The Brave Browser Adds Support for Twitch Streamers

2 Mar
2018

Brave has announced that now Twitch streamers can also start to earn revenue in connection with the Brave browser and the Basic Attention Token (BAT). Brave has seen strong growth of new users and creators (including thousands of YouTube channels) after recent announcements and now it seems that it is time for Twitch streamers to join in with a new way to get supported by their viewers. For those new to Brave, it is a faster, more private browser that also includes Brave Payments, a built-in method of supporting content creators. The Brave browser is integrated with the Basic Attention Token (BAT) using the Brave Payments feature, so that audience members can give to support their favorite publishers unrelated to self-publishing companies, YouTube creators, and Twitch streamers using the crypto tokens.

The Brave browser lists the viewed Twitch channels in the Payments list, so that fans can donate tokens every month. Twitch streamers simply register as Brave Publishers to start receiving BAT contributions from Brave users. Twitch streamers can register their channel alongside other properties they may have (Web site, YouTube channel) as part of Brave’s multi-property support. Brave uses the Twitch.tv API to authenticate Twitch channels, after the streamer’s email is confirmed by the system. Once the verification process is complete and the streamer opens an account with Uphold, they can start receiving BAT contributions every 30 days.

– To give the Brave browser a try and to check out the Brave Payments feature…

Claymore’s NeoScrypt AMD GPU Miner Now Available

28 Feb
2018

Claymore is extending his coverage on the different mining algorithms with a new NeoScrypt AMD GPU miner that ahs been available for a few days already and we’ve played a bit with it to see what it can deliver. Do note that even Claymore warns that the NeoScrypt algorithm is VERY HOT, so yo uneed to make sure you have powerful PSU and good GPU cooling. Also to get the best hashrate you need to set your GPUs to use “-powlim 50” option in the miner (+50% Power Limiter), though you cans till play with the voltages of the GPUs lowering them to reduce the power usage. o note that like other miners from Claymore this one comes with a dev fee included, the Claymore NeoScrypt AMD GPU miner has a developer fee of 2%, so every hour the miner mines for 72 seconds for developer.

AMD’s RX 4xx/5xx series of GPUs do manage to provde a hashrate of up to about 900 KHS, but the old 280X GPUs are also quite interesting with about 800 KHS as well as 290X/390X at 1100 KHS. Owners of AMD Radeon RX VEGA 56/64 could be the ones with the most benefit as the miner is capable of delivering up to about 2200 KHS and that is a lot. Of course in order to maximize the performance in terms of hashrate you need to unlock the GPU power limiter and increase the clocks and see how low the GPU voltage can go stable. With settings optimized for CryptoNight a VEGA 64 can do just about 1400 KHS (that is with low GPU frequency, high memory and -20% power limit), at stock settings you can get about 1700 KHS from a VEGA 64 and for 2200 KHS you need +50% power limit. So again make sure you can cool down the GPUs properly and that your power supply is powerful enough to handle the extra load. Profitability wise for VEGA GPUs mining NeoScrypt at 2200 KHS per card can be better than optimized settings for CryptoNight for about 2000 H/s.

– For more details and to download and try the Claymore’s NeoScrypt AMD GPU Miner…

How to Easily Recover Old wallet.dat Private Keys With PyWallet

27 Feb
2018

From time to time people tend to remember that they have minded BTC, LTC, DOGE or another of the earlier cryptocoins back in the day when they suddenly find an old wallet.dat file and then the problem with recovering the private keys and the coins in the wallet arises, we often get questions on how to do that. The easiest way would of course be to just copy the wallet.dat file in a new installation of Bitcoin Core or the respective local wallet and wait for the blockchain to sync in order to have access to any coins stored in the wallet. Int he case of Bitcoin however this is a slow process requiring you to download 150 GB of data (the whole blockchain), so alternative ways are being looked into and there are some that can be easier. One such way is to use the PyWallet Bitcoin wallet importer/exporter Python script that has been available for ages and that works great for giving you all your public and private keys from a wallet.dat file.

PyWallet however is a Python script that does require you to have Python installed and it requires an older version 2.7, so it will not work with the latest 3.x releases as there are changes that will prevent you from running the script. We are going to go through a short guide on how you can export your public/private keys from a wallet.dat under Windows here, the procedure for Linux is very similar as well. So you need to download and install Python 2.7 first, this is a Windows package of Python, there are no other dependencies to run the script under Windows. Then you need to install it in an easy folder like C:\Python27 for example, copy the pywallet.py script and the wallet.dat files in the same folder and then run the following command:

python pywallet.py --dumpwallet --datadir=.

If you have used the wallet for mining you may have more than just a few addresses inside, so you can use the below code to save the output into a wallet.txt file for easy use instead of just outputting it in the console window:

python pywallet.py --dumpwallet --datadir=. > wallet.txt

Just open up the text file and you will see a list of exported public keys (addresses) and private keys that were inside the wallet.dat wallet file. If you had the wallet encrypted you will also need to provide the password you used for the encryption in order for the data to be decrypted first. If you do not remember that password you have used to encrypt the wallet.dat file, well that would be a serious problem as recovering any coins inside the wallet has just become much harder that you though it could be.

You can use any block explorer for the respective coin to check if it has any balance inside by pasting your address (public key), so that you can be sure if there are coins or not in an address. If there are you can then just import the public/private key in a new wallet and then do whatever you want with the coins inside. Importing the key pair can vary depending on the wallet you choose to use, so check what is the procedure and make sure that you can import a wallet using the public and private key(s) you have just obtained using the PyWallet script.

There is also a more up to date fork of PyWallet available as well that offers some useful additional features, so you may also check it out if the original one does not do what you want it to, although the original one is perfectly fine for recovering the keys.

top