HTC Exodus Smartphones to Get a Monero (XMR) Mining App

11 Apr
2020

It seems that HTC is trying to attract more interest onto its blockchain smartphone – the Exodus, by introducing a dedicated mining application for mining Monero (XMR) directly on the device. HTC has partnered up with a company called Midas Labs to develop a mining application called DeMiner that should be available in the second quarter of the year or with other words in less than 3 months. Currently mining Monero on a desktop level processor using the RandomX algorithm is not profitable according to the to companies and their goal is to actually make it profitable to be mined on a mobile device. Not profitable enough to make you rich, but actually getting more than you spend on electricity to mine the coins…

According to Midas Labs the HTC EXODUS 1S users should be able to mine at least $0.0038 USD of XMR per day on average, while the electricity cost should be less than 50% of that. And it seems that you need to have your smartphone plugged into power for that to work well and to be profitable however there is no way that you can do that 24/7, right? The DeMiner app is designed to automatically inactivate mining whenever the phone is in regular use or when the charger is unplugged, removing the stress upon the phone’s normal usage, so you will not be able to mine Monero (XMR) with the device all the time. A more interesting thing is if Midas Labs could in the future provide smartphone manufacturers with dedicated mining hardware to be built-in the devices and provide good performance, power efficiency and in the end profitability for the end user… this could indeed be a game changer for the mobile industry and for crypto as well.

Now, talking about HTC and their smartphones getting Monero RandomX mining capabilities in the near future is one thing, but we have recently tested Scala (XLA) Mobile Phone Miner that is very similar and already available for users with Android-based smartphones. The XLA project uses its own algorithm called DefyX, though based on the same RandomX that Monero uses, and the miner works even when running on battery and not only when plugged in for charging. We have tested on Huawei Mate 30 Pro and although the hashrate is nothing to brag about with, the power efficiency for achieving it is what is more interesting. What is even more interesting is that the miner app is having built-in measurements to prevent your phone’s hardware form overheating and damaging it which is one of the concerns regarding the use of smartphones for crypto mining.

So if you are interested in what HTC could be soon providing for a limited number of mobile devices, namely their own Exodus smartphones, you should check out what Scala (XLA) is already offering for their users with their mobile miner compatible with all Android smartphones. Maybe they are already ahead of their time, although HTC is getting all the attention now with just announcing future plans for what could essentially be the same thing already available… and you just don’t know about it.

Checking Out the Cudo Miner Automated Mining Solution

8 Apr
2020

A few years ago a lot of miners were using the NiceHash platform as a default go to solution for mining and making a good profit with the available mining hardware without having to manually switch different coins and algorithms all the time. That was until platform was hacked and even though it has been restarted afterwards and users started getting paid back in portions what they have lost due to the hack things hasn’t been the same since. Another thing that “helped” users move away to other places for mining or selling their mining rigs’ hashrate is the drop of the price of Bitcoin and other alternative crypto currencies that has continued for quite some time now, even though we have started to see somewhat of a recovery in the last months.

So we have recently decided to give a try of the latest NiceHash Miner 3.0.0.7 software that uses the NiceHash platform for automatic mining of the most profitable algorithm based on your mining hardware… we haven’t been keeping track fo that software for quite some time, especially after the significant change with the launch of the new and redesigned version of the platform has been launched. Yes, now it is way more functional, however not so attractive to more advanced miners if you ask us and even not so attractive or easy for novice users if you ask us based on our first impressions from the latest NH miner. That is why we have started looking for alternatives and one such has caught our attention – the Cudo Miner, but more about it in a moment.

Back to the NiceHash Miner 3.0.0.7 that has apparently been turned into a nice looking, but not well enough and not really well working solution. Slow initial download of miners, slow benchmarking afterward and not problem free at that, benchmarking issues and while testing performance and actually mining on NiceHash not mining using your own wallet and for you and some other issues are what quickly drove us away half the way while testing and trying to make the software work after dedicating a few hours to it. You are of course welcome to give it a try, do not forget that in order to use it nowadays you must register first on NiceHash, something previously not required and that made things much easier, though not without some limitations.

