How to Mine Ethereum
Ethereum is the largest altcoin on the market to date. Besides its various uses as a platform, it can also be very profitable for you. This article is going to lead you though the process of how to mine the Ether by providing you a step-by-step tutorial. To get you started on your mining journey, let’s first mention what we are going to cover in our article: …more
- Choosing Ethereum Mining Hardware
- Setup and Configuration of your Mining Equipment
- Finding a good Ethereum Mining Pool
If you don’t want to have to deal with hardware and configurations, there is another, easier alternative for you. You can mine Ethereum using a cloud mining contract. Check out the cloud mining section for more information.
Why You Should Mine Ethereum?
Ethereum (ETH) is ranked second, based on market capitalization after Bitcoin, which makes it highly profitable when speaking of mining, and it’s tradeable in almost all exchanges worldwide. The coin itself (also called Ether) has a high price, while the platform it’s created upon further increases its value, by enabling the creation of dApps and smart contracts.
Ethereum, as a well established crypto currency, is already used as payment method in many institutions and is expected to keep evolving. Having in mind the huge development team behind Ether and its prospects for the future, it bodes well for the currency and we can expect to see even higher coin prices in the future. It wouldn’t be a far stretch to say, that it’s a good investment. Miners in turn, receive a reward when mining Ethereum for their computational power, so you can expect a steady income should you choose to mine.
Best Way to Mine Ethereum
We’ve reached an important point in this review – learning how to best acquire Ethereum. Now, mining Ethereum is done through a mining rig with GPUs or with an ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) miner from Bitmain. Ethereum can be mined with every recently released GPU, but if you want to make profit, you’ll need to setup a GPU mining rig or get your hands on some ASIC miners. Both ways are almost equally profitable.
No matter which one you pick, we would recommend joining a mining pool, where you cooperate with other miners to find blocks faster and receive proportional reward for the work you have done. Mining in pool can also guarantee you will receive stable income, all for the price of a small fee (0% – 3%).
Lastly, if you aren’t a tech savvy, then cloud mining might be the best choice for you. We are going to explain it later in our Ethereum cloud mining section.
What do You Need to Start Mining Ethereum?
Now, let’s see what you need to mine Ethereum. Firstly, you must have at least a computer. A stable internet connection with low latency and unlimited traffic is also crucial for your mining. Your machines are running 24/7 and you always need access to the blockchain, while low latency helps you not to miss out on a reward, by sending a completed block as fast as possible. You can measure the latency using any ping tool directed to mining pool’s IP address or hostname.
If you don`t have access to unlimited internet, we recommend that you have at least 15 GB data/per month for each machine. Also, take into consideration the total power consumption of your equipment, otherwise you may damage your electricity network. If you don’t have compatible wallet yet, you can check the official Ethereum Website for the latest download of the official wallet.
To summarize, all you need is:
- Mining Hardware – GPUs or ASIC
- Mining Software (only for GPU Mining)
- Stable, 24/7 internet connection with 1MB/s up and downstream
- Ethereum Wallet to receive your ethers
What Else You Need to Consider?
You should plan well where you’re going to store all machines. Every worker consumes a lot of electricity and produces a lot of heat and noise. Therefore, we recommend that you pay attention to the following:
- Power Consumption and Capacity of your Power Distribution
- Cooling and Ventilation
- Noise created by the Fans
- Regular Maintainance like Dust Cleaning
For more information, visit our hardware/cooling solutions web page.
Which Ethereum Mining Hardware to Buy?
Currently the Ether mining process is performed by powerful GPUs and ASIC miners from Bitmain. The hash rate of one ETH ASIC (Antminer E3) is 180MH/s, which is also the total average hash rate of one well optimized mining rig with 6 GPUs (ex. one RX 580 produce around 30 MH/s).
In this table, we compare the performance and the price of only one ASIC miner with a couple of GPU`s.
Recommended Ethereum/ETH Mining Hardware
Remember that for a GPU mining rig, you need to calculate the power consumption of all the graphic cards and the rest of the computer components (around 50W).
