August 2020 Work Progress Report: New Coin Cortex, Zelcash Halving
September 2, 2020
Ethereum Classic problems, Zelcash halving, 2CryptoCalc ver 2.0, Grin C31 removed, Cortex on 2Miners.
2CryptoCalc Major Update
New version of 2CryptoCalc.com mining profit calculator has been released. We call it ver 2.0 as it includes many updates and bug fixes.
Hashrate and GPU model modes, pool and solo calculation, Nicehash profitability, and many more. Ver 2.0 uses the new design. The calculator now is even faster than before. We’ve added the NVIDIA Super GPU’s like GeForce GTX 1660 Super and GeForce GTX 2070 Super. We’ll add other GPU’s as soon as we test them and get the precise hashrates for all algorithms.
If you find any bugs – please let us know in 2Miners Telegram Chat – @chat2miners
Suggestions/ideas how could we make it even better are highly appreciated. If you find some “null” values in this table it would be fantastic if you could share the correct hashrate instead.
Ethereum Classic Problems
2 massive attacks on Ethereum Classic network were performed in August. Almost 4000 blocks were rejected after the massive blockchain re-organization on August, 6. Later on the 7000 blocks reorg (starting from block 11 090 685) has happened on August, 30.
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 Classic Future – Discussing ETC Network Current State and Security Plan
August 25, 2020
Ethereum Classic network has experienced two 51% attacks last month causing serious consequences: 6 500 blocks declined, miners and mining pools have lost at least 1 complete day of work, exchanges have lost more than $5.6 million due to the double-spend. Recently ETC developers have released a Network Security Plan which aims to protect the coin in the future. In this post, we express our views on the Ethereum Classic problem.
ETC Network Security Plan – What is Wrong With It?
The plan released by the Ethereum Classic devs could be found in this Medium post.
Defensive Mining seems strange. How is it supposed to be done? For sure it requires a lot of resources (=money). Being among the Top ETC pools nobody has contacted us concerning this matter.
Enhanced Network Monitoring is questionable too. ETC Cooperative has announced the new tool called ForkWatch. All it does is Nicehash hashpower rental price monitoring. This doesn’t seem much helpful and accurate.
“Permapoint” or “PirlGuard” sounds good. This kind of solution could be implemented quickly and in our opinion will help to protect the network.
We are firmly against the algorithms that support ASIC/FPGA mining. Only GPU-mining is real decentralization. Graphics cards are sold all over the World. Moreover, we could trust these companies and believe they are not cheating. NVIDIA and AMD are solid, well-known companies with over $400 billion total market capitalization.
ASIC’s, on the other side, means centralization. ASIC’s are produced on a couple of Chinese factories. There is usually a so-called pre-mine while the manufacturer uses the newly produced hardware on its own to get some profit. ASIC manufacturers sometimes play unfairly making their products work for specific Chinese mining pools. They don’t care about other pools and provide no support. ASIC distribution network is complicated. ASIC devices always require special facilities. All these factors mean ASIC mining is only for “big players”. Taking into account modest Ethereum Classic capitalization and potential mining profit the transition to the ASIC-mined algorithm would be counterproductive to ETC Network.
The GPU mining community is strong and creates a lot more media effect than the ASIC community. For a good example, let’s remember the ZCash (ZEC) story. While ZEC was mined with graphics cards it was as popular as Ethereum. Nowadays rarely one could hear a word about this coin in the media: most of the mining is done on large ASIC plants, the project development is centered around large mining plants and not around the community.
Ethereum Classic Vulnerability
We’ve discussed this problem multiple times in our blog posts. Attacks that happened in August 2020 were not the first ones. In January 2019 ETC Network was attacked in the same way. The existence of the 51%-attack is absolutely normal for any Cryptocurrency Network. Even Bitcoin could be attacked that way. Just the price of the attack is a lot higher. The main ETC problem is that it is not the dominant coin of the algorithm.
Currently, Ethereum network hashrate is 55 times higher than Ethereum Classic network hashrate.
A lot of miners are not controlling their rigs leasing their hashpower to Nicehash and other mining rig rental services. This gives the hackers the possibility to rent enough hashrate to perform the attack on the ETC network. Ethereum, on the other hand, couldn’t be attacked that way, as there is no such purchasable hashrate available on the market.
ETC Network Protection – Possible Solutions
There are two major possibilities: either the algorithm must be changed or the protection system must be implemented. How to Prevent a 51% Attack
We like the systems to be as simple and transparent as possible. That means we prefer the algorithm change over the protection system implementation. However, that doesn’t mean that the “protection way” is wrong.
The new algorithm must be wisely chosen:
Ethereum Classic should become the dominant coin of the algorithm.
It is always quite impossible to find the hashrate required to attack the dominant coin of the algorithm.
ASIC-protection is required.
Only GPU mining could provide the proper decentralization of the network.
