If you want to mine cryptocurrencies, one of the options to make a profit is to join pools to mine Ethereum or any other. But what should we take into account when choosing or what does profitability depend on? We review which are some of the best pools to mine Ethereum or what we should look at.
The first thing we must ask ourselves is, is it necessary to join a pool to mine cryptocurrencies? It is not necessary, but it is common for miners to join these pools or groups of “participants” working together to find blocks. Once found, the reward obtained is shared among all. In exchange for “letting you” belong to the pool, they receive a commission from everything mined by you.
What should we look for
When choosing one or the other we can look at certain factors …
- Hashrate
The Hashrate or hash rate is the unit of measure of the processing power of cryptocurrencies. It is a fundamental concept if you want to try your luck mining cryptocurrencies and indicates the amount of computational operations that the network of miners (or a miner itself) is capable of performing. The hashrate of each of your teams or workers is measured, but also the total of the entire pool.
- Commission
How much is the commission that we would earn for being part of said pool? Normally it is usually very similar in all but we can check the differences. It is usually around 1% to 5% although you can consult it before joining one and the usual thing is that it does not exceed 2%.
- Operating systems
It must be compatible with our operating system. Pools to mine Ethereum work with clients that we must download and most work on all operating systems but some are intended only for Windows, for example.
- Size or participants
The reward obtained is distributed among all the users of a pool to mine Ethereum, so the size or number of participants may be important when choosing one or the other. To more participants, more people to distribute. But also more possibilities to get those blocks and more frequencies getting them.
How to use a pool
What are some of the most popular pools for this purpose? And what do we have to do to be part of it?
Ethermine
Ethermine is one of the most recommended that has a pool for Ethereum Classic or Ethereum. Without registering you can see all the details of it, such as the current hashrate, the miners that are active, the blocks obtained or the price. You can see the mined blocks in real time from its main website and there is no commission for withdrawing the funds. Also, you can check its statistics page where you will see the hashrate for days and hours in total or on each of the continents. You will also see the number of blocks obtained.
To join Ethermine you just have to go to its main page and go to “Start mining” at the top right of the screen. Here you will be able to choose the mining software you want to download for Windows or Linux as you have an NVIDIA or AMD graphics card and it has servers in Europe, Asia and the United States. You must download the program, edit the .bat file that you will have and add your Ethereum address to it. Once filled in, you run and become part of the pool. You can choose the server you want or you can let the one that appears by default be chosen.
Once you are part of this pool, you will have a panel where you will see all the necessary details. At the top we will find the number of workers or teams that you have active or inactive, what has been achieved by mining and still pending payment or estimated earnings. You will also be able to see the hashrate of each detailed team.
On your computer you will have the .bat file where you can see what is currently assigned to mine. You will also see when a block is found successfully or other relevant details such as the temperature at which the GPU is or consumption in watts. This file will also tell us when you get a commission for mining or Devfee, as you can see in the screenshot below.
A fundamental advice to mine Ethereum or any other cryptocurrency is to optimize resources. You can use programs like MSI Afterburner to optimize the graphics card. By lowering the frequency of the GPU (core clock) and the consumption of the graphics, you can achieve a lower temperature and less heat in the equipment you are using to mine. You can lower the GPU frequency without influencing mining, and you can improve the fan speed.
Other pools
Beyond Ethermine there are other pools that we can join.
NiceHash
Along with the previous one, NiceHash is one of the most popular pools for mining Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. You can choose between mining with CPU / GPU or mining with ASIC and it has all the detailed information depending on the hardware you use: what would be the daily profits, the cost of electricity, consumption, efficiency and the net profit obtained.
The operation is simple and just go to “Start mining” and choose between GPU / CPU or ASIC machine. We choose the first option and we will see tutorials and videos that explain how to do it step by step. You just have to download the trial software and follow the steps that they indicate. It is compatible with Windows and Linux, with graphics NVIDIA and AMD.
F2Pool
Another of the most popular is F2Pool and one of the strengths for beginners is that it is one of the pools to mine Ethereum that you can find completely in Spanish if you have questions about how to use it. Another advantage of this is that you can not only mine Ethereum but there is a lots of cryptocurrencies you can try.
From the web from F2Pool you can see a tutorial to start mining. In addition, from the main screen you can see the details of the Ethereum price and hashrate, the daily income estimate, the commission or the payment threshold. At the time of writing the commission is 2% to mine Ethereum.
Sparkpool
Another mining pool is Sparpool where we can mine Ethereum but you can also do it with other cryptocurrencies. It has two modes: anonymous or not. If you want to do it anonymously, you do not have to register and it is automatically transferred to your wallet or wallet when appropriate.
Like the previous ones, it has information on the main page where you will see the TH / s, the price … From the statistics section you will see the blocks achieved, the number of miners, the number of workers or devices mining or the percentage of reward (from 1%). Here we can also check the payment time and the settlement date. Sparkpool’s servers are at Europe, China, Japan or the United States.
It is profitable?
that you go to mine because we have talked during the previous paragraphs about mining Ethereum but there are also others such as the well-known bitcoin.
What to keep in mind
Profitability will depend on many factors. Among others, the type of cryptocurrency, what does it depend on? Not only from the pool chosen and the commission that it takes but there are others expenses that we must take into account such as the electricity consumed by the equipment with which you will carry out the mining or the cost of electricity that this consumption entails, which will depend on each one.
The first thing we must take into account is the cost of the hardware: not just any computer is capable of doing this work, so we must bear in mind that you may have to pay for a new equipment or for more powerful components. You must also take into account, as we have explained before, the consumption of electricity. It must be permanently on. In addition, overheating would mean having to invest in air conditioning as well.
And related to consumption is the electricity cost: It is not the same cost for two different people since it depends on the contracted rate, peak hours, whether or not it is a weekend or even whether you pay for the electricity yourself or it is divided if you share a flat or if you live with your parents, for example.
Calculate profitability
Profitability can be calculated through specialized websites. Once you have decided to mine Ethereum, there are websites that allow us to fill in a series of fields to know if it is worth doing or not. The data that they will ask you for are usually those that we have summarized in the previous section: hashrate, power consumed, cost of electricity or percentage of the pool.
There are websites like Coinwarz that allow us to fill in all the data to give us in real time the profitability of mining Ethereum or any other cryptocurrency.
The post How to mine Ethereum in a pool and what to watch out for appeared first on ADSLZone.
