demand resulted in higher supply. Innosilicon released its new flagship ASIC. Let’s get into it.
Ethereum mining popularity is truly at its all-time high at the moment. The cryptocurrency network hash rate, which is the cumulative computing power of all its devices, proves the point. Over the last year it increased 2.2 times meaning that the number of GPUs and ASICs equivalent to computing power doubled at the very least.
The growing number of miners in the 2Miners pool also reflects the rising demand for Ethereum mining. The number of miners hit a new record of over 8600, while on December 1, 2020 it was 5000.
Innosilicon A11 Specs
Despite the growing Ethereum mining popularity, it’s not easy to find up-to-date equipment. In the recent article we discovered that it’s almost impossible to order the new-generation Nvidia RTX 3000 series graphics cards, while the models in stock are sold at a much higher price. Other brands are also releasing new products due to the growing mining popularity.
According to the source on the Chinese platform Weibo, some mining equipment sellers are already accepting payments for the new Innosilicon A11. This Ethereum mining device is the successor of the A10 ETHMaster series announced in July 2018.
There isn’t much information about the new device, but here are some Innosilicon A11 key features.
Hash rate – 2100 MH/s ± 10%
Consumption – 2300 W
Memory – 8GB
Supply – April–June 2021
The new ASIC costs around 100 thousand yuan or 15.46 thousand dollars. In 2018 the A10 ETHMaster devices with 365 MH/s and 485 MH/s cost $3,800 and $5,000 respectively, so today’s price has hardly surprised anyone.
Plus, the hash rate of the new ASIC is equivalent to 67 Nvidia GeForce 1070Ti graphics cards. According to the source, the supply is going to be limited.
Innosilicon A11 Profitability and Payback
The hash rate of the new ASIC is high enough to estimate Ethereum mining profit using 2CryptoCalc. We are entering 2100 MH/s for Ethash and getting an estimated daily profit of $161. The profit is unadjusted for electricity cost due to the difference in rates for users.
Without considering electricity expenses, the payback period is as short as 3 months.
Innosilicon A11 Life Expectancy
The new ASIC features 8GB of memory. According to Investoon, it is enough to mine Ethereum till #895 epoch coming in May 2027.
Plus, Ethereum is planning to upgrade to version 2.0 switching from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. So ETH mining on GPUs will become inefficient. The switch is part of phase 1.5 planned for 2021, but there may be some changes and delays.
Innosilicon A11 Mining Setup
Despite all the upcoming changes, there is still plenty of time to mine Ethereum on Innosilicon A11. If you bought the new ASIC, you can start mining in the 2Miners pool using the following settings.
URL: stratum+tcp://eth.2miners.com:2020
Worker: YOUR_ADDRESS.ASIC_ID
Password: x
YOUR_ADDRESS is a cryptocurrency address where you get mining rewards. You should indicate your wallet address here starting with 0x.
Innosilicon created a powerful and expensive ASIC. Despite the limited supply, the device will not only pay back, but also bring you a profit thanks to the high hash rate at the current cryptocurrency exchange rates. It will still be true even if Ethereum manages to switch to PoS this year.
The new Innosilicon ASIC will arouse a lot of interest among users and remind GPU manufacturers about the high demand on the market. GPUs are difficult to find these days, so Nvidia should definitely think about increasing its supply.
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.
Beginning Miner’s Guide and GPU Overclocking on Different Algorithms
January 14, 2021
Cryptocurrency mining is a lucrative business. Confessions of a Miner show you how with initial capital and strategy mining equipment alone can be worth tens of thousands of dollars. If you are just starting out, we’ve got you covered. This article is about mining basics, overclocking, and useful tips and tricks.
Mining means providing computing power for the cryptocurrency network protection in exchange for a potential reward for equipment operation. Sadly, many legislators wrongly believe that mining is directly connected to coin creation. It’s wrong to say that miners issue cryptocurrency or somehow participate in this process. For most modern currencies the daily outflow of up to 10% of miners will affect the speed of coin issuance by less than 1%.
If there are only ten miners out of a million left in the end, the coin creation will not stop and soon regain the same level with adjusted difficulty.
Miners provide protection to cryptocurrencies against the potential hold or cancelation of a transaction. More miners mean better protection and lower risk of an attack. They would make an attack almost impossible due to the lack of necessary mining equipment in the world.
Any PoW cryptocurrency network (Proof of Work) pays miners for this work with their coins by issuing new coins and using transaction fees.