With the help of the Ethereum mining calculator you can determine, approximately, the mining profit you can achieve. Don`t forget that the price of the coin is unpredictable, and your profit can change significantly in any direction.
Setup and Configuration of Hardware and Software
In this section we’ll go over the setup process in both cases – mining with ASIC and with GPUs. We will guide you through all the steps of connecting and configuring your gear, up to the point where you’ll be mining. Check the ultimate Ethereum mining guide to start mining immediately:
1. Let`s start with the configuration of the ASIC miner.
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01. Connect Your Ethereum Miner with Power and Internet.
- Connect the Antminer with the PCIe cables coming from your power supply unit (every socket is identical, so they don’t have a specific place)
- Plug a LAN cable from your router into the network port
- Connect the cable from the power supply to the power outlet
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02. Choose an ETH Mining Pool
When choosing a mining pool, take into consideration the fee and the reward system.
Here is a list with some of the top Ethereum mining pools:
Ethermine
Server locations:
.Reward system: PPLNSAverage fee: 1%Our choiceEth.f2pool
.Server locations:
. .Reward system: PPSAverage fee: 4%Eth.nanopool
.Server locations:
. . .Reward system: PPSNSAverage fee: 1%You can visit our mining pools page to learn more about pools, fees and reward systems.
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03. Find the IP Address of Your Ether Miner
If you have access to your Router, you can find the IP address of the machine on the list of DHCP clients. Otherwise you will need to download the software IP Reporter from Bitmain’s web site. After you unzip it, double click on the IP Reporter and you will see the following window, where you must click the “START” button.
Click and hold the button “IP Reporter” on the device until the red-light blinks. If everything is fine you will see pop-up window with the IP address of the machine. Keep in mind that you must be in the same local network.
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04. Login the Web Interface of the ETH Miner
Enter the IP in the URL address of your browser and click enter. A pop-up dialog box is about to show, where you need to enter a username and password, which by default are both “root” and click “Sign In”.
Login Page 
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05. Enter the Mining Pool Information
In the Miner Configuration/General Settings, you must set the mining pools and the name of the workers. Fill in two or three servers for the Ethereum mining.
Example:Pool 1 – URL: stratum+tcp:// eu1.ethermine.org:4444 – ethermine for Europe
Pool 2 – URL: stratum+tcp:// us1.ethermine.org:4444 – ethermine for US East
Pool 3 – URL: stratum+tcp:// eth.f2pool.com:8008 – f2pool
When the connection with Pool 1 fails, the miner automatically connects to the next on the list. In the Worker field enter your wallet address. If you have multiple workers, then you can separate the statistics for each of them with a “.” followed by worker name.
Example: WalletAddress.WorkerName1You can leave the password field empty or enter a random value.
The configuration page should look like this. -
06. Click Save & Apply
After a few minutes, you can monitor the activity in the “Miner status” tab where you can get all the statistics. If you see hash rate in “Summary”, then your ASIC is working properly.
Note: Antminer E3 is only for the Ethash algorithm and you can mine only Ethash based coins, but if you use mining rig with GPUs, you can mine all mineable coins, not only Ethash based ones.
2. Let’s look at the configuration of GPU miners
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01. Choose a Mining Software
You need to choose the right software and we will give you a short list with the most popular software when speaking of Ethereum mining.
- Claymore`s miner – for Windows and Linux
- Ethminer – for Windows and Linux
- Phoenix miner – only for Windows
Download and install your favorite software and continue to the next step (the configuration will follow).
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02. Choose an Ethereum Mining Pool
Just like with the example of ASIC Antminer E3 – mining pools are the same. You can review them here. We recommend the Ethermine one, but you can choose whichever one you want.
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03. Before you Start Mining, You Will Need a Wallet.
There you will store your ETH coins and again we can provide you with a short list of wallets:
- My Ether wallet – web wallet
- Jaxx wallet – desktop wallet
- Exodus wallet – desktop wallet
- Trezor – hardware wallet
- Ledger – hardware wallet
More information about web, desktop, mobile, hardware and paper wallets you can read in our dedicated wallets website.
