Mining is a specialized industry that uses purpose-built machines called mining rigs. These machines contain custom ASIC chips, and must be purchased specifically for crypto mining. Mining operations vary in scale from large industrial operations with full data-center warehouses with thousands of mining rigs, to hobbyists who run a small number of mining rigs at home.

Different cryptocurrencies may use different mining algorithms requiring different hardware. In the case of eCash, it uses the same SHA256 mining algorithm as Bitcoin, and thus BTC miners can also be used to mine eCash.

Once you have a mining rig set up, you have two options to start mining. You can point your hash power to a mining service provider, or you can set up infrastructure to mine on your own.

Using a mining service provider

Using a mining service provider

Using a mining service provider

Using a service provider has the advantage that it will handle technical setup for you, typically in exchange for a fee.

Solo mining with a service provider

One option is to “solo mine”, while outsourcing the block template contruction. This means the miner can point their hash power at a stratum endpoint, and they will receive the full miner portion of the block reward when their miners find a block.

• Solopool
• Molepool

Using a mining pool

Many mining services offer mining “pools”, which smooth out mining rewards to make payouts steadier and more predictable. There are several pools for mining eCash. Some options are listed here:

• ViaBTC
• Mining Dutch
• Zulupool
• Zergpool
• Zpool

Running your own mining setup

Running your own mining setup

Running your own mining setup

Rather than relying on a service provider, a miner can take on the responsibility of handling their own technical setup. The advantage is that you retain privacy, and full control of the operation by not relying on a third party.

Solo mining

Solo mining requires running an eCash node along with specialized mining software. Such mining software is available here.

Operating a mining pool

Adding eCash to a mining pool can be an attractive option. Because eCash uses the same SHA256 mining algorithm as Bitcoin, the technical requirements are similar. One aspect to keep in mind, however, is that miners need to be aware of the avalanche consensus layer on eCash, to ensure that the blocks they produce will be accepted by the avalanche validators.

Technical recommendations

• The node generating the block template should have avalanche enabled (it is enabled by default).
• In order to maximize profit, a mining node can also be staking and benefit from the staking rewards.
• Ensure the node has good connectivity. It should accept inbound connections, accept both IPv4 and IPv6, and have no restriction in the number of connections (e.g. no maxconnection config set).
• The coinbase transaction must include the “miner fund” and staking reward outputs. Best practice is to use the values from the “coinbasetxn” field returned by getblocktemplate. For example:

  "coinbasetxn": {
      "minerfund": {
        "addresses": [
          "ecash:prfhcnyqnl5cgrnmlfmms675w93ld7mvvqd0y8lz07"
        ],
        "minimumvalue": 200000327
      },
      "stakingrewards": {
        "payoutscript": {
          "asm": "OP_DUP OP_HASH160 798038c8969512b74e82124a9a73641928932371 OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG",
          "hex": "76a914798038c8969512b74e82124a9a7364192893237188ac",
          "reqSigs": 1,
          "type": "pubkeyhash",
          "addresses": [
            "ecash:qpucqwxgj6239d6wsgfy4xnnvsvj3yerwynur52mwp"
          ]
        },
        "minimumvalue": 62500102
      }
    },