The cryptocurrency market is on the rise again. After a protracted decline in 2018, Bitcoin is gradually updating local highs and pulling the rest of the market with it. At the same time, miners are becoming more active, for whom the profit from mining coins already significantly exceeds the cost of electricity. One of the favorites of GPU farm owners is Ravencoin. The coin gives a good profit, and you can mine it on almost any video card. Let's get to know each other better.
What is Ravencoin
Ravencoin is a digital decentralized network with a native cryptocurrency called RVN. The developers are committed to creating real use cases for blockchain.
The project was launched on January 3, 2022 as a fork of Bitcoin. The date coincided with the ninth anniversary of the first cryptocurrency, so they were clearly preparing for the event. Unlike some competitors, employees did not use ICOs to finance getting started. There are also no masternodes, and the software is considered open source.
Why exactly “raven”, that is, “raven”? The creators love “Game of Thrones” and draw an analogy with the world of the series.
In the fictional world of Westeros, ravens were used as messengers of truth. Ravencoin is a blockchain for certain use cases, which confirms the ownership of a particular asset.
It turns out that if the Ravencoin network had been available during the time of the Seven Kingdoms, the heroes would have lived much better. For example, Baelish would not have been able to sow hostility between Houses Stark and Lannister with Catelyn's letter in the first episode. It is possible that blockchain could have saved Ned's life.
It is safe?
Security is one of the main goals of the Ravencoin project. The blockchain itself operates similarly to Bitcoin in that it "...operates only with market value, a strong trading community, and widespread adoption."
Privacy is one aspect of this, and Ravencoin intends to take advantage of the advantageous on-chain separation between the token owner's address and its real identity.
The developers add that as new and better technologies become available to secure its system and protect the privacy of its users, these technologies will be applied to Ravencoin whenever possible.
Features of Ravencoin
Ravencoin is a fork of the Bitcoin code, but there are differences. There are four in total:
- block reward is 5000 RVN;
- block time - one minute;
- supply of coins is limited to 21 billion;
- mining algorithm - KawPoW.
There are several more unique characteristics of the project:
- the network is closed from ASIC miners to eliminate the threat of possible centralization;
- the coin was launched honestly - without pre-mining and ICO;
- the developers do not hold a fund of coins and do not take interest on the issue;
- The minimum amount of video card memory for mining is 3 GB;
- commitment to community and open source.
X16Rv2 and ASIC
As we have already written, the coin was specially designed to be completely protected from ASICs, so that the production of ASICs for this algorithm would be difficult.
This randomness in the algorithms makes it very difficult to program ASICs. Especially considering the time and cost that will be invested in its creation.
Moreover, out of the entire algorithm, a decent coin that is actively traded and interesting to both investors and miners is RVN, which is also currently not large enough for anyone to invest in an ASIC for it and the entire algorithm.
However, if ASIC does appear, the developers assure that they will immediately change, add a new algorithm, or replace 1 existing one out of 16 with any other, with the goal of instantly moving away from ASICs.
Ravencoin indicators
Currently the RVN rate is at 2 cents. The coin is doing much better than most of its competitors. According to CoinGecko, the peak price of Ravencoin was recorded on March 27, 2022 - then it was paid for 7.3 cents.
Source: CoinGecko
Moreover, as CoinMarketCap shows, on May 7, 2022, 2.1 cents were offered for RVN. Compared to at least 80% declines in other altcoins, Ravencoin is holding up well.
Ravencoin price chart
There are just over 6.1 billion coins in circulation. Taking into account the exchange rate, we get 132 million dollars in market capitalization and 49th place in the overall ranking.
Ravencoin rate
Where to buy Ravencoin
RVN trading volume over the past 24 hours amounted to $31 million. A third of this amount came from Binance – just over $10.5 million.
Exchanges supporting Ravencoin RVN
Also on the list of exchanges are Upbit, Bittrex, DigiFinex and Coinall. The rest provide very little turnover.