Let’s draw an analogy with the modern banking system. Cryptocurrencies are the Central Bank (issues money), mining pools are commercial banks (prepare transactions, distribute rewards, and compete with each other), and miners are clerks (does the essential work). Banks can’t operate without clerks, but it doesn’t mean that clerks issue money.
How to Mine Cryptocurrencies in 2021
Who can we consider a professional miner? How much experience must they have? We don’t have an exact answer, but a professional miner is someone who knows how to adjust under constantly changing circumstances. The crypto market is highly volatile. A certain coin can be 20–30% less profitable than your optimal coin today, but bring twice as much profit tomorrow.
Here’s an example. Cortex (CTXC) was bringing $4.17 per GPU (1080Ti) on August 13–15, 2020, two weeks later – less than $1.8 a day, and on August 30–31 it rose to $3.31 a day per GPU.
Mining is a source of passive income for most miners, so they usually don’t switch from one coin to another on a daily basis. They prefer to stick to major, expensive coins with a stable average profit.
However, every miner must know the capabilities and limits of their graphics cards.
Sure, there are profitability calculators, so why would you need to know that? Even 2CryptoCalc, a powerful cryptocurrency profitability calculator, can’t tell you how an increase in your utility rates will affect mining profitability, or whether the profitability of your coin will decrease five or more times tomorrow. It also can’t tell you whether the room is ventilated well enough for mining, when a multi-rate meter switches rates, and which equipment noise level is acceptable during the day or at night.
ASICs and GPUs for Mining
Initially, CPUs were considered a universal mining tool that everyone could use on their computer. Soon after, it became clear that GPUs are much more powerful and efficient, while single-purpose devices (rare FPGAs and widespread ASICs) are even more powerful.
ASIC is a single-purpose mining device designed for a specific algorithm. ASICs are produced by a few companies with highly opportunistic pricing policies. They are also notorious for mining on their devices before shipping them to clients.
ASIC mining is straightforward, but it doesn’t provide a stable profit. Competition is limited only by operation capacity and manufacturers’ greed.
Cheap and powerful ASICs replaced GPUs on most old algorithms unwilling to protect themselves from such devices.
The biggest ASIC issue is its limited use and constantly decreasing cryptocurrency profit as manufacturers are constantly launching newer, much more energy-efficient models.
A Graphics card (GPU) is a widespread universal device that works with multiple new algorithms and has a good depreciation value (40–60%) on the second-hand market even after a few years of use. You can sell graphics cards to gamers after the warranty expires (or, even better, right before).
Most new cryptocurrencies are trying to be as decentralized as possible protecting themselves against ASICs. Plus, you can improve GPU energy efficiency multiple times even within the same GPU series. The pattern is different for every algorithm. So, apart from GPUs, miners’ assets include valuable knowledge they acquire in the process and relevant information they obtain about the crypto market.
Plus, GPUs with limited power bring several times more profit per kW than ASICs.
So for personal use, miners usually use GPUs of the latest or previous generation.
Graphics Cards for Mining
AMD and Nvidia are two major worldwide corporations that produce powerful gaming GPUs. Miners and gamers call them “red” and “green” respectively (by the color of their logo).
Mining utilizes computing rather than gaming GPU capabilities using special libraries (OpenCL for AMD and CUDA for Nvidia). Such use of graphics cards is considered non-standard. GPU load in mining is similar to its load when designing and calculating same-type texture maps in gaming. With more gaming power added due to growing gamer demands, GPUs acquire more computing power.
AMD Mining and Overclocking Basics
AMD GPU architecture was initially designed to have fewer logic blocks and more stream processors, so it worked better with the first mining algorithms successfully executing a lot of minute operations. It’s no surprise that before the launch of ASICs AMD cards accounted for 95% of mining. The rest were mining on processors.
Modern mining algorithms of new coins require good interaction between core and memory which is beautifully implemented by gaming GPUs, but it’s hard to implement for ASICs. Historically, Ethereum (ETH) has become the most successful ASIC-resistant project among new cryptocurrencies. AMD cards were designed better for ETH mining than Nvidia.
These two facts have defined mining for years to come. From 2015 through 2018, AMD GPUs had a major share in mining, and in most cases, they were mining Ethereum.
The basic setup of AMD cards for Ethereum mining is quite simple.