Current Ethereum Classic Network State
Nothing has been done so far.
For the time being, the development team behind Ethereum Classic have released a Network Security Plan, a proposal aimed to outline possible actions to prevent such attacks in the future, when the proposed changes will be decided on and implemented.
Ethereum Classic Network is still as vulnerable as it was before. The only difference is that now coin developers, exchanges, and mining pools pay more attention to the current network state and monitor it to prevent the new possible losses.
Major exchanges like Binance have put the coin on hold freezing the deposits and withdrawals. Mining pools have increased the number of confirmations (new blocks on the network) to confirm the rewards. 2Miners now requires 10 000 new blocks to confirm the Ethereum Classic balance. ETC payouts are processed 1 time every 24 hours (not every 2 hours as before).
Why are these actions necessary?
Obviously, we don’t want to lose money. Not only the exchanges are under attack. Being the Top-3 Ethereum Classic pool attacks cost us too much. Just during the second attack we’ve lost more than monthly ETC income. Imagine other mining pools loss as well. According to our investigation, all ETC mining pools together have lost almost $100 000 during these attacks in August.
Nobody from Ethereum Classic aims to compensate for these losses.
Conclusion – 2Miners Suggestions
We would like Ethereum Classic Developers to listen to the companies that provide value to the Network infrastructure — a good example of this would be mining pools and Cryptocurrency Exchanges.
We aim to provide a transparent and stable infrastructure for our miners and the network as a whole. While we could support ASIC algorithms in our pool if such a decision will be made, we’re striving for broader decentralization only possible through multiple independent small miners as opposed to large ASIC mining operations/factories.
Changing the algorithm from Ethash could be the solution but then it will automatically mean Ethereum Classic loses any chances to become the logical successor to Ethereum mining once the latter switches to PoS. So each direction has to be carefully evaluated by the community and for sure ranged against existing offers on the leased hash power market, otherwise, there is no gain in the algorithm switch whatsoever. We also think the decisions have to be done quickly — the more delays we have, the less prone to attacks the coin is.
If you want to get the latest updates follow us on TWITTER or join our Telegram Chat.
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 Cortex? Mining Settings, CTXC Profitability, Coin Features
August 24, 2020
Many cryptocurrencies follow the Bitcoin model offering the possibility to store and transfer value. Others follow the Ethereum example and go further. They become a global platform for decentralized apps and smart contracts. Cortex chose a different path. The developers decided to combine blockchain with artificial intelligence and machine learning. Let’s talk about the cryptocurrency and its mining in the 2Miners pool.
What is Cortex CTXC
The main page of the official website reflects what the developers are trying to build. Cortex is claimed to be “AI on blockchain” and “decentralized AI autonomous system”.
The project code is open-source, and its main mission is to provide state-of-the-art machine-learning models on the blockchain. Users will be able to infer in them using smart contracts on the Cortex blockchain. The creators also plan to implement a machine-learning platform that will allow users to submit AI DApps (Artificial Intelligence Decentralized Applications).
The main components of the project are AI and machine learning. However, these features exist only in theory for now.
Cortex CTXC Features
Two main features of the project are smart AI contracts and the Cortex Virtual Machine (CVM).
Smart AI contracts allow users to write machine-learning programs on the blockchain and submit interactions with other contracts. CVM is fully compatible with EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine).
In the section dedicated to the Cortex consensus criteria, the developers explain what makes their project stand out. They talk about the difference between ordinary smart contracts and Cortex. Intelligent contracts may include inference instructions, but all the nodes will need to agree on the outcome of the inferred result. The developers plan to set up a bridge between computing power providers and algorithm providers for trading.
They want to create state-of-the-art AI in the blockchain ecosystem that can be managed independently by smart contracts.
The developers also plan to link two types of users. Machine learning researchers can upload AI data models to the platform, while other users who need these AI models can pay to their providers.
The developers established the Cortex AI ecosystem. Users can use CTXC to purchase AI-related products like graphics cards, deep learning machines, cloud computing services. The network users will need CTXC, the network native token, to execute such operations.
Bitmain that is also working on AI has invested in Cortex. Its AI-focused subsidiary is called Sophon.
Here is a full list of investors.
Cortex CTXC Performance
The cryptocurrency ranks 191st in the CoinMarketCap chart. It is far from the top ten, but still a good result, considering that the overall number of projects on the platform is 6 511. The current rate is $0.14, which is a bit higher than the day before.
The market cap exceeds $35 million, while the 24-hour trading volume is $12.99 million.
CTXC has been listed on CoinMarketCap since April 2018. It reached its peak price of $2.41 on April 30, 2018.
It is worth mentioning that the chart currently shows growing trading volumes. You can see it at the very bottom of the screenshot, under the green curve.
