XZC MTP - Ccminer (x64 2.2): Download, Settings, Launch

An article about how to mine Zcoin (xzc), as well as a short review of the zcoin coin, we will set up the miner, select an exchange, wallet, and so on.

Attention! Update! Zcoin made a hard fork on December 10, 2022, to protect against ASICs and FPGAs. New Merkle Tree Proof (MTP) algorithm.

Let's start zcoin mining with several points:

1. Introductory part about the Zcoin coin
2. Choosing a Zcoin wallet or exchange
3. Selecting XZC pool, GPU and CPU miner
4. Setting up a miner on amd and Nvidia GPUs, as well as CPU
5. Video instruction

Example settings for mtp zcoin

the CCMiner batch file for Firo will look like on the 2miners pool:

To configure a batch file for MTP, we need to enter 4 commands one by one:

1. mtp - specify the algorithm
2. xzc.2miners.com - specify the pool
3. 8080 - specify the pool port
4. aMLjCeLBmBGEJP6dYtWEMdZZuPH4w6uFsK - specify the wallet

This is what the finished CCMiner batch file will look like:

ccminer -a mtp -o stratum+tcp://xzc.2miners.com:8080 -u aMLjCeLBmBGEJP6dYtWEMdZZuPH4w6uFsK -p 0 pause

Setting up for NiceHash

Here is a batch file for NiceHash:

ccminer -a lyra2z -o stratum+tcp://lyra2z.eu-west.nicehash.com:3365 -u 3LZhp4g3m7YWqR4hAPrZsKWbyo7hRBmqvy -p 0 pause

Choosing a zcoin wallet or exchange

You yourself must choose where to mine the coin; you can use an official wallet or exchange for this. I personally use the exchange because I feel much more comfortable with it. At the moment, there are almost no exchanges with this coin, there is only one decent one, and I use it for storage:

Binance is the most convenient and high-quality exchange, many miners use it, including me, I recommend it! This exchange also issues its own Binance Coin (BNB) tokens; you cannot mine this coin, but you can buy it to store your crypto deposit. There are rates: XZC/BNB, XZC/BTC, XZC/ETH and XZC/XRP. There is no exchange rate for XZC to the dollar, euro and ruble. Xzc mining from pools to this exchange goes without any problems.

By the way, the exchange has a Russian-language interface, which will be a big plus for many, and the BNB coin of this exchange ranks 12th in the coinmarketcap.com ranking of crypto coins and tokens with a capitalization of about $851 billion, which indicates great trust in it from users.

Before setting up, you need to find out the wallet number; to do this, register on Binance.

Fill out your email address, then create a password and confirm it. Then check the box “I have read and agree...” and click register, confirm your email if necessary. Next, go to your account, activate it and then balance.

Then search for XZC, find it and click Deposit.

Voila, in front of you is the wallet aE5S9r1g8BU4jfez8GyKuWJUrbUVLg6irE - XZC, in this case mine, on which you can easily mine a coin with any GPU or CPU miner. To do this, copy it and paste it into your bat file.

Next, I will provide a list of official miners and a list of pools for mining the XZC coin.

Algorithms

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What is Firo (Zcoin)

Firo/Zcoin (XZC) is an anonymous cryptocurrency. It became the first full implementation of the Zerocoin protocol, which ensures user privacy. The essence of its work comes down to generating a sequence number “R” and a secret number “s”, which are then used in a cryptographic function to create the value “V”.

The latter is recorded in the blockchain, which guarantees the validity of the data. Anyone can view “V”, but it is impossible to find the owner of the cryptocurrency. In addition, XZC coins are destroyed before use - it is not possible to check the user’s balance even if they wanted to. More information about the features of Zcoin, as well as the purchase and wallets of the project is written here.

Features of MTP mining (FIRO)

mtp requires 4.4 GB of virtual memory, so cards with less than 4.5 GB of virtual memory will not work.

The program also uses about 500MB and 4.4xCard amount of swap/virtual memory.

Instructions for mining on the FIRO wallet (solo mining)

Command line structure:

ccminer -a mtp -o https://127.0.0.1:rpcport -u rpcuser -p rpcpassword —coinbase-addr zcoin-address -d listofcards —no-getwork

In the example above, we specified the SOLO address - https://127.0.0.1

Example (RUN-ZCOIN-MTP.cmd)

ccminer -a mtp -o https://127.0.0.1:8382 -u djm34 -p password —coinbase-addr aMLjCeLBmBGEJP6dYtWEMdZZuPH4w6uFsK —no-getwork -d 0,1,2 -i 22

In the example above, we indicated the mining intensity. The -i 22 command will set the intensity to 22.