On the official website of the project we see such sites.
Source: ravencoin.org
Conclusion
Ravencoin has the goal of improving existing structures like Bitcoin or having an advantage for certain use cases. In today's world, jurisdictions and borders will not matter. This is because more and more assets are becoming easier to trade across borders without restrictions.
Today, using Bitcoin, you can move millions of dollars. In the future, consumers will likely demand similar levels of performance for securities and related assets. For this system to work, it must be independent of regulatory jurisdictions.
How to mine Ravencoin using the KawPoW algorithm
You can dig RVN on Nvidia and AMD cards. To download miners, follow the link and download the archive. Password - 2miners.
After switching to KawPoW, the following miners can mine Ravencoin RVN for Nvidia video cards:
- Gminer;
- kawpowminer;
- TeamRedMiner;
- T-Rex;
- TT-miner;
- NBMiner.
We recommend using Gminer, a review of which we are already familiar with. The miner supports many algorithms and shows excellent results.
What to mine on AMD
“Red” video cards from AMD are supported by TeamRedMiner and NBMiner. By the way, the requirements for mining themselves are democratic. Even an Nvidia GTX 1030 can dig RVN, that is, almost anything will do.
Note that the updated TeamRedMiner for video cards from AMD produces excellent hashrates using the KawPoW algorithm. Here they are:
- RX570 8GB - 13 mh/s;
- RX580 8GB - 14 mh/s;
- Vega 56 - 25 mh/s;
- Vega 64 - 25 mh/s;
- 5700XT - 28 mh/s;
- VII - 40 mh/s.
That is, mining Ravencoin on AMD using TeamRedMiner becomes really profitable. AMD video cards can now even compete with Nvidia cards in terms of RVN mining profitability.
Overclocking
Above we have already written the optimal overclocking for RVN. A conditional disadvantage (although this feature will be a plus in some cases) is the minimization of the influence of overclocking. Taking into account changing algorithms, overclocking provides almost no increase in profits.
You should not overclock the video card too much, since by overclocking it, you increase the peak power consumption, and the card will go into protection, or it may even burn out. If you still want to overclock the card, then start testing from 50 core - maximum +120, leave the memory in stock mode. If you wish, you can overclock the memory, the main thing is to monitor the temperature of the cards on the first day
Where to mine Ravencoin. RVN miner settings
We recommend mining Ravencoin on the 2Miners pool, both in SOLO and in the usual PPLNS. To do this, edit the .bat file from the archive and indicate your data.
Ravencoin pool on 2Miners
Instead of YOUR_ADDRESS, enter your wallet.
For example, RHUC17zAVjNqXDtkqwLPRvQ2XgoRZsXeeG.
We also change RIG_ID - this name will be displayed in the miner’s statistics. The field is optional, so you can leave it blank. Otherwise, we use no more than 32 characters. The Latin alphabet, numbers, as well as the symbols “-” and “_” are suitable.
For example, rig-1.
Here are the settings for the Gminer miner in PPLNS mode. After downloading the program from our archive with the password 2Miners, you need to change the contents of the .bat file.
miner.exe --algo kawpow --server rvn.2miners.com:6060 --user RQGst5s2X7NsSya7ozUaJb1uehcLHHwkHL.RIG_ID
And here is for SOLO mode.
miner.exe —algo kawpow —server solo-rvn.2miners.com:7070 —user RQGst5s2X7NsSya7ozUaJb1uehcLHHwkHL.RIG_ID
Gminer interface on KawPow
Here are the settings for NBMiner.
nbminer.exe -a kawpow -o stratum+tcp://rvn.2miners.com:6060 -u YOUR_ADDRESS.RIG_ID pause
Any unique use cases?
In addition to the types of items that can be sent with Ravencoin, the developers offer several examples of the system in action.
