Is It Worth Mining Ethereum 2021

Beginner’s Guide to Ethereum mining

Past: Steven Hay | Last updated: 12/12/22


Important update:

For our readers who are looking to make a profit with crypto, we recommend looking into Ethereum staking as an alternative for mining.

Ethereum mining is no longer possible; Ethereum moved into a PoS algorithm in 2022, which rendered mining obsolete. Two staking alternatives we recommend looking into are CEX.io and Binance.

The article below is kept for historical purposes and
will no longer exist updated.


Getting started with Ethereum Mining is pretty easy. All you need is a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and you lot can start generating Ether. In this postal service I’one thousand going to encompass what Ethereum mining is in a nutshell and what you need to do in order to mine Ethereum profitably.

Ethereum Mining Summary

Ethereum mining is the process of maintaining the Ethereum ledger through solving complex mathematical problems. Dissimilar Bitcoin mining, Ethereum mining tin be done with a Graphical Processing Unit of measurement (GPU) but.

How to Start Mining Ethereum

  • Pace 1 – Install your GPUs and set upward your computer
  • Stride ii – Get an Ethereum wallet (Mist or MyEtherWallet)
  • Step 3 – Join an Ethereum mining pool
  • Stride iv – Beginning mining!

That’s it! If yous desire a detailed caption about Ethereum mining continue on reading. Here’s what I’ll cover:

  1. Ethereum Mining in a Nutshell
  2. Is Ethereum Worth Mining?
  3. Is Ethereum Mining Profitable?
  4. Choosing your Mining Hardware
  5. Operating System Requirements
  6. Step by Footstep Guide for Mining Ethereum (PC Simply)

    • Install Drivers
    • Get a Client (avant-garde)
    • Become a Client (beginner)
    • Download Miner
    • Windows Settings
    • Join a Mining Pool
    • Start Mining
  7. FAQ
  8. Conclusion

Don’t like to read? Watch the video version of this guide:


1. Ethereum mining in a nutshell

At its core, Ethereum works very similar to Bitcoin. It’s a decentralized ledger that is verified and updated by participants of the Ethereum network.

Ethereum is requires mining just like Bitcoin. The but way to update a new block of Ethereum transactions is by mining that block. The best way to understand Ethereum mining thoroughly is to read (or watch) our guide on Bitcoin mining.

Withal, while conceptually the two are much alike, there are meaning technical differences. Some are more than obvious; for case, Ethereum blocks are added every 15 seconds (on average) while Bitcoin blocks which are added every 10 minutes (on average).
Equally a reward, Ethereum miners receive two ETH plus all transaction and code-processing fees (aka gas) contained in their cake, plus a possible bonus for any uncles they include.

Every bit for the mining algorithm, Ethereum uses a hashing algorithm known every bit Ethash which is dissimilar than Bitcoin’southward hashcash. Ethash is incompatible with the special hashing hardware (ASICs) developed for Bitcoin mining.

Moreover, information technology’southward a memory-hard algorithm; meaning it’south designed to resist the development of Ethereum-mining ASICs. Instead, Ethash is deliberately all-time-suited to GPU-mining.

Hashrate, Difficulty and Cost

Assuming the corporeality of hardware defended to Ethereum mining is ascension, why aren’t blocks existence mined always more rapidly. How come the average 15 second block time remains constant?

The reply is Difficulty.

Past automatically adjusting the computational difficulty of solving a block, the Ethereum blockchain is able to maintain ~fifteen second intervals. Y’all’ll notice Difficulty closely tracks hashrate.

The next obvious question is what drives changes in hashrate and difficulty in the first place?

The answer is cost!

As can be seen in the epitome beneath, hashrate has followed (with some observable lag) the ETH price:

eth price

Chart of Ethereum’due south US Dollar value, courtesy of Trading View

Having said all that, it’south of import to know that Ethereum is planned to move from a proof of work system that requires mining to a proof of stake system that renders mining useless. It’s unclear when this change will happen exactly.


2. Is Ethereum Worth Mining?

Well, here are some good reasons to mine Ethereum:

  • Mining tin can be a not bad way to subsidize the purchase of a new, high terminate GPU (or 2 or three…).
  • As Ethereum is easily traded for Bitcoins (BTC), information technology’s a cheap manner to slowly build upward a holding position in Bitcoin.
  • ETH can also be sold directly for cash on several major exchanges, such as CEX.io, Kraken, Gemini and Coinbase.
  • Mining tin be a inexpensive entry ticket to the Ethereum markets, loved by traders for their loftier volatility. If you’re a good and / or lucky trader, you tin maximize your profits.
  • Building a big ETH position now, in the Proof of Piece of work mining phase, volition enable you to earn interest on your holdings if / when Ethereum switches to a Proof of Stake.
  • If you believe in the Ethereum concept (despite the failure of the DAO and doubts regarding the viability of Ethereum’s approach), yous tin can support and proceeds a voice in the Ethereum network through mining.