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04. Configuration of the Mining Software
To configure your miner you need to edit the file “start.bat” of your installed mining software. Enter the address of the pool (after -epool), the wallet address (after -ewal) and the registred worker/password (after -eworker/-epsw). It should look like this:
Claymore Miner with ethermine for Ethereum– EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eu1.ethermine.org:4444 -ewal 0xd69af2a796a737a103f12d2f0bcc563a13900e6f -epsw x -eworker rig1
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05. Save the Changes and run the “start.bat” File.
After that, you should see some code like the one on the screenshot. It will give you overall stats from the mining process and current hash rate and temperature of each GPU.
From now on, all your income is sent directly to the wallet entered in the miner configuration.
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06. Configure the Mining Software to Start Automatically
The easiest way is to drop a shortcut of the mining software start.bat file in your system startup folder to auto-start when Windows boots up.
You can find the system startup folder in Windows 10 by going to: Start > Run and entering ‘shell:startup’
If your miner is running, you can read our mining guide on hardware and software optimization to see how you can squeeze out the maximum of your equipment. There you’ll find some useful information based on our experience of mining Ethereum with the best possible hash rate.
For both configurations we recommend joining bigger and reputable pools. That will guarantee you stable income.
If you want to see some more information about pools, reward systems or payouts visit our dedicated mining pools page.
Ethereum Cloud Mining
Cloud mining will allow you to rent the hardware, while the electricity and maintenance costs will be covered by the provider (for a certain fee of course, which you’ll either have included in the contract or it would be withheld from your earnings). If you’re looking for the “easy way” to start mining Ethereum, that is the direction you should follow. When doing your research, you should take into consideration the following important criteria:
- 01. Reputation of the cloud mining provider
- 02. The mining algorithm you want to mine
- 03. How much mining hash power you want
- 04. How long the contract period
Now, let’s have a look for a reputable provider and sign a contract based on the chosen parameters.
If you need more detailed information, visit our cloud mining page.
Ethereum Mining Calculator
This is one of the most important topics to discuss, because the first question of each miner is “How much money can I earn from mining?”. Our Ethereum mining calculator will give you detailed information about profitability and earnings.
You must enter the values for hash rate, power consumption, pool fee and the price per kw/h to calculate your mining profitability.
For cloud mining you only need to enter your hash rate and the pool fee.
After the calculation is done, you will receive info about your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly income.
Disclaimer: The result applies only for the moment of the calculation according to the current difficulty of the network and the actual price of the Ethereum. Your profit may be volatile as the coin price fluctuates.
FAQ
How long does it take to mine 1 ETH?
This can be determined by entering the hashing power you have in our Ethereum mining calculator. If you have hash rate of 442MH/s you will receive 1 ETH for 1 month.
Is Ethereum mining profitable?
Mining brings you a small profit every day, depending on the number of hardware devices participating the process.
Is it legal to mine Ethereum?
Ethereum is a cryptocurrency as any other and thus legally minable. Some restrictions may be in place in specific countries. As the situation with cryptos changes constantly, the safest bet would be to research the specifics of your location.
Is it safe to mine Ether?
You just must be careful and conduct thorough research about software, hardware or cloud mining service you’re going to use.
Is it possible to mine at Raspberry Pi?
This way to mine is possible, although highly ineffective.
Which algorithm is used in the mining process?
Ethereum is based on the Ethash crypto hashing algorithm.
How much you can mine at one day?
That depends on your hash rate. Use the calculator for detailed information.
How to make your own mining pool?
Visit our guide for detailed information.
Which hardware to use for Ethereum mining?
Read well our section Which Ethereum Mining Hardware to buy.
Does the calculator calculate correctly?
There may be slight deviations but generally calculates right.
About Ethereum
The platform Ethereum was created by Vitalik Buterin, who’s a programmer involved in the Bitcoin Magazine. At the beginning of 2014, he teamed up with several specialists and officially began developing the Ethereum platform. Their goal was to create decentralized applications with a new platform using a general scripting language. The main team of Ether contains a few people – Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, and Charles Hoskinson. In the middle of 2014 they also bought the ETH value label. What you may consider interesting, is that they make their own payments, using Bitcoin.
Sources:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2844280.0