Yesterday Bitmain has released Antminer E9, its new flagship mining device. It is designed for Ethash-based cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum with its PoW algorithm and Ethereum Classic. The company says that the performance of the new miner is equivalent to 25 Nvidia’s high-end RTX 3080 graphics cards. Let’s talk about this miner and its profitability.
Releasing a mining device for Ethereum is a surprising decision. Ethereum is shifting to the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism in 2022, which will disable mining on GPUs and ASICs. However, there is more to it.
First of all, PoW mining will continue for at least a few months. It is confirmed by the fact that on June 30, 2022, Ethereum has delayed the difficulty bomb in the network by 700 thousand blocks or about 100 days. This way the developers made sure that the blockchain would function properly until the merge of PoW and PoS.
Plus, 100 days is just an estimate. Ethereum will shift to PoS after 100 days only if there are no issues and small bugs during testing.
There are two testing stages left to be held before the merge of the two different networks. The first is the update of the Sepolia test network that will be held today at about midnight. The second stage will be held in Goerli, the last public testnet of this blockchain. In other words, the end is not so close, so there is a good chance that the upgrade will be delayed. For now, Ethereum's developers plan to shift to PoS in the second half of September 2022.
And yet, despite all the uncertainties, Bitmain has released Antminer E9. The company is clearly quite sure that the new miner will pay off.
Antminer E9: Specs and Profitability
Antminer E9 will give out 2,400 MH/s which is indeed equivalent to 25 Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics cards. To give you a better idea, it is also equivalent to 54 Nvidia GTX 1080Ti graphics cards.
It consumes 1920 W, while its energy efficiency is 0.8 J/MH.
Antminer E9 lists at $9,999. Shipping is expected to start in the middle of June. Bitmain accepts payments in BTC, USDT, and USDC.
How profitable is the miner with such a hash rate? According to 2CryptoCalc, ETH is the most profitable coin for mining. At the current exchange rate and network difficulty, you can expect to get an equivalent of almost $42.
Keep in mind that it’s a gross profit, as you should subtract the cost of electricity consumed by the device, which will differ for everybody.
With the same hash rate, you will get $29 from mining Ethereum Classic.
If the ETH exchange rate and Ethereum network difficulty remain stable, the miner will start bringing a profit after $9,999/$42 = 238 days. In reality, the pay-off period may be longer if you also consider electricity costs.
So we can conclude that if you get Antminer E9, you will have to mine Ethereum Classic as well, because ETH network is likely to shift to PoS within 240 days.
Where and How to Mine with Antminer E9
Antminer E9 settings are already available. We recommend mining Ethereum with this ASIC miner and graphics cards on the 2Miners pool that already boasts 102 thousand miners.
You can use the following settings for the new device:
URL: stratum+tcp://eth.2miners.com:2020 Worker: YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.ASIC_ID Password: x
If you need to set up other devices, you will find all the info on the Ethereum pool page.
Antminer E9 is a powerful mining machine that will surely be popular among the right customers. Sure, sooner or later Ethereum will shift to PoS, but the device owners will still be able to mine Ethereum Classic. If the cryptocurrency market continues to grow, its profitability is likely to be more than satisfactory.
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.
June 2022 Work Progress Report: Ethereum Difficulty Bomb Delayed, Ergo Reward Reduction
July 1, 2022
Ethereum difficulty bomb delayed, zero fees in Firo pool after the halving, Ergo block reward reduction, cryptocurrency node updates.
Ethereum Difficulty Bomb Delayed
Ethereum Grey Glacier hardfork activated at Block 15 050 000. The difficulty bomb has been postponed to mid-September. ETH block time has dropped back from 16 sec to 13 sec.
More blocks in the network -> More rewards for the miners!
You could always check the current block time of the Ethereum Network in 2CryptoCalc.
If you have no time to read our latest post on the ETH future, Son of a Tech is reading it for you on YouTube.
No Fees for FIRO
FIRO halving happened on June 16.
The block reward was reduced from 6.25 FIRO to 1.5625 FIRO. The block time was reduced from 5 minutes to 2.5 minutes. That means all the miners now get two times fewer rewards than before.
2CryptoCalc was updated. You could read all the FIRO release details on GitHub.
To further support the miners who have their block rewards reduced due to the change in the monetary policy of FIRO devs, 2Miners pool is completely removing its commission, making it 0%.
From now on all the mined FIRO coins are paid to our miners. No matter if they mine in the Pool or Solo.
The change is immediately in effect and will last until further notice.
ERGO Block Reward Drops
Please pay attention that the ERGO block reward dropped from 63 ERG to 51 ERG at block 777 217 on June 22. 2CryptoCalc was updated.
Unfortunately, another block reward reduction happens at the beginning of July.