This leads us to the Cudo Miner as an alternative solution that we had our eye on for a while, but haven’t given it a try yet, but the recent unsatisfactory results with the NiceHash Miner ave us the incentive to test the alternative. The first impressions of this solution were that it is indeed what novice and somewhat more advanced users actually expect from such a solution. Fast and easy setup and installation, nice looking and informative graphical user interface, easy configuration and monitoring and control… it is all there and working much better and problem free and we really like that.

By default the mining software runs on both the available CPU and GPUs, with the processor only supporting RandomX mining currently and you can easily stop it and probably should, unless you have a higher-end CPU in your GPU mining rigs. There are fewer algorithms available for mining by default, but you can enable 3rd party miners and get more coins and algorithms available as options to get better results mining the most profitable ones. Of course the number is more limited compared to what is available on NiceHash for instance, but things here work surprisingly well and the user is not left alone wondering what is happening or why something is not working as it is supposed to. Things are happening on the background and working without bothering the user, something that not so advanced users like, but may not be that Ok for more advanced miners on the other hand.

Of course not everything is perfect and there is more to be desired, for instance if you mine Ethereum on GDDR5X GPUs it seems that ETHlargementPill is not being used in order to maximize performance, though if you run it manually everything works with improved hashrate. More algorithms and coins could be helpful for maximizing performance and using the most recent versions of 3rd party miners could further decrease issues and increase hashrate, though this could still be a double-sided sword.

We also liked the web-based monitoring and control interface that the Cudo Miner has, it is easy and straightforward without too much things to confuse the users. We got a somewhat unexpected 5000 satoshi bonus for signing up at the service, then choose that we want to be paid in Bitcoin (you can be paid in the miner cryptocurrency as well) or have it converted to BTC. One thing that we did not like that much is the rather high initial mining fee that the service charges you, starting at 6.5% and getting lower based on your mining revenue for the last 30 days, so it will take a bit of time until you get to a lower fee if you have just one mining rig, should be faster with more rigs to get into the more reasonable 2.5-3%. Will the higher mining fees be compensated with improved mining profit and you not having to bother to monitor and switch between coins, algorithms and miners, hopefully it will.

So, in short, our first impressions from the Cudo Miner are quite positive, even though there are some things that probably need addressing. We still haven’t tried everything, there is also a standalone Linux-based mining OS (CudoOS) available and not just a mining client that you can run on Windows. There is also support for mining ASICs available, though there you need to use a standard stratum pool connection and it will be more like standard mining for them, but you will still have a one place for monitoring them as well. These and some other things need extra time for testing, but again, our initial impressions are pretty positive and we would recommend users that are new to mining and don’t want to bother with constant monitoring and switching for their mining rigs to give the service a go and see if it will do well for them.

– If you want to try out the Cudo Miner automated mining solution on your mining hardware…

NiceHash and MiningRigRentals With Support for the Handshake (HNS) Algorithm

6 Apr
2020

The Handshake (HNS) project is gaining more attention as it is getting wider support from services that are allowing users to sell or buy hashpower such as NiceHash and MiningRigRentals (MRR). Handshake is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol where every peer is validating and in charge of managing the root DNS naming zone with the goal of creating an alternative to existing Certificate Authorities and naming systems. So NiceHash has just added support for buying and selling hashrate for the Handshake algorithm on their platform and just recently added support for mining HNS in their dedicated multi-functional software for miners – NiceHash Miner 3.0.0.7.

You can of course also GPU mine Handshake (HNS) using the latest GMiner or NBMiner standalone software miners, though GPU mining may not be that profitable with BlackMiner F1 series FPGAs offering a bit better performance with lower power usage compared to GPUs. Unfortunately at the moment if you have hosted BlackMiner FPGAs you are apparently not able to utilize them with either NH or MRR, so these services are only available to users that have their own miners available and are not using HashAltcoin’s hosting services! Nevertheless you might still make some profit or bet longer term on HNS mining with GPUs or buying or selling Handshake hashrate until June when we are expecting to see the Hummer Miner Mars H1 Handshake (HNS) ASIC miners starting to join the network and significantly outperforming any existing GPU or FPGA mining option at the moment. HNS is already listed for trading on a few crypto exchanges such as Gateio, Citex and HotBit.

top