Ether Mining

Amit Kumar Jaiswal Vipin Rathi

Google Summer of Code Intern@CNCF Google Summer of Code Intern@CERN

Twitter : @AMIT_GKP Twitter : @vipin_scs

What

Ether is the fuel of the Ethereum Blockchain
Pays for smart contract execution in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)
Also a standalone cryptocurrency (Gemini recently licensed for trading it by NY regulators)

Why?

Speculation
- Where will Ether be in a year?
Fun
- Combines DIY, computer hardware assembly, operating system installation/management, scripting + Ethereum

Price Performance

High Volatile (68-95-99.7 rule)
Annualised standard deviation (volatility) 119.63%
ASX volatility during this period 21.95%

USD/ETH Price History

How does it work?

Miners continually trying to verify blocks for the blockchain
- 5 ether reward for each solution
Based on Cryptographic hash function
hash(<block>) => a7ffc6f8bf1ed76651c14756a061d662f580ff4de43b49fa82 d80a4b80f8434a
Miners applying hash function millions (mega) of times/sec = MH/s
Single GPU generates 5-30 MH/s
CPU ~ 0.25 MH/s

Ethash Algorithm

Ethash Proof of Work algorithm (formerly Dagger Hashimoto)
- SHA3-256 variant hashing function
- Memory-hard computation
- Memory-easy validation
- Can't use ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits)
- Uses 4GB directed acyclic graph file (DAG) regenerated every 30000 blocks by miner

Proof of Work Difficulty

Hashing Blocks
- Difficulty - dynamically adjusts parameter defined originally in genesis block (one block produced every 12s)
  - Started at 0x400000000 (0.017 TH)
  - Now at 0x3205AF767000 (55 TH)
Simplifies example:
nonce = random int
while hashimoto(block, nonce) * difficulty > threshold
increment nonce
return nonce

Genesis Block

{

"nonce": "0x0000000000000042",
"timestamp": "0x0",
"parentHash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
"extraData": "0x0",
"gasLimit": "0x8000000",
"difﬁculty": "0x400000000",
"mixhash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
"coinbase": "0x3333333333333333333333333333333333333333", "alloc": { } }

Ohh...It's too much Technical

Let's take me to Mining!!!!!!!

Subtitle

Profitability

Ether mined * ETH Price

(Hardware + Software + Power + hosting + your time)

= Profit

Hardware

Parts:

4-6 x GPUs - NVIDIA Zotac GTX 1060 6GB
Motherboard - lots of PCIe slots
PCI Risers (try fitting > 2GPUs on a single board)
Decent power supply ~ 1000W for 3 GPUs
Cheap CPU
4-8 GB RAM
Power switch

Motherboard

ASRock H81 Pro

Motherboard quirks

Some boards require jumper cables in their PCIe slots

Risers

Motherboard can only hold 1-2 GPU cards

Case

Build or buy?
Considerations
- Budget
- How comfortable are you with DIY?

Case - Wood*

Cost ~ $25 AUD

* Combusts at ~300 degree celsius

Mining Rig

Case - Wood & Metal

Cost ~ $50 AUD

Or even milk crates...

Case - Buy

$200 USD from GPU Shack

Software Installation

OS

Linux
- Ubuntu 14.0x/15.0x with AMD/NVIDIA GPU driver
Windows 8/8.1/10
EthOS (Paid ~ $40 USD)
- Ether mining Linux OS from GPU Shack

Software - Ethereum

Geth/Eth
- Run full ethereum node
Or
- Connect to a mining pool (see next slide)
ethminer
- C++ mining client
- Connects to Geth/eth

Mining Pools

Block reward is 5 ether
- For small rigs => long wait (weeks)
- Steady stream of income (pool splits block reward between contributing members)
~ 1% fee of all ether mined
Minimum payout ~ 1.01 Eth
Provide UI for monitoring workers
Usually go via a proxy (eth-proxy/qtMIner)
- Provides automatic failover in event of pool failure

Begin Mining w/Pools

Claymore mining through Dwarfpool
- For Windows : https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2Q0hpvh6Wm4ZzlnbmUyWVFNYVk
- For Linux : https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2Q0hpvh6Wm4amM0c2psOTV4b1
- Edit "start.bat" file and replace it with "ethminer -G -F http://eth-eu.dwarfpool.com:80/{YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS}/MINER_NAME

Begin Mining w/Pools

Start proxy:
- $ python eth-proxy.py
- Start the miner
  - ethminer --farm-recheck 200 -G -F http:// 127.0.0.1:8080/<node-name>

Mining

Other considerations

Title Text

Power

How much are you paying per kWh?

Indian plans often have an advertised rate cap - e.g., quaterly cap of 4000 kWh
1 x 1000 PSU (3-4 GPU rig) running24/7:
- 1 * 24 * 30 = 720 kWh/month

Power Meters

Measures:

Current Consumption (W)
Consumption used (kWh)

Cost ~ 1800 INR

Managing Failure

Multiple points of rig failure

Hardware - GPU X 4-6, risers x 2-5, motherboard PCIe slots => lots of variables
Software - problematic device drivers
Time consuming trial and error to isolate issues - e.g. jumper cables required on some model PCIe slots

Monitoring

Various components:

Node or pool connectivity
ethminer
- it occasionally falls over
GPU temperature
- On linux requires X server to be running
CPU temperature
OS Crash

Monitoring

You will need to write various scripts (or use EthOS)
Take action
- Send alearts - SMS/Email
- Restart component
- Power off rig

What about the Cloud Mining?

You'll need lots of AWS Credit....

AWS Spot instances

g2.8xlarge instance contains 4 x NVIDIA GPUs
Hashrate of 24 MH/s
0.0077 Eth/hr ~ $0.10 USD/hr
Low spot instance price $2.66 USD/hr

Proof of Stake

Nodes with greater stake (e.g. total # of ether, duration of holdings) more likely to generate valid block
No longer possible to proﬁtably mine ether (if it ever was…)
Expected in 2017

Thanks

Resources

Mining algorithm • https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/blob/master/Dagger-Hashimoto.md
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Ethash
Costs - http://etherchain.org/api/statistics/price - Ether price history
Mining calculator- https://etherscan.io/ether-mining-calculator
http://gpushack.com/collections/gpushack - ready made rigs (US based)
https://github.com/Atrides/eth-proxy
Rig Building: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnp9Ka8WVpA