Block rewards are reduced every three months by 3 ERG/block. Based on the emission schedule, the next reduction in rewards will take place around July 2, 2022. The block rewards will be reduced by 3 ERG, therefore the total reward for each block will be 48 ERG. Three months from that date, the block rewards will be 45 ERG/block, and so on. This reduction schedule will continue until block rewards are 3 ERG/block. Block rewards will remain steady at 3 ERG/block until the remission contract has been depleted.
These cryptocurrency nodes were updated in June by 2Miners.
Beam Node Groovy Gluon 7.0.13064
Ergo Protocol Reference Client 4.0.31
ETC CoreGeth/v1.12.7-stable-a374c2e8
ETH Geth for Grey Glacier hardfork
ETH High MEV Blocks
We’ve seen a couple of nice blocks series in 2Miners Ethereum Pool in June. For example block number 14 959 135 brought almost 165 ETH of MEV to the miners of the Ethereum pool.
You could always find the recent blocks on the blocks page of the Ethereum pool.
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.
Choosing Proof-of-Stake Over Mining Is Ethereum’s Biggest Mistake and Here Is Why
June 6, 2022
Years ago, Ethereum developers decided to quit cryptocurrency mining. And now, on June 8th, Ethereum’s test network called Ropsten will host the merge to shift to staking and abandon mining completely. On that day, only the test network will get an update, while the main cryptocurrency network will get it sometime in the near future. It means that staking is coming. In this article we are going to explain why quitting GPU mining is Ethereum’s biggest mistake.
Bitcoin vs Ethereum. Decentralization
Cryptocurrencies come and go, rise and fall, but there are two cryptocurrencies that have always stayed at the top for many years: Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Everyone compares these cryptocurrencies all the time.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the world’s first cryptocurrency, the father and mother of all other coins. Without BTC, other coins wouldn’t have existed. Bitcoin is the “digital gold”, the most secure coin, the keystone of all. It’s spread all over the globe. Bitcoin’s old software versions work great with its new versions.
The Bitcoin network has had only a few updates lately, but the truth is, it doesn’t need many. It’s good the way it is. Anyone in the world can become a Bitcoin user and launch a fully functional Bitcoin node. You only need a computer connected to the Internet and 400 GB of free space on the hard drive.
Of course you can also download a light wallet on your smartphone, but in this case, it's going to use the wallet's developer node.
Ethereum is a unique project developed on the base of Bitcoin. It’s not just a digital currency, but also a platform for the creation of blockchain-based applications. The Ethereum network allows you to transfer ETH coins that have value, but you can also launch programs called smart contracts inside the network.
Ethereum is like a botnet that allows you to launch a program on all computers within the network. Unlike a botnet though, Ethereum programs can’t access the external Internet and can’t harm anyone. In recent years, we’ve seen some unique projects developed on the Ethereum platform, like decentralized exchanges and other DeFi projects. They are trading platforms operating based on the preset algorithm without any human control or participation.
Ethereum is regularly updated. According to Electric Capital, over 4,000 developers are working on the project. One of the updates is the introduction of a smart contract for Ethereum staking that already stores over 10% of all ETH. Another important update is mining fee burning in the ETH network.
There is a lot going on with the project, and probably that is why users don't criticize the developers for the lack of an official and user-friendly wallet. There are a lot of wallets for Ethereum, but they are all third-party wallets.
Are Cryptocurrencies Decentralized?
You probably already know that cryptocurrencies are decentralized. No one runs them, there is no system in place to override, return transactions or direct them to a different address, you can’t delete your address, etc.
You can freeze your address, but not fully. For example, the Tether company that created the most popular stablecoin called USDT can prevent certain addresses in the Ethereum network from interacting with it. As of now, there are 597 addresses on the blacklist. But you can easily create a new address thus bypassing the ban.
Say, if you send the cryptocurrency to someone’s address, there is no way to get it back. At the same time, if you store the cryptocurrency on your personal wallet, tax or other authorities don’t have access to your funds. Everything is in your hands.
However, not all people understand what makes decentralization possible.
If you install a Bitcoin wallet on your computer with a full blockchain copy keeping it connected to the network, will you contribute to decentralization? Yes and no. But mostly you won’t. All network nodes are interconnected and transmit information about new blocks to each other. Your node also validates new blocks in the network. So your node helps to spread information faster among other network nodes, but it doesn’t help with anything else.
Decentralization is mostly made possible by miners, or by those nodes in the network that not only transmit and receive information but also find new blocks. Miners are the ones responsible for filling blocks with new transactions. We wrote about it in the article: What Is Mining?
Decentralization is Ethereum’s key advantage over Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies. Vitalik Buterin has created a unique solution that no one has been able to replicate yet. Why is it so unique?
If you want to mine most cryptocurrencies, you need special equipment. Bitcoin and many other coins are mined using the so-called ASIC devices. They are metal boxes with electronic circuit boards and extremely noisy fans that are actively blowing out the air. They are impossible to use at home and require a dedicated space.
