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Checking Out Burst, the HDD Mined Cryptocurrency
31, Jan 2016
It has been over a year and a half since we’ve initially checked the Burst altcoin that you mine with a hard drive, so we’ve decided to revisit what has happened since. The Burst crypto currency uses a new algorithm for proof of HDD capacity (POC) mining, so it needs a lot of hard drive space – the more, the better and more coins you should be able to mine. One of the reasons that we wanted to check the coin out again was the availability of a Windows Wallet Client that is supposed to integrate everything in a single user friendly package that is easy even for novice miners to get started. So we have started fro the beginning downloading everything we need, generating a new wallet address, plotting 100GB for mining and trying out the CPU and GPU assisted mining software…
Unfortunately we’ve had some trouble along the way, like the lack of a default Java-based wallet config file for the local Burst wallet (apparently not included in the client package version 0.2) that was resulting in a weird error from the Java when trying to run the local wallet (we have Java installed and working properly, but the wallet is crashing with unexpected error because the config file is simply missing in the official zipped release of the GUI wallet, so it took us some time to figure out the cause of the error). Downloading the complete Burst blockchain can take a while as it is getting close to 2.5 GB already, though you can make it faster by downloading a zipped version and adding it to the local wallet. Generating plot files on the hard drives is also a process that takes quite some time, even for a relatively small 100 GB size it could take a while, let alone for large terabyte plots. We’ve also had trouble getting the GPU assisted miner working, though the CPU one apparently works just fine. You should try mining on a pool as solo mining is probably pretty pointless with such a high difficulty, but even on a pool with a small plot size it might not be worth the effort to start mining at all, so go for it only if you have a lot of free HDD space in the range of Terabytes, not Gigabytes.
In the end, if you still haven’t gotten into Burst, then it most likely it is late to do so now. There is an improvement since we’ve last tried it, however we don’t think it is enough, especially on the user friendliness front and that is an important thing if you want to attract more new users and miners especially. Still, if you have some significant amount of free HDD space and what to try mining a crypto currency that does not require much of a CPU or GPU resources, then you can check Burst out. Another alternative for making money out of your free HDD space could be Storj’s DriveShare when it launches officially, hopefully later this year, so if you are in for the profit you might skip that one as well. For now we are probably going to stick for a while longer testing the DriverShare beta, but more out of curiosity as it is not very profitable and requires a significant initial investment in order to be eligible for rewards, instead of trying to mine Burst coins. Some good places to trade Burst include Bittrex, Stex and Livecoin.
– For more information about the Burst crypto currency with Proof of Capacity HDD mining…
- In: Crypto Coins
- Tags: Burst, Burst mining, Burst wallet, HDD mining, POC, Proot of Capacity, Storj
Checking Out the Eobot Cloud Mining Service
29, Jun 2015
The Eobot cloud mining service has apparently been in operation since April 2013 and is based in California, USA and we’ve known about it for quite some time, but have not tried it up until recently. The service says that their “cloud mining should be considered as a fun, recreational activity and not a source of income or investment”, so it does make reasonable promises and does not try to make you believe you will ROI in no time. It has multiple options available, apart from standard cloud mining it also offers cloud folding services, the ability to rent hashrate and point it to your on pool, or mine with your hardware in their mining pools, they even offer their own software for mining. There is also a built in faucet with small daily payouts built-in that can help you get started even without investing your own money or coins in the service plus some awards to stimulate you to return often such as a daily DOGE reward just for logging in. You can choose to mine not only Bitcoin, or Litecoin, but also BlackCoin, Namecoin, Dogecoin, Dash, Reddcoin, BitShares, CureCoin, StorjcoinX, Monero, Counterparty, Stellar, Bytecoin, Peercoin, NXT or MaidSafeCoin. Though the additional coins are not mined directly, but probably your mined profit is exchanged for the crypto currency you choose.
At the moment the service has almost 230 thousand users registered, but apparently not that much of them actually have purchased a lot of hashrate for clud mining. There are two options available in the form of 5 year contracts – GHS 1.0 sold at $0.20 USD per GHS with a maintenance fee of $0.00232/GHS/Day and GHS 2.0 available at a price of $0.50 USD with a lower maintanance fee of $0.00117/GHS/Day. The first option offers cheaper price for the hashrate, but the profitability is much lower with the maintenance fee resulting in about 95% of what you mine. The GHS 2.0 contracts on the other hand are pricier, but with lower maintenance fee (apparently using AntMiner S5 as mining hardware) that is currently about 49% of what you mine. The mining break even time in months at the moment is almost 50 months for the GHS 1.0 and about 12 months for the GHS 2.0 cloud mining contracts according to the service stats. At some point there were also scrypt cloud mining contracts being sold as well, but these are no longer available.
YOu can purchase cloud mining hahsrate or use the service as a form of crypto currency exchange, but you should be aware that when using crypto currencies to buy hashrate or to exchange between them there is a 5% fee charged. There si also support for purchasing hashrate via PayPal, but if you do so there is a rule that no withdraws can be made for 180 days after every PayPal purchase as apparently set as a precaution to avoid fraud, but not very convenient for honest miners. We have purchased about 100 GHS of GHS 2.0 Bitcoin cloud mining hashrate a few days ago to check out the service and so far everything seems to run smoothly and problem free. Interestingly enough with just about 100 GHS of hashrate the website ranks us in the top 150 users in terms of purchased hashrate from the 230K in total.
– For more information about the various cloud mining services offered by Eobot…