Where to Buy Cortex CTXC
Many popular cryptocurrency exchanges trade Cortex CTXC. In the last 24 hours, Huobi accounted for 46% of its trading volume. Other major platforms are Binance, OKEx, Bithumb, BKEX, etc. Cortex is usually traded in pairs with Tether and Bitcoin.
Here is a full list of partner exchanges from the official website.
Cortex CTXC Wallet
To work with the CTXC token Cortex users can choose wallets for different platforms. The developers created iOS and Android versions. Desktop/laptop users can install the Cortex Wallet in Chrome. All the links are on the official website.
For some reason Download for iOS and Download for Android buttons don’t work. If you have an Android, go straight to Google Play.
Cortex CTXC Mining
Cortex mining is based on the Cuckoo algorithm which is also known as CuckooCortex Algorithm. The block find time is 13 seconds, the block reward is 7 CTXC. The network will regularly perform reward halvings similarly to Bitcoin. The network hash rate is around 8 KGps, the difficulty is 2.48 K.
It’s worth mentioning that CTXC mining requires a lot of memory. For Windows 7 or Linux OS the requirement is no less than 8 GB, while for Windows 10 it is 10 GB, because of a large amount of memory reserved for mining. The good thing is that the algorithm doesn’t heat GPUs. Cortex is usually very profitable for high-performance NVIDIA GPU’s.
To verify transactions in the Cortex network, you can use the blockchain explorer. It contains information about blocks, transactions, and even the best miners.
Where to Mine Cortex CTXC
We recommend mining CTXC in the 2Miners pool. The pool has more than 9 thousand users, supports PPLNS and SOLO mining. It is also available in 18 languages and offers a vast choice of popular coins.
Before you can start mining, you need an address in the cryptocurrency network. You can use the Cortex wallet mentioned above or the account on the crypto exchange like Binance.
Gminer is a good choice for mining. We already have a dedicated review here. It supports only Nvidia for now, so you can use lolMiner for AMD. Here is a link to download these programs. The password to the archive is 2miners (no dots, no capital letters).
In the bat file, you should replace the wallet address with your own.
A sample address: 0xa5f2c7c78e90e01b21d25dc0971b63e7a50f88a6.
You can also customize the rig name by replacing “RIG_ID”. The name can contain no more than 32 symbols: Latin letters, numbers 0–9, symbols “_” and “-“.
A sample rig name: rig-1.
Here are the correct Gminer settings for Cortex mining.
lolMiner.exe --coin CTXC --pool ctxc.2miners.com:2222 --user YOUR_LOGIN.RIG_ID --pass x
pause
GPU Hash Rates
Below you can see approximate hash rates that you can refer to when mining Cortex CTXC.
Nvidia GTX 1070 – 1.5 g/s (0.036 h/s)
Nvidia GTX 1070ti — 1.6 g/s (0.038 h/s)
Nvidia GTX 1080 — 1.6 g/s (0.038 h/s)
Nvidia P104-100 — 1.6 g/s (0.038 h/s)
Nvidia P102-100 — 2.8 g/s (0.066 h/s)
Nvidia GTX 1080ti — 3 g/s (0.071 h/s)
Nvidia RTX 2070 — 2.8 g/s (0.066 h/s)
Nvidia RTX 2080ti — 4.8 g/s (0.114 h/s)
AMD Radeon VII — 3.05 g/s (0.073 h/s)
AMD Vega 64 — 2.2 g/s (0.053 h/s)
AMD Vega 56 — 2.0 g/s (0.048 h/s)
AMD RX 5700 — 1.85 g/s (0.044 h/s)
AMD RX 580 — 1.25 g/s (0.030 h/s)
Cortex CTXC Mining Profitability
We always use 2CryptoCalc to calculate mining profitability. For example, let’s take 300 Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti GPUs that give out 900 Gps.
At the current network performance and CTXC rate, the cryptocurrency mining would bring $597 per day. Below you can see a weekly and monthly profit.
Here is an estimate for SOLO mining. The numbers are similar.
You can check the actual Cortex CXTC mining profitability on this page.
Conclusion
Cortex is an attractive project. Its developers have interesting ideas about AI and it has a relatively low market cap of $35 million, which offers growth potential. Plus, it is not a new project. It has been around for over two years. So it was not created just because the popularity of the crypto industry is high and Bitcoin price is growing.
With the developers planning to do something truly impactful and exciting, the project surely deserves your attention.
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 Classic under Another 51% Attack. What Do We Know about the Attacker’s Actions?
August 7, 2020
This weekend the Ethereum Classic network has suffered a 51% attack. As a result, around 3 500 blocks have become orphans, while miners have wasted around 12 hours of work. The ETC developers have been slow to react and haven’t performed any actions to protect the network. Yesterday it has suffered another attack. This time it was even bigger.
Recently, there has been Interesting news about the first attack on the network. Contrary to some researchers, the experts of Bitquery analytics company don’t think that the attack was caused by a random bug. The attack was planned. The attacker took advantage of the vulnerability in the network and performed a double-spend attack worth 800 thousand ETC.