There are no ASIC miners for Ethereum mining. That is, there are devices called in such a way, but in reality, they are just multiple GPU chips placed in the same case. Such ASICs are not superior to normal GPUs in any way. Their performance is at the same level, while the price is often higher. Plus, GPUs are multifunctional: you can use them to mine, render objects in 3ds Max, and play GTA5. ASICs for ETH are designed exclusively for mining, and their repairability is close to zero.
Ethereum Is the Most Decentralized Currency. Yet
Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum can be mined only with GPUs. Thanks to its mining algorithm security, no one has been able to develop ASICs.
GPUs are available everywhere, so there are ETH miners all over the world. Some mine with one GPU, others mine with two, and there are those who have a garage full of GPUs. The point is, that everyone can start mining. And you don’t need much to do so. With a computer at home and $200–$300 to spend, you can already start mining.
How many GPUs are mining Ethereum? At a current network hash rate of 1.05 PH/s and an average GPU hash rate of 40 MH/s, over 25 million GPUs mine Ethereum across the globe. Some other cryptocurrencies are also mined with GPUs, but even the most popular ones are mined by less than a million graphics cards. The difference is huge.
Bitcoin mining is only possible in special locations, like factories, industrial sites, etc. One up-to-date ASIC mining device costs a few thousand dollars. Plus, you need low electricity rates to be able to afford to mine. It’s hard to say how many people mine Bitcoin in specific countries, but it’s no secret that the leading countries are the USA, Russia, Kazakhstan, and China, despite the official ban on mining. A common person can’t mine Bitcoin. There is a workaround, but even in this case you actually mine ETH and then get paid in BTC.
Ethereum is much more decentralized than Bitcoin. Ethereum truly belongs to people. This is mind-blowing.
Ethereum developers though want to “centralize” the coin. They want to give control over Ethereum to rich users, those who have a lot of ETH. It means that a group of rich people will define the consensus in the network. You may think that they wouldn’t have any interest in harming the coin in any way because they invested a considerable amount of funds in it. The truth is, by working together they can alter the network operation to increase their profit.
Ethereum Staking. What Will Change after the Shift to POS?
Simply put, POW is mining, while POS is staking. Mining means using your computing powers to get rewarded. Staking means locking a certain amount of money on your account and keeping your wallet online to get rewarded.
To become a true validator of the Ethereum network after it shifts to POS, you need to lock 32 ETH, which is sixty-five thousand dollars at the current exchange rate. What are the consequences of quitting mining and shifting to staking? Let’s talk about the key ones.
Lack of Decentralization
As we mentioned above, Ethereum is the most decentralized cryptocurrency of our time. GPUs are widely spread all over the world. Plus, you need only $200–$300 to start mining. After the shift to POS, you’ll need much more investments to start staking: in order to get a reward, you’ll have to lock the equivalent of $65 000 on your account, not to mention the expenses of powering your computer and renting a server for your validator node.
If Ethereum shifts to POS, it will no longer be the most decentralized currency in the world. It will become just an ordinary coin with a network security level comparable to many other coins.
Colossal Risks of Stakers
Some might argue that you don’t necessarily need 32 ETH to start staking: you can stake in pools, plus many exchanges will launch their own validators, etc.
Sure, you can stake in pools, as well as give your money to exchanges, but keep in mind the key rule of cryptocurrencies: Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins. You could pool 32 ETH with 31 more people by sending 1 ETH each to some platform that would launch a validator for you.
But how can you make sure that such a platform won’t rip you off? Someone could also hack the platform and steal your money. It’s even worse with exchanges: almost all of them have been hacked at least once, and the rest could be hacked at some point. Plus, exchanges tend to change KYC policies quite often. If you fail to comply one day, you won’t get your money back.
Exchanges can also ban user accounts due to "suspicious activity" without any further explanation.
Even if you have 32 ETH and you managed to launch your own validator node, it doesn’t mean that you will now get generously rewarded. There are a lot of penalties that your validator can get. You will be charged for all of them, as well as for inactivity.
Imagine that your validator gets under a DDOS attack. In this case, you will be charged a penalty. If someone launches a virus and your validator gets affected, it will be sending the wrong data to the network. The base penalty for such an error is 0.25 ETH, or $500.
In mining, these types of problems don’t exist. You get a reward without running any risks. No one can confiscate your GPUs if they don’t operate properly. Plus, you need $200–$300 to start mining, not $65 000. Mining is mostly done through mining pools. If something happens to a pool, you can switch to another pool in no time. In the case of staking, you can’t do that, especially if you stake through a third-party platform. Moreover, the servers of such a platform may catch fire, get seized, and your coins may disappear or get locked at any moment.
The ETH exchange rate tends to fluctuate, and you get as little as 5% per year for staking and run colossal risks.
Also in case of staking, you can’t withdraw your money for now. And it’s still unknown when it will be possible. You also don’t know how much 1 ETH will cost on that day: it can be $400 or $1,000. Nobody knows.