Instructions for mining on a pool

ccminer -a mtp -o stratum + tcp://zcoin.mintpond.com: 3000 -u aMLjCeLBmBGEJP6dYtWEMdZZuPH4w6uFsK.worker -p 0, strict, verbose, d = 500 -i 20

In the example above, we indicated the pool (NOT SOLO) and mining intensity. The -i 20 command will set the intensity to 20.

Introductory part about the Zcoin coin

Currently, Zcoin can be mined using a CPU and GPU. As of January 25, 2019, there are no ASIC miners for mining this coin.

The coin currently runs on the MTP algorithm, which is designed to be resistant to ASIC miners. The transition to a new mining algorithm is aimed at resuming a fair distribution of mined coins among home miners and thus extending the life of the coin.

Before you start mining a coin, make sure you have a Zcoin (XZC) wallet address where you want your mining payouts to go to on your devices. You can get a Zcoin (XZC) wallet by downloading the appropriate wallet program, as well as on one of the popular crypto exchanges.

It should be recalled that the zcoin (xzc) cryptocurrency, previously mined using the Lyra2z algorithm and now using MTP, has good security, which makes it more reliable than equihash. You should also know that Zcoin is in no way related to the zcash cryptocurrency.

Where to mine zcoin pool for xzc

When you don’t want to struggle with the settings, it is recommended to mine Zcoin coins on 2Miners. For mining, download a new version of ccminer for Nvidia video cards.

Launch the bat file. That's it - the process has begun.

There is both PPLNS mining and SOLO.

Why do you need Instant Send on the Firo network?

The Instant Send function will allow you to finalize transactions - that is, consider them confirmed - in a matter of seconds, without even waiting for the block to be confirmed. It is combined with ChainLocks technology, which makes blocks final after just one confirmation. As a result, the developers believe that this is quite enough to use Firo for everyday transactions on a regular basis.

Once block 421150 is created on the Firo network, transactions using the Instant Send mechanism will be used by default. This applies to all wallet transactions, including Lelantus transactions. The developers promise to cooperate with crypto exchanges and other platforms so that the latter can quickly identify deposits in Firo.

Firo Zcoin indicators

Firo Zcoin is in 477th place in the world ranking of cryptocurrencies. The coin price is $8.74, market capitalization is $109 million. Over the past 24 hours, XZC equivalent to $3.8 million was involved in turnover.

Firo exchange rate chart for the last year

The peak price was fixed at $139. This happened on December 26, 2022.

Firo cryptocurrency statistics

The coin exchange rate is quite stable.

MTP - Merkle Tree Proof

Zcoin is the first cryptocurrency to implement MTP (Merkle Tree Proof). MTP is a unique Proof of Work hashing algorithm designed to provide high security, high performance and promote peer-to-peer mining for CPU and GPU. This algorithm was created by Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich in 2016 to solve the problem of mining centralization caused by ASICs. These are the same people who created the Equihash PoW algorithm.

MTP is an improved version of Equihash and is a memory-intensive hashing algorithm aimed more at CPU and GPU mining.

For you, we have prepared a complete detailed article revealing the whole essence of the MTP algorithm, its history, purpose, and operating principle.

conclusions

For a cryptocurrency to be successful, it needs to achieve wider adoption. To do this, the coin must offer an interesting product, and also be accessible for mining not only to giants who have concentrated a powerful hashrate in their hands, but also to home miners with small capacities. This is necessary to maintain the coin network. Today we will talk about a coin that will be noticeably different from other cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency mining is largely dominated by not many players, and centralization of mining has become the biggest challenge in the blockchain space. ASIC miners are affected by the most popular Proof of Work algorithms such as SHA-256 (Bitcoin), Scrypt (Litecoin), X11 (Dash).

In early 2022, these ASIC companies affected so-called ASIC-resistant algorithms such as Ethash (Ethereum), Equihash (Zcash), and CryptoNight. Not only has this driven home miners out of the game, but controlling a significant amount of hashrate has put many coins at risk. Today, a large number of well-established decentralized cryptocurrencies have completely failed to provide ASIC resistance.