According to Decrypt, the attacker appropriated the sum equivalent to 5 million dollars. Meanwhile, hashing power rented for the attack cost 192 thousand dollars. The net income is impressive.
We checked the latest data. According to Crypto51, a 1-hour 51% attack on Ethereum Classic costed 15.73 thousand dollars yesterday and just $6 534 today. For comparison, the same value for Bitcoin and Ethereum is 520 thousand and 429 thousand respectively.
Ethereum Classic under the Second Attack
Yesterday the ETC network has suffered another 51% attack, the second one this week. It is bigger than the first attack. The attacker has turned 4 thousand blocks into orphans.
It is not clear whether it was the same attacker as the first one or someone got “inspired” by Saturday events.
The problems were noticed in the morning. The 2Miners pool interrupted payouts in ETC and recommended miners to switch to Ethereum mining. Reject signs in the right column point to the problems in the network operation.
Another huge attack on Ethereun Classic (ETC) network has been performed recently.
Almost 4000 blocks were rejected after the massive blockchain re-organization.
Bitfly (Ethermine mining pool) also spoke about the recent events and advised their users to mine Ether.
Today another large 51% attack occurred on the #ETC which caused a reorganization of over 4000 blocks. Until further notice ETC pool payouts are disabled and we encourage all our miners to switch to our #ETH pool at https://t.co/f8Px6gGJiM in the meantime.
This comment is probably a joke that just draws attention to continuous problems in the ETC network. However, the problems in the ETC network began when the developers removed Ethereum Classic support from the updated version of MultiGeth last week.
Everybody related to Ethereum Classic, especially miners and mining pools, suffered from the attack. For example, Nanopool had to recalculate the balances of ETC accounts, because all the blocks in the interval from 10904147 to 10907763 were rejected. Naturally, miners will not be rewarded for this work.
According to MiningPoolStats statistics, the attacker has continued to control the network. At the time of writing, the distribution of the last one thousand blocks looked as follows.
67.9% of the blocks were found by one unknown address.
Ethereum Classic once again recommended pools and exchanges to interrupt payouts.
It’s worth reminding that Ethereum Classic is not a dominant coin of the Ethash algorithm. It means that any user can rent hashing power from Nicehash and organize such attacks on the network. Nicehash does have enough power to rent. It possesses 149% of the overall ETC network hash rate, which allows attackers to cause a lot of trouble.
There is no clear solution. The current tendencies may lead to the situation when it would take days for deposits to be approved. For example, they may be approved every 10 000 blocks or more. Considering the current problems, it is impossible to use the network properly.
Until then, there are a lot of risks involved. The second 51% attack started right after the deposits on exchanges had been restored. It means that attackers were waiting for this moment to immediately start the attack.
Here is the Ethereum Classic exchange rate chart. We did notice a small reaction to the latest events (but not significant though). The decrease of the ETC cost in the middle of the week, on August 2, coincided with the decline of Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market in general. So it seems that the first 51% attack has nothing to do with it.
Overall, the situation is sad. The Ethereum Classic network already suffered 51% attacks in the past, but two large-scale reorganizations of thousands of blocks in just five days is too much. Miners can’t ensure the network operation and can’t be certain that they will get the reward. Any time an attacker can rent hashing power, block the ETC operation and deprive you of what you earned during multiple hours of work.
Apparently, the developers didn’t learn their lesson after the first incident failing to find a way to protect the network from the attack. For now, they only ask pools and exchanges to interrupt payouts and share articles about the attacks. Indeed, it is more secure to mine the regular Ethereum nowadays. At least in the nearest future.
If you want to get the latest updates follow us on TWITTER or join our Telegram Chat.
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.
How to Mine MimbleWimbleCoin? Mining Settings, MWC Profitability, Pool, Features
August 4, 2020
Bitcoin is not an anonymous cryptocurrency. Anyone can trace your identity to a certain address so that all transactions become evident. The developers are working on enhancing BTC confidentiality, but the progress is slow. That’s why we see new anonymous projects being launched. One of them is MimbleWimbleCoin (MWC). Let’s find out more about the coin and its mining.
What is MimbleWimbleCoin
As the name suggests, MimbleWimbleCoin (MWC) is a cryptocurrency based on the MimbleWimble privacy protocol. Its white paper was published by the pseudonymous developer Tom Elvis Jedusor on July 19, 2016. The author’s name refers to Voldemort, the main antagonist in the series of Harry Potter novels. The character’s real name is Tom Marvolo Riddle, while the author’s pseudonym is Voldemort’s French name.
By the way, the word “MimbleWimble” is a spell from Harry Potter. The anonymous developer is definitely a fan of the novel.
MimbleWimble provides a blockchain with advanced scalability, confidentiality, and interchangeable tokens. In the beginning, there was an idea to improve the Bitcoin blockchain by implementing the protocol, but the process turned out to be too complicated.