It means that common users will lose a source of income.
POS Security Is Questionable
Ethereum has been around for seven years now, since June 30, 2015. The network has always used POW as an algorithm, and mining is ensuring network security. It’s a tried and true solution. Ethereum hasn’t experienced any attacks for many years. In order to hold a 51% attack, you need a huge amount of computing power in the form of GPUs that no one in the world has.
The shift to POS and staking raises a lot of questions. Have ETH developers really made sure that their code is valid and the network is secured against any incidents? For example, on May 25, Ethereum’s POS network experienced a 7-block deep reorg. Simply put, the blockchain got split into two chains, so they had to cancel one of them. With mining, Ethereum hasn’t experienced such problems for a few years now.
Does Ethereum Need POS? What’s behind Developers’ Actions?
The Ethereum developers claim that POS is necessary for environmental reasons. Cryptocurrency mining uses a lot of equipment that consumes megawatts of power. But shifting to POS will deprive Ethereum of decentralization.
Plus, only extremely rich people will benefit from Ethereum staking, while common people won't be able to afford it.
The new system will boost the number of fraudulent platforms offering to stake jointly. And their victims will lose money. All of it will ruin trust in cryptocurrencies, and the consequences may be much more serious than the fall of LUNA and UST.
Furthermore, many cryptocurrencies offer staking, but can you name at least one successful project? At the time, Ethereum replicated Bitcoin’s success by taking its best parts and adding new groundbreaking ideas. It was a coin designed for mining. Now, why is Ethereum trying to implement a mediocre idea? Bitcoin and Ethereum come first and second respectively in terms of the cryptocurrency market cap in the world.
POS Risks
We know that the developers have been delaying the shift to POS for 4 years now. Does it mean that they themselves are not so sure about it? How can this fully replace the old fully functional system?
The cryptocurrency market is full of coins with validators, masternodes, and staking. But only Ethereum with its mining is the second most popular coin after Bitcoin.
More than 10% of all ETH coins are now locked in Ethereum’s staking smart contract. What will happen when it becomes possible to withdraw this 10% of all Ethereum coins? It’s more than 12 million ETH, or $24 billion. If you stake 32 ETH now, they get locked, and it’s still uncertain when withdrawals will be enabled. What will happen to the exchange rate when this 10% of coins flood the market? Even if only half of all users start selling these ETH coins, we are still talking about selling billions of dollars worth of ETH.
Why should people even consider ETH staking if the annual interest is only 5%? They’d better buy a property and rent it. You can expect the same profit from renting an apartment. But the cost of an apartment doesn’t fluctuate from $4800 to $1800 within a couple of months. The risks are much lower.
Does it mean that staking will be used for money laundering? Why else would someone invest in such an unprofitable and risky asset?
What if someone invests illegal ETH coins in the same staking pool you’re using? The authorities might start the investigation and put the platform operation on hold or even close the platform. You may lose any control over your coins.
Also, imagine investing 32 ETH at a rate of $4,800 per ETH and discovering in a month that 1 ETH now costs $1,500. We really are clueless as to who may be interested in such business.
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.
May 2022 Work Progress Report: Zcash Hardfork, Ethereum Difficulty Bomb Activation
June 1, 2022
Zcash hardfork, Nvidia LHR GPU 100% unlock, big blocks in the Ethereum pool, cryptocurrency node updates, Ethereum difficulty bomb activation.
Ethereum Difficulty Bomb
Ethereum block time started to go up recently due to the activated difficulty bomb.
What does that mean?
Fewer blocks in the network -> Fewer transactions the network could handle within a certain time (i.e. 1 day or 1 hour). As a result, the ETH transaction fees could go even higher during periods of high demand.
Fewer blocks in the network -> Less reward for the miners.
What’s next?
According to ETH developer Tim Beiko, in the next months, the block time will continue to grow. Then the developers think to postpone the difficulty bomb for 2-4 months again. The difficulty bomb was designed in 2015 and it was already postponed multiple times.
You could check the current block time of the Ethereum Network in 2CryptoCalc.
ZEC Hardfork
Zcash Network Upgrade 5 (NU5) was activated at block 1 687 104. We updated Zcash node software to the latest 5.0.0 version which included many protocol improvements.
If you are a ZEC miner there is nothing extra you should set in your mining software. 2Miners pool is already set to provide you with the best ZEC mining experience.
This month we also updated the Zcash pool API and statistics pages. This means that you have now the detailed hashrate statistics and share statistics available. You are also able to change the payout threshold in the ZEC pool!
You may need to clear your browser cache with Shift+Ctrl+R to see the update.
Nvidia LHR GPU Unlock
You could now fully unlock Nvidia LHR graphics card potential. NBMiner was the first to release the new mining software followed by Gminer and T-rex. From May 2022 there is no difference if a particular card is LHR or non-LHR. Their mining hashrates would be the same. We updated GPU hashrates on 2CryptoCalc.