On the other hand, there are several currencies that are actively working to counter the threat of centralization. One of them is Zcoin (XZC), which is now implementing a new ASIC-resistant mining algorithm called MTP. The planned hard fork will take place on December 10 at 12:00 UTC.

Wallet for XZC

Zcoin has its own official wallet, which can be downloaded from the cryptocurrency website https://zcoin.io/get-zcoin.

You can download the storage for Linux, Windows or Mac operating system. Wallet installation video:

In principle, setting up storage for XZC coins is no different from other cryptocurrency wallets:

• download the installation file for your OS from the official website;
• extract the contents of the archive to a specified location on your PC;
• run the boot file zcoin-qt.exe.

Next, you will receive an antivirus warning (false positive), which you can ignore. When you first launch the wallet, it will take time to synchronize the wallet with the network. Always back up your wallet before performing an update.

You can install the third-party mobile application Coinomi Wallet for Android, which is also recommended by the developers and has XZC support.

Difference between ZCoin and ZCash

These crypts operate on the same zero-knowledge proof system and are positioned as completely anonymous. However, they should not be confused, as they have a number of unique features and differences.

First of all, you need to know that in ZCash, unlike Zerocoin, users can hide the amounts of transactions performed. This feature has both positive and negative sides. On the one hand, there is no need to worry about timing attacks, on the other hand, almost unlimited inflation is possible, which is impossible to track. A timing attack is carried out by analyzing the time between two stages of transfers in Zerocoin - between the removal of coins from one wallet and their generation in another.

ZCash users cannot be harmed by timing attacks since the payment amount is hidden. But there is another vulnerability in the system. Due to the ability to hide the amount of the transfer, individual users can generate almost unlimited reserves of coins and no one will know about it.

This problem may become significant in the future, since the entire market may be controlled by people increasing the number of tokens they have. You can find many examples when the increase in capital in one hand led to the collapse of the entire market.

The cryptography algorithms used in the described technologies are not completely identical. Zerocoin uses the proven RSA methodology. This algorithm has been successfully used for many years; it allows the system to work with old platforms, as well as with the most modern projects. In addition, the network is well protected from collapse due to various attacks.

ZCash is based on the names of the developers. It is enough for a team of employees to have 1 person who will not support the desire of the others to illegally make money from their users in order to prevent any hacker attack. At the same time, both algorithms are not perfect and ideal, they have shortcomings, but each of them deserves the right to life.

Another difference is the difference in system requirements for computer RAM, as well as the different speed of confidential operations. The new ZCash is considered more demanding, and it takes much longer to complete actions than Zerocoin. If transactions are completed within 5-10 seconds in Zcoin, then in ZCash it can take up to half an hour. However, the size of each Zerocoin transaction is almost 50 times larger than the size of a ZiCash transfer.

In general, we can say that the presence of several crypts at once with complete confidentiality of the operations performed is a clear advantage for participants who want to keep the transfers made secret. At the same time, you should choose between individual systems with caution; you should always take into account their individual characteristics, advantages and disadvantages.

FAQ

What happens if I don't update on time?

If you do not update in time, your wallet balance may not be correct until you update your Zcoin wallet to an MTP supported version.

If you are using Znode, then also update to the latest version supported by MTP.

MTP needs a lot of RAM. Does this mean it's better to use the CPU and lots of extra RAM?

No. Just because MTP requires a lot of RAM doesn't mean more RAM is better. In fact, using more RAM in an algorithm does not give you any advantage. The MTP miner requires a fixed 4 GB per thread, so for an 8-core processor you will need 32 GB of RAM to load all the cores and some free space to run the OS. In this case, having more than 32 GB of RAM will not do any good.

What is the best equipment for MTP mining?

Video cards (GPUs) are the best, but CPUs are also worthy and can be considered for mining. But if you want a really good hashrate, then it is best to assemble a mining rig from video cards.

Will the requirements for the Znode system increase?

Yes, you now need about 21 GB of disk space per year.

Creators of Zerocoin

The idea of ​​creating a more private coin came to the minds of coders working at Johns Hopkins University back in 2013. At first they positioned ZCoin as an addition to the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, but already in 2015 the creators realized that they needed to develop a separate, completely independent cryptocurrency, transactions with which could be encrypted in a new way, achieving complete secrecy of money transfers. The Zerocoin Electric Coin Company helped implement this startup.