As a result, MimbleWimble has given birth to privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies. The most popular ones are Grin and Beam. You can mine them in the 2Miners pool. In November 2019, the successor of these projects was created. It was MimbleWimbleCoin. Unlike Grin, MWC has decided to gradually decrease the inflation rate by limiting the overall coin supply in advance.
The main facts about MimbleWimbleCoin are as follows.
Transactions: each of them uses CoinJoin and Confidential Transactions.
MimbleWimbleCoin Features
The key MWC feature is the HODL program. The program rewards MimbleWimbleCoin addresses that, during predetermined periods of time, have zero negative movements. This way the developers are trying to encourage MWC owners to hold their coins, because even the smallest amount may bring profit.
If you simply store coins on the wallet, without any movement, there will be more of them after a certain period of time. The first HODL program rewards were distributed at block 305 000 and 314 760. They amounted to 7 699 MWC and 774 065 MWC respectively.
It’s worth mentioning that the HODL program rewards users for simply having coins on their wallets. It is different from proof-of-stake that is to be implemented by Ethereum in the future. In this case, users will intentionally lock their ETH in smart contracts and participate in the life of the network by validating transactions and getting a reward for their work. Meanwhile, MimbleWimbleCoin users don’t have to lock anything. The fact of having coins on the wallet is already enough to get a reward.
Here is the predetermined coin distribution.
10 million MWC for mining.
10 million MWC for the genesis block.
7 400 037 MWC have been distributed and are circulating.
2 599 962 MWC are currently held in verifiable escrow wallets.
2 000 000 MWC for the HODL program.
The developers think that digital money must possess the following ten characteristics. It must be scarce, censorship-resistant, extensible, durable, indestructible, salable, portable, fungible, private, and divisible. Through these qualities, MimbleWimbleCoin creators have defined the goal of the project described on the official website.
Their mission is to exceed other coins on the market with regard to these ten characteristics.
MimbleWimbleCoin Performance
Currently, MimbleWimbleCoin ranks 215th in the CoinMarketCap chart valued at $16. The market cap exceeds $165 million with a circulating supply of 10.37 million MWC. The 24-hour trading volume exceeds $2.07 million, or 193 BTC.
Here is the cryptocurrency chart. MWC was added to the database on February 24, 2020, so there is not much information. It’s worth mentioning that the trading volume peaked in the period from the end of April to the beginning of May fluctuating between $79 million and $146 million per day.
Where to Buy MimbleWimbleCoin MWC
MimbleWimbleCoin is traded on several exchanges. The key ones are BitForex and Hotbit that account for 82% and 17% of the overall cryptocurrency trading volume respectively.
By the way, the 2Miners pool users have had problems with the crypto exchange BitForex. More specifically, the exchange lost the coins of a pool miner and failed to find them. As a result, the pool team covered the miner’s loss, while the exchange representatives denied the problem. More details about the issue are in this article.
Make sure to keep it in mind when you choose an exchange. We recommend HotBit.
MimbleWimbleCoin Wallet
The MimbleWimbleCoin MWC wallet is available on macOS, Linux, and Windows. At the time of writing, the latest version is mwc-1.0.22 issued on June 19, 2020.
As we have already mentioned, MimbleWimbleCoin MWC mining is available on two algorithms: Cuckarood29 and cuckAToo31. Block time is 60 seconds, the block reward is 0.6 MWC. At the current exchange rate, it is equivalent to $9.6.
It’s the same Cuckarood29 that was used by Grin in the beginning. Meanwhile, the latest mining algorithm for this cryptocurrency is Cuckarooz C29. You can find the mining guide here.
MimbleWimbleCoin differs from Grin in other characteristics as well. At the same time, some of their features are identical. For example, both have the same block time, 60 seconds. Meanwhile, the Grin reward is 60 coins, which is a hundred times higher than that of MWC.
Plus, Grin has three active PoW algorithms: Cuckarooz C29, CuckAToo-31, and CuckAToo-32. MimbleWimbleCoin has two. Here is a hash rate chart of different algorithms in the 2Miners pool.
Block monitoring is possible through the official blockchain explorer of the coin. You can find it here.
Where to Mine MimbleWimbleCoin
We recommend mining MimbleWimbleCoin MWC in the 2Miners pool. The mining pool has 9 thousand active users, PPLNS and SOLO modes, and user-friendly design. It is available in 18 languages.
If you are interested in mining MWC, the help page on the pool website will help you to start. First, you must get an address on HotBit or the official MimbleWimbleCoin desktop wallet. It’s worth mentioning that in order to receive payouts, a desktop wallet must be always on. If you don’t want to do it, it is better to use an address on the exchange.
In the miner settings, you must use a login generated on the 2Miners pool website.