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 Fully Unlock Nvidia LHR Graphics Cards with NBMiner: Experiment Results
May 11, 2022
Today we are going to share with you the results of experiments held by the 2Miners pool team to unlock LHR with a popular mining program called NBMiner. The team tested it on the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, but the principles are applicable to any LHR graphics card. Let’s get into it.
In May 2021, NVIDIA published another article titled A Further Step to Getting GeForce Cards into the Hands of Gamers. This article talks about lowering the hash rate on the Ethash algorithm for the GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti. These models became available at the end of May 2021 and were marked with a “Lite Hash Rate” or “LHR” identifier.
At the end of May 2021, NVIDIA announced the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti. You can read the full announcement here.
These GPUs weren’t marked as LHR, but even before the release, there were rumors online about the limited hash rate on Ethash. The rumors about LHR were confirmed after the release and testing.
The active expert discussion of the term LHR started in May 2021.
Test Mining Rig. Estimating Potential Max Hash Rate and LHR Impact
Here is the the configuration of the mining rig we used for this test:
Motherboard: BIOSTAR Hi-Fi B85S2
CPU: Intel Pentium G3220
Memory: DDR3 SDRAM Kingston 4Gb
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 160Gb
PSU: EVGA 1000 GQ 80+ GOLD 1000W
GPU: EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 ULTRA GAMING
Two GPUs were connected to the motherboard, each through the riser PCI-E X16-X1.
OS: Windows 10
Nvidia drivers: 512.15
Overclocking: MSI Afterburner
Monitoring: GPU-Z
Testing was held on three different rigs with the same setup, indoors, with the room temperature at +15 °C (59 °F).
The potential max hash rate without LHR lock on Ethash and Etchash is 116 MH/s. LHR lock causes the hash rate to drop to 64 MH/s (by 45%).
NBMiner: Review & Testing
NBminer is a universal program for cryptocurrency mining on GPUs that supports both AMD and NVIDIA. The mining program has been in development since 2018. As of now, NBminer supports such popular algorithms as Ethash, Kawpow, Octopus, Autolykos2, Cuckoo, and Beamv3.
The miner developers keep in touch with their users on popular platforms and social media.
On August 15, 2021, NBminer developers released the v.39.0, the first mining program that unlocked LHR to 70% of the potential max hash rate. The miner hash rate on Ethash ranged between 77 MH/s and 78 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load charts were stable, and the Board Power Draw chart – with slight leaps.
Such settings allow NBminer v.39.0 to unlock LHR to 67% of the potential max hash rate.
On November 24, 2021, the developers released NBminer v.40.1 which greatly improved the performance of LHR graphics cards. The miner hash rate on Ethash ranged between 83 MH/s and 85 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load charts were stable, and the Board Power Draw chart – with slight leaps. Such settings allowed NBminer v.40.1 to unlock LHR to 72% from the potential max hash rate.
NBminer v.41.0 Review
On May 8, 2022, the developers announced NBminer v.41.0. Click here to download the miner and read about its features.
This version promised to unlock LHR to 100%. To achieve this, the developers recommend using the 512.15 video driver for Windows and 510.60 video driver for Linux, as well as running the mining program as admin. For better stability, you should also lower GPU memory overclocking by 100–200 MHz (in comparison with the previous versions).
We launched the mining program on the first rig with the following GPU settings: PL(%): 70, CC(MHz): +0, MC(MHz): +1000.
Here is the log file data right after the miner launch and after 20 hours of operation:
We encountered ‘Enable LHR unlocker’ only once, at the very beginning of the log file. We didn’t encounter ‘LHR lock’ in the log file and didn’t restart the miner.
The miner was active for 22 hours and 21 minutes. The miner hash rate on Ethash ranged between 115 MH/s and 116 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load charts were stable, and the Board Power Draw chart – with slight leaps.
Based on the number of shares sent to the pool, we estimated the miner hash rate. Initial data: 2174 shares (GPU0: 1122; GPU1: 1052) in 22.35 hours, share difficulty is 8726 M. We multiplied the number of shares per second by share difficulty and got 235.8 MH/s. This is a hash rate of two GPUs. We can also estimate the hash rate per GPU: GPU0 – 121.7 MH/s, GPU1 – 114.1 MH/s.
We recommend extending the testing period to get statistically correct results: each card should send over 5000 shares to the pool.
Below is the Stats page of the pool with the results of the rig operation.
We launched the mining program on the second rig with the following GPU settings: PL(%): 70, CC(MHz): +0, MC(MHz): +1100.
Here is the log file data right after the miner launch and after 20 hours of operation:
We encountered ‘Enable LHR unlocker’ only once, at the very beginning of the log file. We didn’t encounter ‘LHR lock’ in the log file and didn’t restart the miner.
The miner was active for 26 hours and 50 minutes. The miner hash rate on Ethash ranged between 117 MH/s and 118 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load charts were stable, and the Board Power Draw chart – with slight leaps.