First, we should identify the max memory clock at +25 MHz intervals. Find the clock value that makes it crash – reload – the GPU driver, 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 hash rate decreases only by 10–15%.
and the max stable core clock (at +25 MHz intervals), move 25 MHz down from it.
Fine-tuning would give us an additional 5–6% of hash rate or 3–4% of energy efficiency, but we will not go into more detail in this article.
Nvidia Mining Basics
The basic Nvidia GPU architecture had a significantly lower number of stream processors combined in larger CUDA blocks which made them less efficient for mining until 2016.
The 9xx series with the Maxwell architecture could already mine ETH at an acceptable hash rate. However, it was the new 10xx series with the Pascal architecture in 2016 to bring to an end AMD’s dominance in mining.
Gamers have always appreciated Nvidia graphics cards for their energy efficiency and good cooling systems. They weren’t heating like AMD cards and weren’t dropping clocks in games due to overheating. The green brand has become associated with optimal energy consumption. With every new series, Nvidia was trying to get ahead of AMD on this parameter.
The 10xx series was no exception. In 2016–2018 it was still behind AMD in terms of Ethereum mining power, but it was leading in energy efficiency. Nvidia on the 16 nm process achieved better results than AMD on 14 nm (the 4xx and 5xx series).
Important: Nvidia GPUs show full consumption (not just core consumption), so you can’t compare them directly to AMD GPUs using the information from drivers.
You can compare them only by measuring real consumption when you plug the whole rig.
The 10xx series wasn’t designed for mining, so in 2020 miners with the 10xx cards experienced a drop in hash rate on Ethash (the current Ethereum mining algorithm). Miners had to increase energy consumption to maintain the hash rate which affected energy efficiency. AMD encountered that problem at the beginning of 2017. They solved it by producing special drivers. Then they integrated a special Compute mode in standard drivers. Nvidia solved this problem only for their new series (16xx and 20xx).
Despite the problem of the 10xx series with Ether mining, green cards still have a significant advantage. They are better suited for many other mining algorithms. Most cryptocurrencies that emerged after 2017 didn’t want to use existing algorithms. They wanted to create somewhat unique products.
Before we get to algorithms for green GPUs and Nvidia overclocking principles, we are going to address an important question: how to assemble a working computer for mining with several graphics cards, known as a “rig” among miners.
How to Build a Mining Rig and Choose an OS
We are not going to talk about hardware. All modern motherboards support mining with at least 4 GPUs (most support 8+ GPUs with cheap slot extenders).
We are mostly interested in operating systems. Most miners can be divided into two groups: Windows and Linux users. The latter mostly don’t use Linux in its original form. They use ready-made mining operating systems, like HiveOS, RaveOS, and mmpOS.
Rave OS
Rave OS is a system for miners that allows them to control mining rigs remotely. Rave OS promises stable mining, high hash rate, and minimal down-time that usually leads to losses.
You can manage three devices for free. If you have more, you pay $2.00 a month per each.
The main advantage of the system is its simplicity. You just have to record an image on the data storage device and connect it to your device. The system automatically detects the model of the equipment, adjusts settings accordingly, and allows you to start mining.
Mining on Windows
Mining on Windows has a few main disadvantages.
You need to install a lot of necessary mining programs and drivers manually, disable auto-updates and antiviruses.
You need to study stability and reboot of mining devices in and out.
There is no built-in restart algorithm in case the system crashes because of power supply issues, freezing GPUs, etc.
You also need to install a remote control/desktop system, as you can’t be around your rig all the time. Plus, rigs usually don’t have additional monitors, mouses or keyboards, as it would add expenses on peripherals.
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 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 program.
The best thing to do is to disable CUDA P2 state through the nvInspector tool (more specifically, through its nvProfileInspector subtool). Find CUDA Force P2 state parameter, disable it, and launch your miner.
Important note: this parameter is reinstated every time you install a new Nvidia GPU, so don’t forget to double-check.
If you use MSI Afterburner to monitor your GPUs (every miner should use it), you will notice an increase in operating memory clock when mining and a higher hash rate when mining RAM-dependent algorithms, like Cortex. Memory clock will not fluctuate, so you can overclock memory safely. You will get a real operating value in MHz, not just a plus sign in the settings.
Nvidia Mining in 2021
Nvidia graphics cards are more universal in terms of algorithms, but it doesn’t mean that they are always more profitable than AMD.