The creators of ZCoin strive to create a monetary asset, the use of which will support the financial independence of the owners and will not interfere with their free circulation within the network.

Here is the core team of the Zerocoin project:

Official cryptocurrency website – https://zcoin.io

A little history

Creation

In late 2014, Poramin Insom, a master's student in security informatics at Johns Hopkins University, wrote a paper on the implementation of the zerocoin protocol in cryptocurrency with Matthew Green as a faculty member. The project to create an autonomous cryptocurrency that implements the Zerocoin protocol is called “Moneta”.

On September 28, 2016, Poramin Insom and his team launched Zcoin, the first cryptocurrency to implement the zerocoin protocol. Roger Ver and Tim Lee were the original investors in Zcoin. Poramin also created an exchange called "Satang" that can directly convert Thai Baht to Zcoin.

2017-2018

On February 20, 2022, a malicious coding attack on the Zerocoin protocol created 370,000 counterfeit tokens, which the attackers sold for over 400 Bitcoin ($440,000). The Zcoin team announced that a single character bug in the code snippet "allows an attacker to create Zerocoin spend transactions without the corresponding mint." Unlike Ethereum during the DAO event, the developers decided not to destroy any coins or try to reverse what happened to the newly generated coins.

In April 2022, a cryptographic flaw was discovered in the Zerocoin protocol that allowed attackers to steal, destroy, and create Zcoins. The Zcoin cryptocurrency team, while acknowledging the flaw, pointed out the high complexity of executing such attacks and the low likelihood of economic gain for the attacker.

In June 2022, cooking classes and culinary experience platform Cookly, Thailand, raised Series A funding through Zcoin. The company also planned to use Zcoin technology to facilitate its transactions.

In September 2022, Zcoin introduced the Dandelion protocol, which hides the originating IP address of the sender without the use of an onion router (Tor) or virtual private network (VPN).

In November 2022, Zcoin held the world's first large-scale party elections for the Democratic Party of Thailand using blockchain instead of relying on the election commission to count the votes.

In December 2022, Zcoin implemented Merkle tree proof, a mining algorithm that discourages the use of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) in coin mining because it requires more memory for miners. This allows regular users to use a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics card for mining to ensure parity when mining coins. That same month, Zcoin released an academic paper proposing the Lelantus protocol, which eliminates the need for trusted setup and hides the origin and number of coins in a transaction. The document was edited in November 2022 to include new changes to the protocol. The Lelantus protocol has also been integrated with the Mimble Mimble protocol.

2019-2020

In February 2022, Zcoin was added to a wallet supported by the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. That same month, Zcoin partnered with the Binance Charity Foundation to raise funds for the Lunch for Children program in Africa. The charity used blockchain to track and verify the movement of funds from donor to recipient. On April 25, 2022, Zcoin was listed on the Indonesian digital exchange KoinX.

https://firo.org/2021/01/09/2020-in-review.html

On July 30, 2022, Zcoin officially abandoned the zerocoin protocol by adopting a new protocol called “Sigma” that prevents counterfeit privacy coins from increasing the number of coins. This is achieved by removing a feature called “trusted setup” from the zerocoin protocol. In August 2019, Zcoin was added to an African cryptocurrency exchange called OVEX. In December 2022, Zcoin introduced a decentralized crowdfunding and decision-making system to finance project support tasks.

In January 2022, Zcoin will implement recipient address privacy (RAP) to allow users to share a single permanent address with the public to receive money without outside knowledge of any transaction history at that address. In May 2022, Zcoin announced that all founder rewards would be stopped, while at the same time increasing development funding to 15% of block rewards, and allocated 35% of block rewards to masternodes.

In addition, a reserve fund of US$100,000 was created to protect against price fluctuations. In September 2022, Zcoin completed its first block reward halving. That same month, Zcoin was added to Stakehound to facilitate access to decentralized finance (DeFi) while earning staking rewards.

Profitability of mining

The profitability of Firo mining will always be determined by the 2CryptoCalc profitability calculator. Here we either enter the hashrate of your video card or write their number by model.

On topic: How to use the 2CryptoCalc mining profitability calculator. Detailed instructions.

For example, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 using the FiroPoW algorithm has a hashrate of 22.7 Mh/s. As of today, this could yield about 0.33 FIRO or $2.89.

Profitability of mining Firo on Nvidia RTX 3060