Based on the number of shares sent to the pool, we estimated the miner hash rate. Initial data: 2612 shares (GPU0: 1308; GPU1: 1304) in 26.83 hours, share difficulty is 8726 M. We multiplied the number of shares per second by share difficulty and got 235.9 MH/s. This is a hash rate of two GPUs. We can also estimate the hash rate per GPU: GPU0 – 118.2 MH/s, GPU1 – 117.8 MH/s.
We recommend extending the testing period to get statistically correct results: each card should send over 5000 shares to the pool.
Below is the Stats page of the pool with the results of the rig operation.
We set up GPUs on the next rig by fixing GPU frequency and voltage. We used the Voltage/Frequency Curve Editor in MSI Afterburner.
We launched the mining program on the third rig with the following GPU settings: PL(%): 80, CC (MHz): -109 fix Voltage(mV) 750, MC (MHz): +1000.
When you fix the voltage, choose a point that will let you run the miner with a Core Clock (CC) of 1300–1350 MHz.
Here is the log file data right after the miner launch and after 20 hours of operation:
We encountered ‘Enable LHR unlocker’ only once, at the very beginning of the log file. We didn’t encounter ‘LHR lock’ in the log file and didn’t restart the miner.
The miner was active for 27 hours and 46 minutes. The miner hash rate on Ethash ranged between 115 MH/s and 118 MH/s. Memory Controller Load and GPU Load charts were stable, and the Board Power Draw chart – with slight leaps.
Based on the number of shares sent to the pool, we estimated the miner hash rate. Initial data: 2574 shares (GPU0: 1283; GPU1: 1291) in 27.77 hours, share difficulty is 8726 M. We multiplied the number of shares per second by share difficulty and got 224.7 MH/s. This is a hash rate of two GPUs. We can also estimate the hash rate per GPU: GPU0 – 112 MH/s, GPU1 – 112.7 MH/s.
We recommend extending the testing period to get statistically correct results: each card should send over 5000 shares to the pool.
Below is the Stats page of the pool with the results of the rig operation.
We tested the miner with HiveOS.
The miner was active for 5 hours and 6 minutes. The miner hash rate on Ethash ranged between 117 MH/s and 119 MH/s.
Based on the number of shares sent to the pool, we estimated the miner hash rate. Initial data: 741 shares (GPU0: 255; GPU1: 233; GPU2: 253) in 5.1 hours, share difficulty is 8726 M. We multiplied the number of shares per second by share difficulty and got 352.2 MH/s. This is a hash rate of three GPUs. We can also estimate the hash rate per GPU: GPU0 – 121.2 MH/s, GPU1 – 110.7 MH/s, GPU2: 120.2 MH/s.
We recommend extending the testing period to get statistically correct results: each card should send over 5000 shares to the pool.
Such settings allow NBminer v.41.0 to unlock LHR to 100% of the potential max hash rate.
NBminer v.41.3 Release
As of now, the latest miner version is NBminer v.41.3. The LHR unlocker is now much more stable, the failure issue on AMD graphics cards has been resolved, and it’s also more compatible with equipment low in RAM.
You should use the 512.15 driver on Windows and 510.60 on Linux. You can download the mining program on the official NBMiner website:
NBminer offers a universal solution to unlock LHR graphics cards.
NBminer v.39.0 unlocked LHR to 67% of the max potential hash rate on Ethash, NBminer v.40.1 – to 72% of the max potential hash rate, and the latest NBminer v.41.3 — to 100%.
Please note that we didn’t test GPUs with extreme settings. You may as well get stable results by using different settings. Make sure to overclock and test each GPU individually.
We recommend you mine Ethereum in 2Miners Mining Pool. We have an amazing BTC and NANO payouts system that saves you a lot on payouts processing. You could find the basic settings below. nbminer -a ethash -o stratum+tcp://eth.2miners.com:2020 -u WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_ID
If you have enough hashrate you could also mine Ethereum in SOLO. Please check your chances on 2CryptoCalc before.
Share your thoughts in our cryptochat. Join the discussion about the latest news in the blockchain industry. 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.
April 2022 Work Progress Report: Currency Selection, ETC and ERG Reward Reduction
May 2, 2022
Ethereum Classic and Ergo mining rewards reduction, extra rewards in the Ethereum pool, new API and statistics pages for Horizen, multiple cryptocurrency node updates, and currency selection available.
Currency Selection
Now you could select your local currency on 2Miners.com
No matter which pool language you use, you could select the currency for statistics representation on your own. Click the currency sign on the top right corner of the pool and select the desired currency.
Ethereum Classic News
We launched the new payout system in the Ethereum Classic 2Miners pools in March which allows you to mine ETC and receive the payouts in BTC! Almost 500 miners started to use this system in April.
On April 25th ETC switched to Era 4.
Block reward was reduced from 3.2 ETC to 2.56 ETC.