Mining algorithms can be “hot” (the GPU gets really hot) or “cold” (the GPU doesn’t heat up too much). Hot algorithms mostly use GPU core, so their performance depends on the core clock. The max core clock is achieved by the increasing voltage which leads to a proportional increase in GPU power consumption.
Cold algorithms mostly use memory, so they are highly limited by bandwidth capacity or memory access time. As a result, there is no point in overclocking the core much, as it doesn’t increase the hash rate. Maximum efficiency is easily reached on such algorithms. We need to find out which core clock maximizes hash rate, and then obtain that core clock with the lowest possible stable core voltage.
In summer 2020, green cards didn’t have a lot of algorithms. The leading algorithms (coins) by profit were: Ethash (ETH), MTP (XZC), and Cuckaroo30 (CTXC).
Let’s get into more detail.
Nvidia Mining and Overclocking on Ethash
Ethereum algorithm used to be one of the most efficient for the Nvidia 10xx, 16xx, and 20xx series. However, every 3–4 days its difficulty rises by a bit, which requires more and more GPU memory. At first, the requirement was 2GB, but at the end of 2020, GPUs were required to have at least 4GB of RAM to mine ETH.
It turned out that the 10xx GPU architecture prevents them from mining ETH effectively on the new epoch. In a few months, their mining hash rate dropped by 25%. You can remedy this by increasing core clock and voltage by a lot which will lead to a significant decrease in energy efficiency.
Conclusion: from 2020 onwards, ETH mining on the 10xx GPUs is not the most efficient alternative.
The newer 16xx and 20xx GPUs don’t have this problem, so they can mine this cold algorithm efficiently. And with enough memory (6GB+), you won’t have to worry about the DAG file increase for a few years.
The most efficient configurations are below. This is the GTX 1660.
And this is the RTX 2070s.
As you can see, you don’t gain any hash rate by increasing core clock and voltage. So the optimal energy efficiency for Ethereum mining for this GPU series is 220W–230W per 100 MH.
Setting the core to 650 mV on new cards leads to a significant decrease in max hash rate, but doesn’t increase energy efficiency, because GPU switches to the P3 state with a significant decrease in memory clock (much needed for this algorithm).
Nvidia is getting closer to AMD by the number of stream processors, so the new series (the 30xx and modifications) became even more competitive on this algorithm.
However, Ethereum is planning to abandon the PoW system, so its profitability in the next few years may decrease by a lot.
Nvidia Mining and Overclocking on MTP
The MTP algorithm appeared when Zcoin was switching (or running away) from the old algorithm due to the ASIC threat.
The algorithm was initially designed as ASIC-resistant. It requires at least 6GB of GPU memory. Luckily, this parameter doesn’t grow as it does with Ethereum.
The algorithm is quite hot. It depends highly on both the core clock and the memory clock. You won’t necessarily increase energy efficiency by simply lowering the voltage.
As you can see in the screenshot if you lower the 1660 core voltage to 650 mV, the hash rate drops significantly, but energy efficiency doesn’t grow. It’s important to search for and know your GPU’s optimal minimum, as well as an optimal maximum (without overheating). Overheating leads to a significant deterioration of GPU functions and can even cause it to break.
The 10xx series efficiency ranges from 15kH/W to 22kH/W. The 20xx series ranges from 19kH/W to 3kH/W.
The new series must have improved this value to some extent (by 20–30%). They haven’t raised it multiple times (like with Ether), so even in 2020 the 10xx series GPUs are working well on this algorithm.
You need to activate the pill to maximize the hash rate for the 1080 and 1080ti (3.4MH and 4.4MH respectively).
Nvidia Mining and Overclocking on Cuckaroo30
The algorithm for Cortex is hybrid. It uses both core and memory with the latter prevailing. It can be considered a rather cold algorithm. It works well for mining on GPUs with at least 10GB of RAM. For example on the 1080ti it gives out as much as MTP does at full capacity or Ethash at standard capacity. However, the real energy consumption of plugged graphics cards is 40% lower than that of MTP and 25% lower than that of Ethereum.
It’s worth pointing out that Cuckaroo30 is an algorithm with a changing load. Sadly, systems like HiveOS only show the current load changing within a 30% range. In the mining program, say Gminer, you can see the real load, but most users interact with the web interface that doesn’t provide this information.
For example, if such users set the power limit at 240W in RaveOS for the 2070s GPUs, they wouldn’t understand that on this algorithm a GPU doesn’t consume more than 200W, as the short active core load stage is followed by the long memory load stage.
