How to mine Ethereum?
Welcome to Cruxpool, an Ethereum mining pool. Our mission is to provide you with the most efficient tools to mine on the Ethereum blockchain. This quick start guide will show you where you should begin your mining experience with Cruxpool.
INTRODUCTION
Blockchain, Mining & Ethereum?
If you’re here, you probably know what the blockchain is all about. But just in case, you can watch these videos to get a general idea of how it works. What you need to understand is that Cruxpool is supporting the blockchain by gathering computing power that will validate the transactions happening on the blockchain, In order to encapsulate them into blocks.
This is where you play your part, by putting in common with other miners your hashrate i.e. your computing power.
Why should you choose Cruxpool?
PPS is pay-per-share system. In this configuration you are not depending on the luck of finding a block to get your reward in crypyocurrencies. This means you get a more stable and predictive income. Read more here.
A very low payout threshold means that you do not have to mine multiple blocks in order to get your payment. This participates to a better stability of your revenue!
Track all the data you need, in order to be informed on your mining activity, get a comprehensive view of your estimated and expected revenues, but also to check the performance of your hardware.
Our team is dedicated to your satisfaction and remains available for any questions. If you need support, we’ll be there for you!
STEP 1
Why and how to mine Ethereum?
When you mine a block, you become part of the blockchain process of verification of transaction, and you have a role in the creation of the new blocks. When a block is found there will be a retribution for your efforts.
This reward consists in fraction of cryptocurrencies; that depends on many factors but once the job is done those cryptos will go to your wallet, and you can exchange them right away, let them take some value for future trading purposes, buy the cool stuff you want etc. You can then create a form semi-passive income!
What do I need to start mining?
A mining rig, which is a combination of graphic cards that are optimized for crypto-mining.
A wallet, which will be used to store your cryptocurrencies. This is where we’ll send the rewards from mining with Cruxpool.
A mining software, in order to tell your mining rig what they have to do, and where they should connect.
Cruxpool, a mining pool that will be sending to your rig the jobs required by the blockchain. The pool will then send the rewards from mining.
If you don't have a rig, you first need to buy or build one!
Lucky for you, we have solutions for both cases. We have a partnership with JustMining a company that builds and sells mining rigs directly to you. We suggest you take a look at it, you’ll probably find something suitable for your budget!
In case you are more at ease with computers, you can buy on your own the components and start building the rig with your very own hands!
Learn how to build your own rig from scratch
STEP 2
Your first connection to the pool
A. With Windows
Windows cannot recognize more than 4 graphic cards connected to a computer. In case you have more than 4 graphic cards in your computer, you need to have them recognized. For this purpose, go to the BIOS of your computer and look for the setting that will increase the number of graphics cards detected by your system
1. Install drivers for your graphic cards
Do not mix AMD + Nvidia graphic cards on the same rig!
2. Increase virtual memory of the card
Click on Advanced System Settings, then on Performance Settings. A new window will open and click on Advanced. Click on Change, uncheck the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives and then tick Custom size. You will have two unlocked fields. On the initial size field, put 16,000 and on the maximum size field, put 30,000
3. Disable Windows Sleeping Mode
4. Disable Windows Update
To disable updates, type Services in the search bar or Cortana of your Windows. Once you get to this page, look for Windows Update in the list of services. When you have it, right-click and select Properties, and then set on «disabled» on the Startup type.
5. Choose and install mining software
The mining software will allow you to configure your RIG. You can choose between several software programs such as Claymore for example.
Once its downloaded, unzip the file and start.bat then right click and Edit, a text file should open. Enter the server address and your wallet address
If you prefer, we have created a command line generator that will automatically fill up the line to enter. It’s available on our website
B. With Linux
Download Ubuntu 16.04.
Then, put the ISO on a bootable USB. After preparing the installation support, install Ubuntu on the hard disk of your RIG.
Follow the instructions, and as soon as the installation is finished, the session will automatically open with Ubuntu. Remember to remove the bootable USB
1. Disable Lock Mode and Sleep Mode
LOCK : To change these values, go to Ubuntu settings, then to Brightness & Lock tab. Then, disable Lock and uncheck “Require my password when waking from suspend.”
SLEEP: To change these values, go to Ubuntu settings and then to Power tab. Then, set “Don’t suspend” to Suspend when inactive for”.