Uncle block reward was reduced from 0.1 ETC to 0.08 ETC.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
Getting Paid in Bitcoin for Ethereum Classic (ETC) Mining: Step-by-Step Guide
April 5, 2022
In 2021, NFTs gained an unprecedented popularity. Ethereum blockchain users were actively minting tokens thus overloading the network which sent transaction fees skyrocketing. The 2Miners pool came up with an innovative solution: rewarding ETH miners in BTC and NANO. As a result, you could save on expenses and technically even mine Bitcoin on GPUs. Now this solution is also available for Ethereum Classic. Let’s get into it.
Ethereum transaction fees in 2021 have indeed been record-high. Take February 22 as an example: you had to pay over $600 to exchange tokens on a decentralized platform Uniswap. With that being said, we paid $150 to swap tokens on that day as it depended on the network load at a particular moment of time, but still the numbers were impressive.
NFT transactions cost even more. The reason is simple: NFTs require a lot of resources from the network which is directly proportional to how much gas is used and how much a transaction costs.
Let’s see the cost of a transaction in ETH blockchain at the time of writing. A fast Ether transaction costs $4.48, fast ERC20 token transaction costs $11, and transaction on Uniswap decentralized exchange costs $39. Selling NFTs on the previously discussed OpenSea exchange costs $43.
NFTs have been gaining more and more in popularity. Here is an NFT trading chart since January 2018. Notice the 2021 leap.
As a result, the blockchain has been constantly overloaded. Below you can see Ethereum’s average fee chart. The peak value of $52 was registered on November 3, 2021.
So transactions in ETH blockchain have been, and still are, expensive compared with other popular networks like Solana and Avalanche. And there is more to it.
Ethereum Transaction Fees
ETH miners started earning more thanks to rising fees. Plus, mining pools allowed miners to include transactions in blocks at a minimum cost.
So not only miners earned more, they could also get their reward almost for free. For example, the 2Miners pool used to cover fees for sending rewards to ETH miners.
This has changed on August 5, 2021. Ethereum has performed the London upgrade and implemented ETH gas fee burning. Plus, due to the base fee introduction, it has become impossible for pools to pay out rewards at a minimum cost.
2Miners came up with a solution that was simple and genius at the same time. 2Miners started converting ETH miner rewards to Bitcoin or Nano and sending them to user wallets thus minimizing transaction fees. Read more about it here.
The solution has become quite popular. As of now, there are over 159 thousand miners in the 2Miners pool. 119 thousand of them mine ETH.
Ethereum Classic is the second most popular cryptocurrency on 2Miners, and now Ethereum Classic miners can benefit from the same solution. Ethereum Classic is becoming more and more popular among miners thanks to the growing mining profitability. Take a look at the mining profitability of one Nvidia RTX 1080Ti graphics card. Ethereum Classic comes third and is far ahead of the popular Ravencoin.
One of the reasons is ETC’s growing exchange rate. In the last 30 days, it has grown by 68%.
How to Get Paid in Bitcoin for Ethereum Classic Mining
To get paid in Bitcoin, ETC miners should do the following.
Create a desktop or mobile BTC wallet, or get a wallet address on an exchange. If you choose a mobile wallet, we recommend Coinomi and Trust Wallet. If you choose an exchange, Binance, Kraken, Gate.io are good options.
Replace ETC address with BTC wallet address in the miner settings. Here is a sample bat file to mine cryptocurrencies with Gminer. You can use Bitcoin addresses in the following formats: SegWit, Compatibility, Legacy.
Once mining starts, you can go to your Stats page by entering your wallet address in the search field on the pool website. You will see your address on the list of all pool miners along with regular ETC addresses. You can also set a payout threshold in ETC on your Stats page.
This page has all the information on how to start mining Ethereum Classic, including miner download links and settings.
2Miners use Binance to exchange ETC to BTC due to a relatively fast deposit confirmation for Ethereum Classic. To do that, you need 500 blocks, and it takes about 13 seconds to create each, so the confirmation process takes about 2 hours. As a result, the whole exchange and payout process takes about 3–4 hours.
On some other exchanges, deposit confirmation takes about 1-2 days. Why does it take so long? In summer 2020, Ethereum Classic suffered from multiple 51% attacks. As a result, thousands of blocks on the blockchain became orphans with users losing time and money. Since then exchanges take the precaution of allocating a large number of blocks for confirmation.
Why Miners Need the New Payout System
High transaction fees in Ethereum have been caused by its popularity and versatility. However, this year ETH developers are planning to shift to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm. As a result, miners and GPUs will be replaced with validators and stakes, or in other words, a certain amount of coins locked in an escrow smart contract. So those who own computing power will have to switch to other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum Classic.
A growing number of active users and transactions, as well as an increase in ETC exchange rate, will lead to higher fees. So many would want to save on them and get rewards in a more popular cryptocurrency – BTC. Miners in the 2Miners pool are already prepared for such a scenario.
