Archive for the ‘Crypto Coins’ Category

Mining Nervos (CKB) Using the Eaglesong Algorithm With AMD and Nvidia GPUs

9, Nov 2019

The Nervos project is nearing its CKB v1.0 Mainnet launch called Lina planned for November 16th or in a week from today, though even in the last days of the testnet you are still able to mine CKB coins thanks to the testnet mining competitions being ran. If you take part in any of these mining competitions the testnet tokens mined will be moved to the mainnet when it launches, though there are some specifics things that you may want to read carefully. The Eaglesong algorithm is more GPU intensive and thus works better on more powerful Nvidia GPUs than on what most widely used AMD cards can deliver, though mining is possible on both AMD and Nvidia hardware. Some good crypto exchanges to trade CKB coins include Bittrex, Citex and Gateio.

There are a number of miners available with support for the Eaglesong algorithm available, though probably the most interesting for Nvidia miners will be NBMiner 26.0 (AMD is also supported) for the moment as it supports dual mining of ETH and CKB. If using dual mining on GDDR5X GPUs make sure you also have the OhGodAnETHlargementPill running as it will help you maximize both the Ethash and Eaglesong hashrates. For instance on GTX 1080 Ti you may be getting 400 MHS on Eaglesong and 33 MHS for Ethash without the pill, and when you run it the performance should go to something like 500 / 42. Mining only CKB should get you around 1100 MHS as hashrate on the same hardware. The latest GMiner 1.73 has also added support for CKB mining for both AMD and Nvidia and it delivers pretty much the same hashrate on 1080 Ti as the NBMiner, though no dual mining in this release (ETH + CKB dual mining should most likely come in next GMiner release). AMD GPU miners have another option for a miner and it is SRBMiner-MULTI that also supports Eaglesong mining. If you are interested in a pool where you can mine CKB, then you might want to start with f2pool, hashpool or spark pool for a start.

– If you re interested in getting more details about the Nervos (CKB) crypto project…

Ethereum’s Istanbul Hard Fork to Start on December 4th

8, Nov 2019

The first phase of Ethereum’s next major hard fork is planned to happen on less than a month around December 4th at block number 9056000. The hard fork called Istanbul is divided in two parts with the first one to be executed on December 4th and the second one planned for early 2020. The next hard fork called Serenity that will bring Ethereum 2.0 and switch the project from PoW to PoS may or may not happen before the end of 2020, so there is still time for that. Is is worth mentioning that on December 4th Ethereum (ETH) will not be switching its mining algorithm from Ethash to the much anticipated and still somewhat controversial ProgPoW as this is still planned to happen in the second Istanbul phase with the EIP-1057 scheduled for the first quarter of 2020.

If you are still mining Ethereum with ASIC miners or GPUs and the Ethash algorithm you will have more than just a month left, it could easily take up to another 6 months for ProgPoW to replace Ethash as the PoW algorithm, though it can also happen faster than that. Nevertheless this can signal the upcoming death of ETH ASIC miners as although there are a number of other projects using the Ethash algorithm, they will most likely not be able to handle the massive hashrate outflow from Ethereum if/when it forks to ProgPoW. On the other hand ProgPoW can also bring a change in the way GPUs are being used for mining as it is supposed to provide a more level playing field for the different GPUs in terms of mining performance. So definitely Ethereum’s upcoming hard forks will have a serious impact on the crypto mining sector.

Veil to Fork and Change Their Mining Reward Distribution

8, Nov 2019

The VEIL project, a privacy-oriented cryptocurrency, has announced their plans for an upcoming fork to change the way PoW mining works in an upcoming fork. The project launched earlier this year has started with X16RT as a PoW algorithm for mining making 50% of the total block reward and the other 50% is for users staking coins in their wallet. The 50% reward for miners will continue, however it will be split in three different parts in the future with 3 different algorithms in play. Veil miners will have the option to chose to mine using ProgPoW (Programmatic Proof-of-Work) for GPUs that will account for 35% of those 50%, RandomX for CPU mining will represent 10% and the remaining 5% for miners will go to SHA-256D ASIC miners. It is interesting change as prior to announcing these plans the project was anti-ASIC, but now it seems that it is planning to attract all kinds of miners – GPU, CPU and ASICs. Also an interesting fact is that they have chosen to go for multiple algorithms including the much talked about ProgPow to be soon used by Ethereum and RandomX to be soon used by Monero. The fork date is not yet announced and it may take a while before these plans get applied to the mainnet of Veil, so for now the project remains on X16RT as far as mining is concerned.

– For more details about the future plans of the VEIL project regarding PoW changes…


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