2. install and set graphic cards drivers
SOLUTION 1: LINUX + NVIDIA ONLY
Install SSH and package updates
Open Terminal with Ctrl + Alt + T
Enter following command:
Install Nvidia Drivers
Enter following command:
Then, press Ctrl + Alt + F1, it gives you a black screen interface asking you to log in. Then type these command lines:
Replace the «XXX» with the Nvidia driver update number
Then insert this line
SOLUTION 2: LINUX + AMD ONLY
Install AMD drivers
To install the AMD drivers, download the AMD GPU-PRO driver for Linux 16.04 Then enter following command
In case the last command does not launch, you must give permissions for it to run. To do this, insert this command line :
This may take time as drivers are downloading and installing. When the installation is complete, insert this command line :
Then install the ROCm component. To do this, insert this command line :
Last, insert this command line :
3. Install Claymore on Linux (AMD or Nvidia)
In order to mine Ethereum, you need a mining software. Download Claymore. We advise you to rename the downloaded archive, in our case we have renamed it claymore. Then insert these command lines :
Then, go to the installation directory and create a startup script with the following command lines:
A new window will appear and you will set up Claymore. In this window, choose your Cruxpool server according to your location :
Europe: eu.cruxpool.com
North America: us.cruxpool.com
Then, put your wallet address in place of YOUR_WALLET. As for the other features to add to the software, check them out on our dedicated page. Once you have set up Claymore, press Ctrl + X to save and confirm with (Y)es.
Then, give the file permission to execute, using this command line :
Finally, launch mining operation using this command line :
STEP 3
Monitor data with our dashboard
In order to offer the best mining experience posssible to our miners, we have implemented a monitoring dashboard.
Your dashboard is the place where you can monitor and control everything. On the main page, you’ll be able to see your global hashrate, the number of active and inactive workers (=rigs). You can also check your real time balance and the last time you got rewarded. As you can see on the image below, we also added a chart that allows you to follow your hashrate over the last 24h.
When you click on the Statistics button, you’ll get access to a more detailed view of the main dashboard. This will allow you to control and monitor stat in one glance.
The Hashrate box displays data on the computing power generated by your rig
The shares box, shows the number of share that you submitted to the pool. If you don’t know what a share is, check our article dedicated to the shares
The workers box is about rigs that are active or inactive. This will help you control is there is a disconnected rig that needs fixes or reboot for instance.
Eventually, the balance box is a summary of all payments and income you have with our mining pool
Scrolling down on the same page, you have access to the detailed view of ou active rigs. This will help you monitoring the performance of each worker more easily.
And by clicking on the rig name or on the search icon you can get the isolated view of each rig and control how much they perform and how much income they produce!
By clicking on Earnings, you will be able to check all data concerning profitability and revenue you get from your rigs.
Here you can see you current Balance, Expected earnings, Total paid amount since you started using Cruxpool, but also the individual list of all payments done
STEP 4
How to mine Ethereum Classic?
If you have followed our guide you now know how to mine Ethereum. Lucky for you, mining Ethereum classic requires basically the same configuration. So, when if you feel that switching to ETC would be more profitable for you, you can do it in a few minutes – it’s not rocket science.
What is Ethereum Classic?
In another article on our blog, we explained how Ethereum Classic was born (full article is available here). For a time, there was only Ethereum and its blockchain kept stacking. The Ethereum network allows applications to run and execute certain types of contracts when they meet specific conditions (on a “IF/THEN” basis). All of this changed when a decentralized organization that ran on Ethereum got hacked: the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).
In a nutshell, the DAO intended to provide a voting system to decide which Dapps (decentralized apps) would be funded. Users had to buy DAO token by using Ether. Holders of this token were voters and gave the approval required for funding. This project raised more than $150 million in Ether in just a month. Problem was this project was not secure enough, and this led to a massive hack (about 30% of the initial funds disappeared).
This caused a massive backlash within the Ethereum community, divisions of opinions and instability. This required to rework Ethereum, imagining a fork somewhere in the original chain in order to create a new viable and more secure chain. More than just that, it was a solution to get back the stolen $50 million. This division is what we call a “fork”. The Ethereum branch became the new chain, and Ethereum Classic the “original” and “immutable” blockchain of the Ethereum. Note that the vast majority of the community voted for and followed the Ethereum fork instead of the Ethereum Classic (ETC)
How to mine Ethereum Classic
Well, that is the easiest part of the job. As we said earlier, you don’t need to change anything in your hardware and the configuration is the same for both NVIDIA or AMD cards.
The only modification you need to do is to change the stratum port to 7777 instead of 5555.
Servers are automatically geolocated so simply enter the following address etc.cruxpool.com.
The last thing you’ll have to do is to change your wallet and select one that is compatible with Ethereum Classic. We can recommend ClassicEtherWallet but be aware that previous hack have been reported so be very careful with that, it’ll never be safer than a regular cold wallet.