3. Is Ethereum Mining Profitable?

With a clearer understanding of Ethereum mining and of import concepts like Difficulty, information technology’s time to perform some economic calculations.

This pace is very of import and you should not skip it. While mining earns money it also costs coin and if you make the incorrect decisions yous may cease up with negative ROI (i.e. paying more than you earned).

Luckily, we created an Ethereum mining profitability calculator so it is fairly easy to find out if you’re going to be profitable or not.

Difficulty Cistron
Hash Charge per unit
ETH/Cake Reward
ETH/USD Exchange Rate
Pool Fees %
Hardware Toll (USD)
Power (Watts)
Ability Cost (USD/kWh)
Duration Calculation Estimated Turn a profit in USD
Testify Details

Hibernate Details

Pure Earnings in ETH:

Pool Fee in ETH:

Earnings Later on Fee in ETH:

Earnings in USD:

Ability Price in USD:

Earnings Subsequently Power Toll in USD:

Earnings After Hardware Cost in USD:

In the calculator make full in the information as follows:

Difficulty Factor, Block reward and  ETH/USD rate:
These fields are updated automatically. Y’all can enter your own values manually to simulate scenarios.

Hashrate, Power (Watts):
Apply this table to find the parameters per your GPU’s make and model. Make sure the hash rate measurement is identical between the table and the calculator i.eastward. MH/s, KH/s etc.

Pool Fees % (optional):
Enter your mining fees if you’re mining via a mining pool (usually run around 1% plus a 1 ETH payout fee). Go out this blank if you’re mining on your own (not recommended)

Hardware cost (USD):
Put hither (in USD) how much you paid (or near to pay) for your GPU and whatsoever other mining equipment.

Power Cost (USD/kWh):
Enter your electricity price, as appears on your utility bill. Use this list for the U.s.a. or this list for elsewhere in the world.

The profitability output will appear below the figurer as yous enter the values:

*In the example in a higher place I used a 1080Ti GPU with a residential power cost of 20 cents per kWh, with no mining pool. As can exist seen in this example, this setup will brand me lose money, even subsequently a year of mining…

Most importantly, information technology is crucial to empathize that difficulty and price are variables i.e. they can and will probably change significantly over time. The profitability score you become is only truthful to the moment of calculation.

Profitability Alert

Ethereum is scheduled to switch to a Proof of Stake model at some unspecified engagement, pregnant it volition no longer be mineable. Before whatever serious outlay of capital, further research into Ethereum’southward prospects is warranted.

While GPUs may exist set to mining other coins and their costs partially recouped through resale, GPUs depreciate quickly. This is peculiarly true of cards that are used for constant, intensive work of mining.


4. Choosing your Mining Hardware

Experimentation with various GPU selections in the calculator will reveal a card with the best cost to performance to power consumption combination (expressed equally MH/s per Currency Unit). Go along in mind that AMD cards outperform NVidia for cryptocurrency mining purposes.

The card should have at to the lowest degree iii gigs of RAM or information technology won’t be able to properly mine Ethereum. This is due to the growing DAG file (directed acyclic graph) used in the Ethereum Proof of Work hashing process.

For a complete list of Ethereum mining hardware read this mail.


5. Operating System Requirements

This guide covers using Windows 10 (brand certain it’s 64 bit). There are also various distributions of Linux that tin can be used (not covered here). Windows is the easiest to configure and get up and running fast. In that location is no Mac version at this time.

There could be a very lengthy post on all the hardware requirements and considerations, simply to embrace the important things at a high level, here are some chief considerations for edifice a mining rig:

  • You desire to go a motherboard with enough PCI-E slots to support the number of cards you are running.
  • If using more than one GPU, you’ll want to get a powered pci-e riser for each boosted GPU
  • For Power Supplies, yous want to double check that your PSU has enough connections to back up the number of GPU’s you are running and plenty overall wattage to support your total organization power draw (and to give yourself some buffer of at to the lowest degree 10-15%).
  • You want to get a unproblematic low finish CPU and at least 4GB of RAM. Make sure your motherboard, CPU and RAM are compatible (i.e. LGA 1151 motherboards need an 1151 socket CPU, and DDR4 RAM / LGA 1150 motherboards need an 1150 CPU and DDR3 RAM)
  • Don’t forget a power button!  Pick upwardly a simple PC ability button switch which connects onto the headers of the motherboard so yous can turn your system on/off
  • A standard keyboard, mouse and monitor are needed.  If managing your rig remotely (not covered hither in this beginner guide) you will want to become a headless HDMI dummy plug to plug into your rig so information technology boots into Windows properly for remote access.