The 2Miners pool supports payouts to TOR/Onion addresses. In the address generator, you should indicate it as https://ADDRESS.onion/
Then you should download mining software: lolMiner (for AMD), or Bminer (for both AMD and Nvidia). We have added all these programs to the quick start pool archive. Don’t forget to enter the password ‘2miners’ to unlock the archive.
The next step is to edit the bat file by replacing the default login with your own.
A sample login: 2aHR0cHM6Ly9ncmlucHJveHkuYml0Zm9yZXguY29tLzE5ODkzMzA
You can also choose a name for your rig. It can have no more than 32 symbols: Latin letters, numbers, and symbols “_” and “-“.
A sample rig name: rig-1.
Below, you can see the correct Bminer settings. Here are they for Cuckarood C29.
It’s worth mentioning that you can mine MimbleWimbleCoin MWC by renting power from mining power rentals. Here are the settings for mining on Miningrigrentals.
Name: 2Miners MWC
Type: Cuckaroo D29 (Grin) or Cuckatoo 31 (Grin)
Pool Host: mwc.2miners.com:1111
Workername (-u): YOUR_LOGIN
Password (-p): x
Custom pool name: 2Miners MWC
Algorithm: GrinCuckarood29 or GrinCuckatoo31
Stratum hostname or IP: mwc.2miners.com
Port: 1111
Username: YOUR_LOGIN
Password: x
Mining Profitability
Let’s check the mining profitability of MimbleWimbleCoin MWC. As always, we use the 2CryptoCalc calculator. First, let’s estimate the Cuckarood C29 hash rate for 300 Nvidia GTX 1070 Ti. The result is 1 890 Gps.
At the current network performance and cryptocurrency exchange rate, the calculator predicts $213 per day in PPLNS and $212 in SOLO. Here are the estimates for longer periods.
At the indicated hash rate, it’s almost $1 500 per week. Sounds pretty good.
Cuckatoo C31 predicted profitability is quite similar. However, we do recommend you always compare the mining profitability of both algorithms if your GPU’s are able to mine both.
Conclusion
MimbleWimbleCoin is a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency that uses the MimbleWimble protocol. The coin is younger than its more reputable competitors, such as Grin and Beam. However, it has already demonstrated a few interesting features, like a decrease in the inflation rate and the HODL program.
In terms of mining profitability, MWC is totally comparable to other more popular cryptocurrencies and algorithms. Miners and crypto traders should definitely take note of MimbleWimbleCoin and follow the development of the project.
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.
July 2020 Work Progress Report: New Coin – MimbleWimbleCoin, BitcoinZ Delisting
August 3, 2020
Grin Hardfork, BitcoinZ delisting, MimbleWimbleCoin on 2Miners, Ethereum Classic under attack.
Grin Ver.4 Hardfork
Grin Hard fork has been successfully performed on block 786 240. If you mine C29 algorithm please remember to install the latest version of the mining software. Ready-to-go version of the miner in our Quick Start Archive. Password: 2miners
Nicehash mining rentals are working as well. We’ve already tested our pools. The new algorithm is called CuckaRooz29.
If you mine C32 algorithm nothing changes for you.
MWC is mined using 2 algorithms: Cuckatoo31 and Cuckarood29. Cuckarood29 was previously used by Grin cryptocurrency. Cuckatoo31 is still being used by Grin, but they are gradually switching to Cuckatoo32.
MimbleWimbleCoin could be mined both in PPLNS and SOLO modes.
First, we’ve supposed that the network problem was caused only by the deprecation and removal of the ETC support from MultiGeth (Ethereum wallet software). ETC pools on 2Miners were temporarily offline. Ethereum Classic network was split into multiple chains and it was difficult to find the right one.
Then we have realised that the problem was much more serious. ETC was attacked. There was a huge re-organization of the blockchain (more than 3000 blocks were orphaned). Read more. This is not the first attack on ETC but for sure one of the most significant. Unfortunately, ETC is not the dominant coin of its algorithm so it is rather hard to prevent this kind of attack.
All exchanges have halted Ethereum Classic deposits.
You could read the official ETC devs statement on Medium.
We hope the situation would be resolved soon. By now ETC 2Miners pools are fully operational. Blocks are being mined. Payouts are being processed.
Ethereum Extra High Block Rewards
Ethereum (ETH) price has increased recently. The last month ETH has grown even more than Bitcoin (BTC). Moreover, USDT transactions have seized the network. These factors are helping miners to earn more. According to Eth Gas Station gas price has reached 100 Gwei this month.
The Ethereum network block reward is only 2 ETH. However, due to the high transaction fees included in the blocks, the average reward is 3 ETH or even higher. This fact has made Ethereum mining very profitable recently. We welcome you to join 2Miners ETH pool.
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.
Today we have witnessed perhaps the largest network split in the Ethereum Classic history: a chain of about 3000 blocks (that is about 12 hours worth of mining) got orphaned, destabilizing the whole network and causing major issues with the mining pools, exchanges and infrastructure nodes of the network.