You can easily notice it in Windows. When you set the max PL at 111% (245W), the real-time consumption monitor will only show a few single values higher than 220W following one another. The rest of the time consumption is much lower, with a minimum of 158W and a mean value of 197W. Note that with Platinum PSUs, estimated power values correspond to the real consumption.
Windows 7 and Linux systems (RaveOS, MMP, etc.) allow you to use Gminer to mine with 8GB GPUs.
It’s not efficient for the 10xx series: the hash rate of 1070, 1070ti, and 1080 is 1.55, 1.5, and 1.65 respectively. But it works well with the 2070 and 2070s, where the hash rate is directly dependent on the Power Limit value. If you set PL at 240W, the 2070s with 8GB consumes around 197W and gives out a decent hash rate (comparable to the 1080ti with 11GB).
Mining Algorithms for Low-End Nvidia GPU’s
Sadly, GPUs with low memory, old GPUs, and even some new GPUs can’t mine the algorithms mentioned above, and if they can, they are less efficient. There are a lot of profitable algorithms for such Nvidia cards.
The two most profitable in the second half of 2020 are BeamHash-III (Beam) and Kawpow (Ravencoin).
Nvidia Mining and Overclocking on BeamHash-III
The third version of the Beam algorithm is an ASIC-resistant algorithm for GPU mining.
The initial requirement was 3GB+ GPUs, but soon after LolMiner activated support for 3GB GPUs (i.e., for memory that doesn’t display images in Windows).
When you overclock the core of the 10xx series GPUs, the algorithm gets limited by their memory pretty fast, at the average power consumption level (around 70%). Further core overclocking doesn’t lead to an increase in hash rate. So this algorithm can’t be considered hot, but it brings a decent average annual profit on 3GB/4GB GPUs.
The algorithm is not featured among the most profitable for 6GB+ GPUs , as there is a large number of old GPUs on the algorithm.
Nvidia Mining on Kawpow
Kawpow (with RVN as a major coin) was quite promising at the beginning, but after three months it wasn’t featured among the most profitable algorithms anymore.
That’s a short success story, but Kawpow has some key advantages. The algorithm works even with 3GB GPUs, adjusts well (many GPUs that are problematic on other algorithms work well on kawpow), the hash rate correlates to GPU PL, and 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 after Ethash.
Overclocking is similar to Beam, so we won’t get into more detail. It was Beam to take on some part of 3GB GPUs, which allowed kawpow users to feel more optimistic in 2020.
Plus, after the ETC upgrade and the outflow of more 3GB GPUs there, Kawpow will be featured among the most profitable algorithms more often, even for powerful GPUs.
Nvidia Mining and Overclocking on Cuckarooz29 and Cuckatoo32
Both algorithms (C29 and C32) mine GRIN cryptocurrency that was initially said to be GPU-focused and ASIC-resistant. So it makes slight changes to algorithms from time to time to make it too costly to build new ASICs for the network.
Grin mining on C29 was featured among the most profitable algorithms very rarely. This algorithm was tied to a single coin, and Grin’s popularity went a bit down. Grin v5.0.0 hard fork has happened at block 1 048 320 (January, 15) and the C29 algorithm was terminated. At the moment C32 is the only active algorithm for GRIN mining. Read more
Unlike C29, C32 requires at least 8GB of GPU memory for mining, and top GPUs in the series give out a higher hash rate, just like with the Cortex algorithm. This algorithm is often featured among the most profitable for the 1080ti, 2080ti, 3060ti, 3070, 3080, and 3090.
The algorithm doesn’t cause issues and works well even on weak GPUs.
Nvidia Mining and Overclocking on Equihash-xxx
Anonymous ZEC coin on equihash was launched in 2016 challenging the ETH dominance in mining. Initially, coin mining was only available on CPU, but after a month they launched a GPU mining device that was giving much better results on green cards than on red cards.
Equihash is highly dependent on the core overclocking and doesn’t have large-size temporary files to place in GPU memory, so it was an easy target for ASICs. Despite the network centralization threat, they didn’t change the algorithm, which made people talk about their affiliation to Bitmain, the biggest ASIC manufacturer.
Unlike the main coin, its various modifications felt threatened by the growing hash rate that might have been concentrated in someone’s hands. So they decided to change the algorithm. That’s how multiple Equihash-xxx variations appeared. xxx is a numerical ID code for example Equihash 125,4 (used by ZelCash) or Equihash 144,5 (used by Bitcoin Gold).