A helpful site for identifying how many 6 or 8 pin PCI-Due east ability connections your GPU will require is Realhardtechx.com and to get a sense of your overall arrangement ability draw, yous tin can use outervision.

Pro tip: If edifice multiple rigs stick with the same brand Power Supply Unit (PSU) as you can use extra cables on your other systems if needed (east.thousand. I use just EVGA G2 PSU’south so if I have extra VGA, sata or molex cables from ane build I tin use them on some other build).

As long as your system meets the full general requirements and has at to the lowest degree one GPU with at least 3GB of RAM, you can mine Ethereum. Some Gaming laptops do have loftier end cards, but with the considerable oestrus generated from mining there could be other impacts to your laptop so information technology’southward best to get with a desktop build.

Virtualized environments that you tin rent normally practice non accept enough powerful dedicated GPU in them, or are just non profitable if they exercise.


half-dozen. Step by Step Guide for Mining Ethereum on a PC

I’yard going to assume you lot’re running Windows and then we’ll focus on mining Ethereum on that platform.

The whole process of getting a wallet setup, downloading your miner, configuring things in Windows and setting up your batch file to run should take less than 10 minutes.

Pace 1: Install Drivers

AMD GPU’s:
Go to amd.com and so choose “Support & Drivers”.

Enter your GPU information and click “Brandish Results”

AMD Driver

Click the Download push button for the current driver. Alternatively,  cull “Download Previous Drivers & Software” on the correct hand side to choose older versions. This is recommended since some driver versions are known every bit great for mining (based on your cards) e.g.:

  • R9 and older – use 15.12
  • RX 4XX Series – use xvi.ix.ii or 16.10.3
  • RX 5XX Series – as these are newer I’d recommend going with electric current driver for at present

AMD Driver2

Nvidia GPU’s:
To get the latest Nvidia GeForce drivers go to https://www.geforce.com/drivers. Enter your bill of fare info and click “Start Search”. Download the current driver version from the results.

Nvidia Driver

Install your GPU Drivers similar you commonly would (Adjacent, next, Ok, etc.) and reboot. Yous know your GPU’s are recognized correctly if you go into Device Manager (search in Windows search bar) and y’all don’t see whatever warning marks on your GPU’s. It should await something like this:

GPUs in Device Manager

Some miners have had success installing all GPU’due south at once and then installing the drivers. Others adopt a different method in which they install a unmarried card first, install the drivers and close down the system.

While the system is off they install the residuum of the GPU’s. One time done, they turn it back on and let them all be recognized by Windows. Notice that you’ll probably feel the system lagging and experience some flickers or brief black screens while each card is detected past Windows.

Bottom line, I’ve had success both ways, so if you meet an result with i method, merely delete the drivers and endeavour the other method. If y’all do demand to remove your drivers, use the DDU (Brandish Driver Uninstaller) program from Guru3d.com to remove everything cleanly and and so start over.


Note:
Steps 2-4 explain how to download the official Ethereum wallet, but that would require you to wait for the full Ethereum blockchain to sync. To skip this and get going much faster, jump down to step 4 (easy) and create a wallet using MyEtherWallet instead.


Step 2: Get an Ethereum Client (advanced)

For a deeper explanation of how Ethereum wallets piece of work make sure to watch our Etherueum Whiteboard Tuesday episode about Ethereum wallets.

In this guide I will evidence y’all how to install Mist, with its friendly and familiar GUI:

mist

The Mist package contains the Ethereum wallet which you’ll need to receive whatsoever mining profits. Mist also includes an Ethereum browser with various functions, such as messaging, a social network and tutorials.

As a tip, these tutorials and the social network are helpful learning resources. Don’t be scared to ask the Ethereals if you lot experience difficulty with any part of this process.

To download Mist, caput over to https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases and select the almost recent release:


Ethereum Download

Select the latest release, information technology’ll accept the highest number:
Choose mist
 Scroll down to the Downloads. You can cull Mist or the standalone Ethereum wallet.


download file

Choose a memorable download folder for the “Ethereum Wallet” null file. Excerpt it with a suitable file extraction tool, and notice to which folder it was extracted to. Navigate to the new folder, locate and run the Ethereum app.