It appears that at some point in time a 51% attack was executed on the network, and this is where the things got worse. It seems that different node software supporting the Ethereum Classic network is actually using different weighting algorithms that determine in cases of the network split which chain should take precedence.
Ethereum Multi-Geth Update
But let’s step back in time for just a day earlier and notice the new Multi-Geth release (v1.9.18) that publicly dropped the ETC support because “Ethereum Classic broke its core principle of immutability and code-is-law in the Phoenix hard fork, and because of the excessive community toxicity”. The authors say they no longer support ETC while their software together with OpenEthereum was backing up more than 70% of the nodes on the network, and just hours later ETC suffers from a large split. What was the cause is yet to be analyzed (multiple teams of people are investigating at the very time of this writing), but it seems like some of the larger parties on the ETC network failed to read the release notes and updated their node software to the latest-and-greatest Multi-Geth thus falling out from the network momentarily.
The loss of the hash power has caused alternative chains to appear and then it seems that different Ethereum node software seems to follow different principles in determining which chain is the “winner” and should be adopted as the main chain. Some of the nodes have decided the longest chain is the winner, while others that the chain with the larger block difficulty should take priority. As a result, over 3000 blocks were orphaned as the major network operators and miners have updated their software (for example, 2Miners moved from an older version of Multi-Geth that still supported ETC to a newer regular Geth).
Ethereum Classic Developers Reaction
Another point is the reaction of the core ETC developers out there (or, should we say, the lack of it). If the cryptocurrency network you’re responsible for is experiencing issues for more than 10 hours and there is no reaction whatsoever it brings up the questions of responsibilities and care. It is true that any cryptocurrency has to be self-driven and ideally independent of particular personalities, but in reality, the developer community behind it still should feel the responsibility and act quickly to prevent possible damage caused by such incidents.
“MIA” stands for “missing in action”
Sometime later ETC devs have released the note asking the exchanges to stop receiving deposits.
https://twitter.com/eth_classic/status/1289486354494025729
The Current State of Ethereum Classic Network
The waves are still going around but for the time being the situation with the network has stabilized. The real cause and why different node software distributions followed different weighting rules is yet to be thoroughly investigated, and we will surely follow-up with the findings of our own analyst team combined with other researchers’ conclusions.
Ethereum Classic pools on 2Miners are working, both PPLNS and SOLO. However, the payouts are currently stopped. We wait until the ETC developers will take a decision on this matter to re-enable the payouts. It is still not clear whether they want to execute some blockchain re-organization or not. So, once again, you could mine Ethereum Classic but you get the payout when the problem is solved and developers announce the investigation results and actions they are willing to perform.
If you want to get the latest updates follow us on TWITTER or join our Telegram Chat.
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.
Grin Version 4 Hard Fork. What Will Change and How to Get Ready?
July 14, 2020
Last time the Grin hard fork happened on January 16, 2020. Back then the developers upgraded to version 3.0 and implemented the Cuckaroom mining algorithm. This week they will perform another hard fork. In this article, we will talk about the latest hard fork and what the network users should do.
Hard forks in the Grin network are not spontaneous. They are held according to the previously defined schedule. In the beginning, the developers had been planning to perform four upgrades in the first two years after the launch. Each hard fork is held every 262 080 blocks or approximately every six months. So the third upgrade is scheduled at block 786 240.
Grin Hard Fork in July 2020
As we have mentioned above, the hard fork will be performed at block 786 240. It is expected to be mined on July 16, 2020, so the network users have only a few days to prepare. Apart from the new name, the developers point out several important changes.
New mining algorithm. The current algorithm Cuckaroom29 will be replaced with the new Cuckarooz C29. Frequent algorithm switches are also part of the plan. This strategy makes it too costly for ASIC developers to build new devices for the network. Since Cuckarooz C29 is different from Cuckaroom29, old ASICs will become obsolete. That’s how the developers are trying to discourage ASIC manufacturers from building new hardware.
Code refactoring. The developers will optimize the user interface and retire the first Node API version. They are also working on the server database code.
Parallel IBD (Initial Block Download). Initial sync and download of blockchain data will become faster.
More features in the network. The developers will enable new future use cases, such as payment channels.
Getting Ready for the Grin Hard Fork
After the hard fork Grin will switch to version 4.0.1. The new banner on the official website confirms the upcoming upgrade. Under the banner, the developers describe their mission.
Electronic transactions for all. Without censorship or restrictions. Grin is designed for the decades to come, not just tomorrow. Grin wants to be usable by everyone — regardless of borders, culture, skills or access.
Just like other cryptocurrency hard forks, the Grin latest upgrade requires software version 4.0.0 or greater. This includes wallets, miners, and nodes. Hodlers, miners, and other Grin users should update their software. You can download the latest software here. Version 4.0.1 is already available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
The developers point out that Grin v4 is a wide upgrade of the cryptocurrency network. However, apart from updating their software, users are not required to do anything. Their coins will not be affected. They will remain on the wallet.