At the same time, the main coin exchange rate fell significantly, as well as the crypto market as a whole. That turned the production of new ASICs for each modification into a losing game.
However, multiple coins created on these algorithms after 2016 can’t compete with top coins in terms of profitability.
If you decide to start mining these coins, you will have to monitor profitability and switch between algorithms/coins from time to time. With that being said, you could still make a nice profit (especially with old GPUs).
These algorithms mostly need core overclocking.
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 the 2CryptoCalc mining profitability calculator 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.
Let’s take as an example a small but problematic rig that can mine well only four algorithms on Linux.
Below you can see the results for the middle of January 2021.
You can see that it made sense to overclock the rig in January only at the electricity cost of no more than $0.09 per kWh.
Hot/Cold mode electricity consumption difference is 190W.
That means the Hot mode requires 0.190 x 24 = 4.56kWh more every day.
The hot mode rig operation daily reward is $9.50 while the cold mode reward is $9.09. The hot mode gives you $0.41 more.
0.41 / 4.56 = $0.09 per kWh
Also, remember that the night power rate is usually lower so it would have made sense to operate at full capacity. Electricity costs and current profit are crucial when you are choosing an algorithm and rig operating mode.
Max Energy Efficiency for New Mining Rigs
When you build a new rig, you have to remember that GPU max energy efficiency within one series is almost the same. Usually, mid-range GPUs ($300–$400) have the best max power-to-price ratio.
But it’s tedious to build and monitor a large number of weak rigs, so miners usually choose GPUs at $500–$700.
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 “free” power limits.
Here are 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, so make sure to follow the updates.
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. The effect on the core algorithms is not so impressive (33%).
GPU Series Comparison. AMD 5xxx–6xxx vs Nvidia 20xx–30xx
Competition between AMD and Nvidia leads to the constant series upgrade between the two in an attempt to beat the competitor.
In 2017 AMD released the popular 4xx-5xx series. As a response, Nvidia released the 10xx series increasing Nvidia’s share on the market for several years in a row.
Only in 2020 AMD managed to launch the 57xx series in response not only to the 10xx, but also to the less popular 20xx (Nvidia had to upgrade it quickly to the Super subseries).
Nvidia 30xx and AMD 60xx surprised us with the increased number of stream processors. However, the power of core algorithms didn’t increase multi-fold for the first 30xx cards. The results of memory-focused algorithms, ETH in particular, are fantastic. The architecture was modified to a great extent, close to the modern technology limits. It means that multi-fold increase in power is impossible without a substantial rise in GPU prices.
We hope that the future series will feature new ways of interaction with GPU memory to use new and powerful cores to their fullest potential (like the 3090 and its modifications).
Conclusion
Despite the late start in the mining industry, Nvidia has obtained a significant share of the market. As of September 2020, the open data shows that green cards account for 39% of all video cards used for mining as opposed to 25% in 2018. 90% of those cards are from the 10xx series. The 20xx series is only entering the market, while miners may already shift en masse to the next 30xx series very soon.
According to 2Cryptocalc, the versatile choice of algorithms closes the gap between the top and alternative algorithms for Nvidia GPUs. Plus, there are many efficient algorithms to choose from.
We hope that this article will help beginning miners to maximize their profit without damaging or overheating their GPUs.
PS
At the beginning of 2021, we will see a lot of new GPUs. It means that the balance of power may change as new GPUs, mining programs, and algorithms are entering the market. So we will try to keep this article up to date as we get the new data.
Prepared by Denis Trushin, Head of the Advanced Technology Department at ADM Techno. Denis is an active member of the 2Miners mining pool community.
Remember to 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.
December 2020 Work Progress Report: Exmo Exchange Hack, Horizen Halving
December 31, 2020
Ethereum pool growth and server updates, Grin payout issues, Exmo exchange hack, Horizen halving.
New Milestone For 2Miners
This December we’ve reached the new important milestone – 12 000 miners online and 6 000 miners in Ethereum pools (PPLNS and SOLO). We would like to thank you for your support. We really appreciate that and we do our best to provide the best possible service for our miners.
With Bitcoin reaching the all-time high price this year we can see the increasing interest in the mining process. The number of ASIC and GPU miners is growing day by day. For all the newcomers we do highly recommend to read our blog, especially the most important articles:
That’s very basic knowledge that every miner should have. If you want to jump into the industry now you should calculate the hardware costs and evaluate the mining profitability. We’ve recently updated the post on How to Build the Mining Rig so give it a look. For profitability calculation we always recommend 2CryptoCalc, which is the easiest to use mining calculator. Our post How to Use 2CryptoCalc Mining Profitability Calculator describes all the calc functionality.