Download the Blockchain

The next footstep is just to wait, as the Ethereum blockchain downloads and syncs. It’s a actually large file and then this process may accept a while…

When it completes, spend a few minutes to familiarise yourself with the Mist app; the interface is adequately self-explanatory. The app isn’t still fully polished and so expect a few bugs.

Set your Wallet

Open the Ethereum wallet and generate a new business relationship and contract based wallet. This wallet will contain the payout address to which you’ll receive mining rewards from your puddle or straight from the blockchain.

Ethereum accountAdd your new account, give it a memorable mining proper noun. Shop the password securely!

add wallet

After generating the Business relationship, add a wallet and write downwards or re-create to a text file the unique address. This address will start with the characters “0x”. Information technology’s necessary for receiving ETH mining rewards!

A Note on Geth:

Mist likewise contains Geth, a popular command line interface. You may choose to go only the latest Geth app for your system, it’due south able to perform all the functions of Mist (and more) from the control line.

Geth (an abbreviation for “get-ethereum”) allows your miner to interact more directly with the Ethereum network, but requires some programming knowledge.

Equally you become more proficient in Ethereum mining and coding, Geth will go more than useful to you, but for now this is non recommended equally the easiest path to getting started with Ethereum mining.

Footstep two: Get an Ethereum Client (beginners)

If you lot desire to skip the long fourth dimension it takes Mist to download the Ethereum blockchain head over to MyEtherWallet.com

Delight beware of phishing websites. E’er triple-bank check the domain. The existent site is MyEtherWallet dot com.

Enter a strong password and click “Create New Wallet”:

MyEtherWallet Step1

Download your “Keystore File” and click the “I understand. Continue.” button.

MyEtherWallet Step 2

Save the individual key provided.

A skilful practice is to open a notepad and enter in your info – password, individual key, and your Ethereum accost (which you’ll go before long). Salve that text file forth with your Keystore File, in an encrypted file (using WinRar or like program).

Afterwards, shop a copy of that on a USB bulldoze or cloud drive and delete the individual files (storing merely the encrypted file digitally).

MyEtherWallet Step 3

Click on Save Your Address and and so select the “Keystore File” radio button. Click on “Select Wallet File”, scan to your recently downloaded Keystore File (which starts with “UTC…”) and select information technology.

MyEtherWallet Step 4

You’ll then be prompted to enter your password again

MyEtherWallet Step 5

Once unlocked you can scroll down and come across “Your Accost” – this is your Ethereum Wallet address that we will use for mining. Relieve information technology to a separate notepad text file and save it on your Desktop for easy admission

It’s okay to share this address as this is how people will send you lot Ether and how y’all will receive your mining payouts, merely never share your Private Key!

MyEW5

Pace 3: Download Miner

Nosotros are going to be using the very popular Ethereum mining software called Claymore Miner.

Become to Claymore’s original Bitcointalk thread and download the electric current version from the Google or Mega download links he provides (don’t use other people’south links). The electric current version every bit of the time of this writing is 14.half-dozen and yous’ll want to get the Catalyst and Cuda version (not the Linux version).

Annotation, when downloading the Claymore Miner, Windows may issue a warning, but if you used Claymore’s download link y’all can ignore this.

Once downloaded, extract the binder to your Desktop for like shooting fish in a barrel access.

Step 4: Windows Settings

Some settings should be modified in Windows to get y’all ready for mining:

Showtime, you lot don’t want your reckoner to get to Sleep equally it will interrupt your mining so go into your Power Settings and set it to “Never” turn off/sleep.

Next, Alter your system folio file and manually set up it to 16384 MB (this is 16GB).

To minimize the disruptions to your mining and settings y’all may want to also disable Windows Updates. If y’all feel more secure leaving them on, you tin do so and but sympathise there are very frequent updates that sometimes reboot your system without your interest and therefore cease your mining.

Finally, if you are running Windows Defender or some other anti-virus plan, add an exception to it so that information technology does not flag the Claymore mining executable “EthDcrMiner64.exe” as a virus or try to disable/delete it.

Stride five: Join a Mining Pool

The side by side stride is to set upwardly pool-mining, as solo-mining is unlikely to make you whatsoever Ethereum unless you have a warehouse full of GPUs.

Your first pace will be to choose an Ethereum mining pool. There are plenty to choose from only I recommend Nanopool or Etheremine. The dwelling house page or aid section of a mining pool site about likely contains instructions on how to mine on their puddle using the pop Claymore miner.