It's worth noting that you can mine Ethereum Classic even on 3GB GPUs. According to Minerstat, you can mine ETC on 3GB GPUs until mid-June 2022. So Ethereum Classic is likely to gain wider popularity among miners after ETH shifts to PoS.
Ethereum Classic miners in the 2Miners pool already have a solution in case the cryptocurrency network fees go up. Most importantly, this payout solution allows you to earn BTC directly without any intermediate steps. Plus, it also applies to 3GB GPUs considered to be quite obsolete.
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.
March 2022 Work Progress Report: Bitcoin Payouts for ETC Mining
April 1, 2022
Horizen, Grin, Ergo cryptocurrency node updates, high rewards in the Ethereum pool, Bitcoin payout system released for the Ethereum Classic pools.
Bitcoin Payouts for ETC Mining
We launched the new payout system in the Ethereum Classic 2Miners pools. It allows you to mine ETC and receive the payouts in BTC! This system works for both PPLNS and SOLO pools.
There are no complicated settings. You just need to set the BTC wallet address in your mining software if you want to get the payouts in BTC.
The ETC payout system is identical to the ETH system that we have been using since October 2021. The only difference is that the ETH pools support both BTC and NANO payouts and the ETC pools support BTC only.
In just a couple of days, more than 250 miners have successfully joined the new ETC->BTC payout system.
Ethereum Mining Pool News
Hundred Thousand Miners Online
We reached a new milestone and surpassed the first hundred thousand active miners in the Ethereum pool. Currently, more than 116 000 miners are online mining ETH. More than 155 000 miners are mining all over the different coins presented in 2Miners.
Maximum Gas Price Reduction
We reduced the maximum gas price to 80 gwei in the Ethereum pool so all the miners who use standard ETH addresses to receive the payouts don’t pay more than $4 per transaction.
Last week the gas prices dropped. It allowed us to reduce the maximum gas price. The pool reserves less amount of ETH to process each payout. This is important only for the miners who mine ETH and receive the payouts in ETH. Read more.
BIG BIG Blocks
This March the pool found many extremely profitable blocks. Almost every day we had some extra rewards for our miners. These are the most noticeable blocks: 201.8 ETH, 51.4 ETH, and a nice series of 41.3 ETH and 60.4 ETH almost one after another.
Recent blocks could be found on the blocks page of the pool.
Cryptocurrency Node Updates
This March we updated the cryptocurrency nodes of three coins for both PPLNS and SOLO pools – ZEN, GRIN, ERGO.
The 2Miners pool co-founder, businessman, miner. In 2017 started mining cryptocurrencies and built many rigs on his own. As a result, he gained lots of practical knowledge and became interested in sharing it with others.
In his articles on 2Miners, he shares useful tips that he tried and tested himself. For example, Darek gives advice on how to buy hardware components for the basic mining rig and how to connect them to each other correctly. He also explained lots of complicated terms in simple words, such as shares, mining luck, block types, and cryptocurrency wallets. After the pool was launched, he published a series of articles ‘Crypto Mythbusters’ where he explained how to protect the network against 51% attack, talked about cryptocurrency mining difficulty and difficulties of launching your own node.
February 2022 Work Progress Report: High Reward Blocks in the Ethereum Pool
March 1, 2022
Ethereum, Ergo, Nervos cryptocurrency node updates, high reward blocks in the Ethereum pool, PPLNS reward system update success, and the second life of the dual mining.
Ethereum Mining Pool News
Last month we increased the number of shares used for PPLNS rewards distribution from 300 000 to 1 000 000. This didn’t change the average rewards of our miners. However, it helped the small miners with a low hashrate to participate in larger numbers of blocks.
This update was a success. We noticed a lot of small miners that were happy to participate in almost all the BIG blocks of the pool in February. This month we’ve seen extra rewards every week.
and many more. All of them could be found on the blocks page of the pool. The most important are listed in the 2Miners Telegram News Channel. If you use Telegram messenger we recommend you to subscribe to this channel. We always post important news there.
Cryptocurrency Node Updates
We always keep our software up-to-date. We updated the nodes of three coins in February for both PPLNS and SOLO pools – Ethereum, Nervos, and Ergo.
This is the list of the most important updates and the current versions of the node software installed.
Geth/v1.10.15-stable
Ckb 0.101.4 (7d03c55 2022-01-18)
Ergo Protocol Reference Client 4.0.23
Dual Mining Is Back
This month the dual mining of Ethereum and Toncoin was discovered. Many mining software developers including lolMiner, Gminer, and TeamRedMiner released new versions of their software that could mine both coins and get extra rewards.
Unfortunately TON mining difficulty has greatly increased since then. Moreover, TON mining ends in 3 months’ time. We warn you that if you want to try dual mining now you need to make the calculations carefully as dual mining increases the power consumption of your mining rig.
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.