Ethereum Mining News
Ethereum has reached the all-year high price this month. The number of our Ethereum miners grew by 20% in December.
Due to increased demand, we have doubled the number of ETH PPLNS servers in European and Asia regions. Happy mining and thanks for choosing us.
Btw. this month’s Ethereum block record was 24.88 ETH. Almost 25 ETH for a single Ethereum block! Of course, all has been paid to our miners, thanks to the PPLNS rewards system.
Starting from Ethereum epoch 382 (December 16) all 4GB GPUs require the latest versions of the mining software and sometimes additional settings for them. Read How to Mine Ethereum and Ethereum Classic on 4GB GPUs if you have any issues with that.
The current Epoch number and DAG size could be always found on 2Miners ETH pool homepage.
EXMO Cryptocurrency Exchange Hack
On December 21, EXMO Exchange has been hacked. All the deposits and withdrawals have been suspended. They have been restarted a few days later, the deposit addresses have been changed though.
We have helped our miners to transfer the coins from the old addresses to the new ones even if it was against the 2Miners pool rules. We thought EXMO required our support, especially in difficult times. A friend in need is a friend indeed! We want all crypto-companies to be treated with respect and understanding. Our industry is still very young and we are always ready to give a helping hand to our colleagues.
If you got any EXMO-related problems please write to our Helpdesk.
Horizen ZEN Halving
Horizen (ZEN) halving has happened on December 2 (block 840 000). Block reward has been halved from 7.5 ZEN to 3.75 ZEN. Please pay attention!
Grin Payout Issues
Grin payout procedure is getting more and more complicated. Poloniex has delisted Grin in November. This month HotBit exchange got issues with Grin as well. Hopefully, our dev team has found a workaround. The payouts are working now.
Important! Due to the upcoming Grin https-address termination we recommend all the Grin miners to start using TOR-address asap. Grin++ is a nice example of such a wallet.
Happy New Year!
And last but not least… We wish you an amazing 2021 year. We hope your profits would be high, and you and your friends would be safe and healthy!
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.
Unfortunately, we were experiencing issues with submitting GRIN payments to the users of HotBit exchange. Let us briefly explain what is the problem and how it can be potentially fixed, although we have no power to do so (it is entirely in HotBit’s hands).
How Do Grin Payouts Work
GRIN payments work like this: a special URL is supplied to each customer with a distinct wallet to be used for submission of the funds. The submission is done by GRIN wallet and is entirely automated (as in, despite the fact it is an URL, it is meant for robot interaction and not for human beings — a so-called API endpoint, if we can lose the definition a bit). When our pool pays out the proceedings to our GRIN miners, for each payment it connects to that URL, passes in the required data, disconnects, and repeats the process over for the next customer.
Cloudflare Protection
Enter the world of the modern World Wide Web with automated spambots, crawlers, and DDoS attacks. To countermeasure these things specialized solutions are engineered, one of which is the widely popular CloudFlare. Its automated algorithms analyze each access to the web site pages and present special guard pages to the visitor if they think it is unusual activity.
HotBit is using CloudFlare to protect their Web front (a very right thing to do, I might add). However, this protection is also enabled on the GRIN payment endpoints, so when our pool pays out to different HotBit customer wallets in a succession, naturally CloudFlare thinks it may be some unusual activity and responds by presenting a visitor check webpage. The problem is, the parties communicating are, in fact, computer programs, and they are not designed to bypass the “human check”. This causes our payments to fail — overly cautious algorithms on the CloudFlare side plus improper configuration on the HotBit side (they should have added an exception for the machine-operated endpoints on their CloudFlare dashboard) make them stall and not go through.
Conclusion
The talented team of 2Miners engineers has managed to create a temporary workaround that bypasses CloudFlare security checks for the time being, but in reality, it is HotBit that should be fixing the issue on their side. We are in contact with them but with the little outcome so far (they suggest using different VPNs to pay out to our miners). Hopefully, we will reach a competent person on their end at last…
Meanwhile, we highly recommend our Grin miners to use other Grin wallets. If you have any problems with Grin payouts please write to our Telegram Chat or directly to Helpdesk.
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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.