Imagine an art dealer who wants to transfer ownership of a physical painting to a buyer. Each of the tokens he creates in the Ravencoin system is associated with a unique name and serial number. This coin cannot be duplicated or destroyed and serves as a digital support for the physical painting. It also serves as proof of authenticity since the coin is unique and specific to that particular painting.
Ravencoin also envisions its system being used to facilitate shareholder voting in public companies.
"A public company that issues Nasdaq stock, as an example, would have to pay a quasi-monopoly company to obtain the mailing addresses of its shareholders at a certain point in time,"
the developers wrote,
“Physical mail (dead tree) should then be sent to shareholders with information on how to vote along with a proxy voting form.”
Ravencoin could potentially eliminate this system with messaging capabilities. Token holders are notified that a vote is scheduled to take place and then new voting tokens are issued at a 1:1 ratio with their original tokens. The actual voting can then be largely automated by sending voting tokens to specific account addresses.
Profitability of mining Ravencoin
By tradition, we will estimate the possible profit of mining using the 2CryptoCalc service. For example, let's take the basic indicators of the calculator - 300 Nvidia GTX 1070Ti video cards. Their hashrate on the KawPoW algorithm is 4500 Mh/s.
Ravencoin mining profitability on 2CryptoCalc
As you can see, after the hard fork and the transition of Ravencoin to the KawPoW algorithm, the coin was in first place in terms of mining profitability. Three hundred GTX 1070Ti video cards bring $220 per day. This is an excellent result.
Installing a wallet.
Go to the Downloads folder and double click on raven-qt.exe to start the installation process, easy installation of the program.
The first thing you will see is a screen offering you a choice of where to install the Ravencoin wallat.dat and blockchain files. By default this is usually the C:\Users\<user>\AppData\roaming\ folder, with: <user> being your Windows username, in my case “Mining”, but raven of course. This is an acceptable location if your C drive has a lot of free space, but downloading all the blockchain data can take up a lot of space over time. For this reason, I choose the second option, which is to use a custom data directory.
If you are concerned about C disk space or just want to store files directly in another location, you can select custom and specify the directory where you want to install the files.
In the above example, I created a Raven directory on my D drive, which is an external USB SSD drive. This drive has 2GB of free space and I use it for my various wallets. The good thing, besides offloading data from your C drive, is that it is also portable, if my computer died, I can easily move the drive to another computer.
In any case, just click OK to continue installing the program.
When installing a new wallet, the first thing you'll likely see upon launch is the loading screen. This details the number of blocks your client has downloaded and also offers an estimate of how long the process will take.
On Windows, you may also receive a firewall screen popup sometime during this startup process, which you will need to approve in order to allow the client to connect through your firewall and begin synchronizing with peers.
Since Ravencoin is still fairly new and the blockchain size is not that large yet, this step should only take 10-15 minutes. Over time, as the Ravencoin blockchain grows, this process will begin to take much longer.
For reference, the Bitcoin blockchain, which has been growing for 9 years, can take 24 hours or more to fully download.
Luckily, you can click on the “hide” button to close this dialog box and go to the wallet client GUI. The blockchain download will still happen in the background, but you can at least move on to other steps.
After waiting for the blockchain to load or clicking on the “hide” button, you will find yourself with your new empty Ravencoin wallet. As you can see in the example above, you will obviously have a balance of 0.
Some other things to immediately note are in the lower right corner of the wallet. The first is RVN, which is simply the coin symbol used by the wallet, in this case Ravencoin.
The next entry is HD, which indicates that the wallet is capable of using new style addresses derived from the Hierarchical Deterministic Protocol (BIP32) inherited from Bitcoin.
The next icon shows how many nodes your wallet is currently connected to. The icon goes from light (no connections) to dark as your client connects to more peers.
The last icon shows the blockchain synchronization status. In the example above, the blockchain is fully synchronized, so it will display a check mark. This is useful, since you can't send coins until your client is synced with the network, so at a glance you can tell your clients the status.
