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By day, a simple software engineer. By night, also a software engineer. This guide is out of date. This post describes mining Sia with a desktop graphics card GPUbut custom mining hardware is now available for Sia. The custom hardware has made Sia GPU mining non-viable. This guide will still work, but you may never reach payout, even with for bitcoin pool beginners cryptocurrency list high-end GPU.
Sia is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network for buying and selling computer storage space. Users pay for transactions within Sia using a cryptocurrency called Siacoin.
These miners are paid for their contributions in Siacoin. I estimate that it only takes about 20 minutes to get started with mining. It may be installed already, as it is included with many AMD drivers, but to ensure you have the latest version, follow the steps below.
There are a few different Siacoin miners to choose from, but they all offer similar features and performance. This verifies that your GPU library is installed correctly and your miner is able to access it. There are currently two main options for Siacoin wallets, which I describe below.
The fastest way to create a Siacoin wallet is to use Bittrexa cryptocurrency exchange. Bittrex provides a web wallet, so you can create an account and generate a Siacoin wallet instantly. The downside is for bitcoin pool beginners cryptocurrency list you have to trust Bittrex to keep your Siacoin secure. There have not been any major security breaches at Bittrex that cost their customers money, but many other exchanges have had issues with this, and Bittrex is by no means immune.
I recommend starting with Bittrex as you build familiarity with Siacoin and mining. Developed and maintained by the Sia developers, it is the most secure and powerful Sia wallet available though this is somewhat by virtue of it being the only Windows wallet available. At this point, Sia-UI will likely still be synchronizing with the rest of the network. First-time synchronization is sloooooow. It can take hours to days to get synchronized depending on your disk speed and network connection.
In the Description, type Mining revenues or whatever label you prefer:. Sia will now show your Siacoin receiving address labeled Mining revenues. This is because mining consumes all available graphics resources, which makes it difficult for you to use your computer normally. Instead, you can use a handy feature built in to Windows called Task Scheduler. Configuring a scheduled task is a bit tedious. This will create a pre-populated task for you with the correct settings for your Siacoin miner.
With this task created, your PC will mine Siacoin automatically any time you leave the mouse and keyboard untouched for ten minutes. As soon as you touch the mouse or keyboard, mining stops so as not to interfere with your normal usage. Mining is a game of chance.
Your machine is doing repeated calculations with random numbers hoping to discover a solution to an equation that the Siacoin network needs at the given moment. A solution is found roughly once every ten minutes, but due to for bitcoin pool beginners cryptocurrency list number of miners active, it is possible for your miner to go months without getting lucky and stumbling on a solution.
This guide configures your miner to participate in the Luxor mining pool to give you a more regular and predictable mining income stream. With a mining pool, all participants implicitly agree to share effort and share rewards proportionally. The Luxor mining pool takes a 0. When the unpaid balance for your for bitcoin pool beginners cryptocurrency list address reaches Siacoin, the pool pays out your rewards. Within six hours, you will see a deposit in your wallet for a little over Siacoin.
My particular GPU reaches the payout threshold about once every two weeks as of November Your experience will vary depending on the performance for bitcoin pool beginners cryptocurrency list your GPU, the percentage of time your miner is running, and the number of other active Siacoin miners. You need to convert your Siacoin in two stages:. Bitcoin has been around longer and the ecosystem is much more mature, so you have several options for cashing out your Bitcoins.
Bitcoin exchanges are beyond the scope of this post, but here are a few places to start. A more comprehensive list is available at bitcoin. The tables below show estimated mining performance of different GPUs. These numbers are based on anonymous, self-reported data from a mix of systems, aggregated from Sia mining wikis. I do not recommend buying a GPU for the express purpose of mining Siacoin. These variables can change drastically at any time. Another way of earning Siacoin is by renting out your unused hard disk space.
Having trouble getting up and running? Here are some for bitcoin pool beginners cryptocurrency list issues readers have run into and how to fix them. When you run marlin. This usually happens because the mining settings are too intense for your GPU.
To fix this, follow the steps below. If it for bitcoin pool beginners cryptocurrency list, repeat these steps with increasing intensity until you find the highest intensity that is still stable. This can happen if the mining settings are too intense for your GPU. To fix this, follow the same steps for Miner crashes immediately. On February 1st, I quit. It was because they refused to buy me a Christmas present.
With no idea what I for bitcoin pool beginners cryptocurrency list doing, I hired a cartoonist to illustrate my blog. The results were surprisingly positive. Silly Bits Blog About Projects.
Michael Lynch By day, a simple software engineer. Overview Sia for bitcoin pool beginners cryptocurrency list a decentralized, peer-to-peer network for buying and selling computer storage space. Install a Siacoin miner There are a few different Siacoin miners to choose from, but they all offer similar features and performance. To install Marlin, follow the steps below: Go to the Marlin miner download page. When the download completes, open it and unzip to C: Type cmd and hit Enter. In the Command Prompt, type the following: Be the first to know when I post cool stuff Subscribe to get my latest articles by email.