If someone asks you to transfer your cryptocurrency elsewhere, it’s a scam. Ignore such requests and don’t send your coins to other addresses.
What Should Miners Do After the Hard Fork?
Please note that the CuckaroomC29 algorithm will be substituted for Cuckarooz C29.
If you mine CuckatooC32 algorithm there is nothing to worry about. Nothing changes for you.
Grin C29 miners should update their software. Nvidia owners should update Gminer. The miner update for the new Grin algorithm has not been released yet. At the moment, it is impossible to update. As soon as the developers release the software, it will be added to the Quick Start archive by the 2Miners pool. The archive password is 2miners, all letters are lower-case.
We checked the Gminer developers page on GitHub and didn’t find the new update. The latest miner version 2.16 was released recently. The update contains only the Cuckaroo29b algorithm for BitTube.
Cuckarooz C29 for Grin has not been released yet. The software will be released in the next couple of days. We will surely spread the news about the update release through our social media channels. Mining setup for Grin on the 2Miners pool will be available after the miner is released and tested.
Unfortunately, we are not aware if any Cuckarooz C29 miner would be available for AMD. For example lolMiner has refused to work on the update at the moment.
UPD: the new versions of GMiner (2.17) and Bminer (16.2.8) were released.
Here are the right settings for mining Grin with Gminer on 2Miners pool. They are the same, so it’s gonna be an auto-switch.
The developers still have not updated the post about the Grin network upgrade to version 4.0.0. It still says that the details about the new mining algorithm, the upgrade compatibility, and required actions will be specified later.
It means that the upcoming hard fork is just a scheduled upgrade rather than a radical change.
The Grin exchange rate chart in 2020 looks as follows.
To sum up, this week the Grin developers will perform a scheduled hard fork that will protect the network from potential ASIC presence. Even though the details are being released behind time, the network will be upgraded as planned. As a result, the network operation will still be ensured by GPU owners, and cryptocurrency owners will keep using the network.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
June 2020 Work Progress Report: Beam Hardfork, New Front-end
July 1, 2020
Beam Hardfork, unstable BTG, new 2Miners front-end.
BeamHash III Hardfork
Beam cryptocurrency hardfork was successfully performed on block 777 777 (June 28th). Mining algorithm has changed from BeamHash II to BeamHash III. This hardfork was planned in advance. The main idea was to prevent the ASIC/FPGA devices from entering the Beam mining. Fork has included other important updates such as support for confidential assets, support for Lelantus Mimblewimble, support for one-sided payments. If you want to get more information about the updates check our post Beam Hard Fork. What Will Change and How to Get Ready for BeamHash III?
Beam One-sided Payments
Classic Mimblewimble payouts are processed only if both wallets sending and receiving are up and running. Beam developers have designed the mechanism to make direct anonymous payments. They are told to be less secure but still, this option could be very useful especially for the mining pools. At the moment the pool could send the payout to the miner if only his wallet is online. Sometimes it is problematic for the miner to keep it online 24/7. We look forward for the one-sided payment implementation. At the moment the Beam devs are just developing this technology. It is not ready yet. So in order to receive the payment from the Beam PPLNS or SOLO pool you still need to keep your wallet running.
Beam Network Difficulty Drop
Beam Network Hashrate and Beam Network Difficulty have dropped 2 times after the hard fork. That is absolutely normal. It doesn’t mean that half of the miners have left Beam mining. The new BeamHash III algorithm is just different and each video card gives about 2 times less hashrate.
BeamHash III Mining
Mining process has not changed much. We still recommend Gminer for NVIDIA graphics cards and lolMiner for AMD. As the fork has been performed just a couple of days ago the mining software developers are constantly updating their products. The latest ready-to-use version of the miner is always available in our quick start archive. Archive password is 2miners
Miners who rent hashing power on Nicehash should note that the new algorithm is called BeamV3. Nicehash settings for 2Miners could be always found on the pool Help page. For Beam Solo the setting are presented below.
First, the Nicehash pool validator was not working. We have reported this problem directly to Nicehash and they have solved the issue. Now everything is fine.
Bitcoin Gold Network Instability
On June 21st Bitcoin Gold network was unstable. We are not sure if it was an intentional attack on the network or just an unwanted accident. 2Miners pool have stopped the payout for 1 day. At the moment the BTG network is operating fine. Welcome to 2Miners:
2Miners front-end code refactoring has been performed in the last 2 months. Finally, it is ready.
It is difficult to see the design changes as they are really minor. However, the code is absolutely new. The website is operating much faster than before and this should provide our miners even better user experience. If you see any errors in 2Miners website operation you could always contact us by email, helpdesk or Telegram chat. We would be glad to receive your feedback and suggestions.
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.
.