For the purpose of this guide we will utilise Etheremine. Direct on the home page of Ethermine.org yous’ll see a department called “Stratum mode using Claymores Miner”. Open your Claymore miner binder on your desktop, correct click on the text file chosen “Offset” and choose “Edit”.

Go to the Ethermine site, highlight and copy all the text in the first box under “And so get-go your miners by…”

Ethermine Instructions

Depending on your location, you want to connect to the closest server to yous and update the server string of text for the server:

        :eu1.ethermine.org4444
      

To the most appropriate stratum server for you based on your location:

        N America (East): us1.ethermine.org:4444 or us1.ethermine.org:14444
        North America (West): us2.ethermine.org:4444 or us2.ethermine.org:14444
        Europe (French republic): eu1.ethermine.org:4444 or eu1.ethermine.org:14444
        Europe (Germany): eu2.ethermine.org:4444 or eu2.ethermine.org:14444
        Asia: asia1.ethermine.org:4444 or asia1.ethermine.org:14444
        
      

In this instance I’ve updated mine for the U.s.a. East Coast, so within your Text file yous should now have:

setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0

setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100

setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS ane

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool us1.ethermine.org:4444 -ewal <Your_Ethereum_Address>.<RigName> -epsw x

  • Replace “<Your_Ethereum_Address>” with your Ethereum Wallet address (which starts with 0x…),copy that from your other text file and paste it here.
  • Supplant “<RigName>” with any name you would like to create for your miner.  Nosotros’ll apply “MiningRig1” for our example, so you now take:

setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0

setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100

setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1

setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool us1.ethermine.org:4444 -ewal 0x46064Df3e898488B19bC985A0973be51698bD6bb.MiningRig1 -epsw x

Save your file as Batch file with the bat extension. To practise that, cull File > Save As and and so in the box, choose a name for it so blazon “.bat” after the name. In the ‘Save as type’ box, make certain you select “All Files”, so click Save.

Congrats! You now take a batch file ready to mine! Create a shortcut for the new Bat file and send it to your desktop. Y’all can then delete the text file version of the file.

Saving Bat File

Step 6: First Mining

Double click your Bat file to start the miner. The miner will start, run the setx commands to set those environment variables, initialize each of your GPU’s, build the DAG file on each of your GPU’s and start hashing abroad. Permit it run for virtually xx seconds and then click “south” to display your Hashing speed.

You lot can now use this information in the Ethereum mining calculator over again to decide a more accurate representation of your earnings.

To monitor your earnings on the puddle, get back to Ethermine.org and paste your wallet address into the Address window upward at the top. Click the ‘Check Status’ button:

Ethermine CheckStatus


7. Frequently Asked Questions

Can I mine with my CPU instead of a GPU ?

GPUs are so much faster, that CPU-mining is no longer profitable or worthwhile. Even entry-level GPUs are near 200 times faster than CPUs for mining purposes.

Can I use any ETH wallet address for mining?

You lot tin utilise any ETH wallet address for mining, but some exchanges do non allow mining or do non allow very small deposits so double check with the site if mining directly to a spider web-deposit address. If the wallets in this mail service don’t work out for you, you lot can discover a complete list of recommended Ethereum wallets here. Just make sure to check that the wallet y’all choose is suitable for mining.

What well-nigh cloud mining sites?

Short Answer – DO Not purchase into Ethereum cloud mining sites or related Investment programs.

99.9% of cloud mining sites are Ponzi schemes or fractional reserve Ponzi’s. Even though in that location are a few that accept been around a long time, in that location have been no 3rd party audits of the hashing power sold and profits are usually very low unless you are promoting heavily and getting others to join in (another red flag of ponzi related activeness).

How Many Ethereum Can Be Mined?

Different Bitcoin, there is no limit to the amount of Ethereum that can be generated. Each 24-hour interval around 13,500 Ether are mined.


eight. Conclusion

I hope yous constitute this guide useful!  If y’all run into whatever issues or take questions, delight comment below and we will try to help.  Note, we are not covering more avant-garde steps of mining such equally overclocking and undervolting, bios flashing, remote access and monitoring, or Dual mining.

If interested in taking your mining to the next level from here, sign up for Crypto Mining University, where I go into massive depth and item at every stride of this process in a comprehensive course.  Happy Mining!



Ian MacpheeThis article was written with the assistance of Ian MacPhee. For additional info my username is Techman34 (on the Ethereum forum) or contact me at [email protected]

Source: https://99bitcoins.com/ethereum/ethereum-mining/

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