Mining ZCash: difficulties, profitability and setup

Nadezhda Zakharova 11/29/2020

There is a huge amount of review materials on the network regarding the ZCash cryptocurrency, however, very little has been written about how Zcash mining is carried out.

Users who plan to start mining this coin have a large number of typical questions regarding the choice of equipment, its configuration and control of the operation of a computer or farm, as well as solving emergency situations.

This material is intended to provide answers to all common questions regarding this issue.

Contents:

• As an introduction
• Mining Zcash. Positive points
• Mining difficulty
• Profitability calculation. Zcash mining calculator
• Setting up Zicash mining
• Getting the Zcash wallet address
• Installing the miner
• Setting up a system for mining Zetcash
• Selecting pools for ZCash mining
• Let's start mining
• Finally

As an introduction

Mining ZCash on NVidia is the most productive format of work.

It has been experimentally established that video cards of the same type from NV and AMD show a significant difference in the mining process in favor of the first option.

Since key pools are moving away from the format of complex settings and launching equipment using the command line in favor of greater simplicity and the creation of a catalog of preliminary settings in the miner, this material will consider the ZCash mining program that has the highest popularity index - Nvidia EWBF Miner.

This software is finely tuned to work specifically with the CUDA cores of Nvidia video cards, which allows you to squeeze out enough hashes even from low-performance cards to make it worthwhile.

go

Content

• What is Zcash
• Where to buy Zcash
• Prospects for Zcash (ZEC)
• Zcash wallet
• Zcash mining equipment
• Profitability of Zcash mining
• Zcash Mining Difficulty
• Mining Zcash. Claymore for ZEC
• Setting up an EWBF miner for Zcash
• Setting up a DSTM miner for Zcash
• Conclusions. Series of questions and answers

On May 3rd, Bitmain announced the release of Antminer Z9. The ASIC miner runs on Equihash, so it is theoretically suitable for mining Zcash and other coins of this algorithm. Today we will talk about the features of ZEC mining on video cards. Traditionally, inside there is information about the coin, links to wallets, project prospects and a description of mining.

Mining Zcash. Positive points

• The first thing to understand is that the ZEC currency is extremely in demand by the market , is represented on almost all major trading platforms and has high liquidity. There is a trading pair with BTC everywhere, so those who cannot expose their equipment to mine the main coin (BTC) can gradually exchange the received ZEC coins for Bitcoin;
• Storing cryptocoins is available not only in the traditional official wallet or on exchange balances, but also in cold, hardware wallets, for example, Trezor and Ledger Nano S;
• The value of the coin reached, in the past, $400+ per ZEC , which at that time placed it in second place in value and capitalization among all cryptocurrencies. Today, the value has dropped by almost half from its peak level, but we know that the price of cryptocurrencies is more susceptible to wave movements than other assets;
• Mining ZCash on a video card is a good way to create savings in cryptocurrency and speculate on it as a trading asset without the need for large investments in purchasing coins on trading platforms.

go

Registering a ZEC cryptocurrency wallet

ZEC tokens obtained during mining can be stored in several types of wallets:

1. Official client from https://z.cash. The developers have created a desktop version of the wallet; the application downloads the entire volume of the blockchain to the PC’s hard drive (more than 14 gigabytes). Control takes place through the command line; beginners have access to a short guide. The graphical shell was created unofficially, runs Java and is unstable.
2. Jaxx multi-currency wallet. The application is adapted to work on a PC, smartphone, tablet. The platform is a “hot” type of wallet; users’ personal data is stored on remote servers and is susceptible to hacker attacks. It is recommended to store the minimum amount of Zcash required for trading on Jaxx.
3. Hardware wallet from Trezor or Ledger Nano. A secure way to store large amounts of ZEC tokens for the long term. The owner of the coin orders equipment, registers in the system and transfers tokens to the account.
4. Built-in wallet on cryptocurrency exchanges. Multicurrency wallets linked to user accounts of Binance, EXMO and other exchanges are a convenient but unreliable option for storing Zcash. It is recommended to transfer small volumes of coins to the exchange wallet.

Regardless of the chosen method of storing tokens, the private and public key to access the asset should be stored in encrypted form.

Mining difficulty

It is the complexity parameter that plays a key role in users deciding whether to connect their equipment to the process or not.

Despite the fact that ZEC and BTC are quite similar to each other, their hashing algorithm is so different that it makes it impossible to mine ZEC using ASICs developed for Bitcoin.

Upon closer examination, it turns out that the key Zcash mining algorithm, Equihash, is extremely demanding on the amount of RAM. This fact significantly complicates the creation of specialized miners with increased hashrate, since providing high-performance chips with enough RAM for operation will make their cost not recouped in principle.

The estimated block time in the Zcash network is 2.5 minutes, versus 10 minutes for Bitcoin.

10 coins are paid as a reward for finding a block.

It is noteworthy that as the overall hashrate of the network increases, the difficulty of finding each block also increases. For the Zcash network, the difficulty is constantly growing, and is proportional to the hashrate.

At the same time, the speed of finding new blocks remains almost unchanged and, with slight deviations in both directions, amounts to the stated 2.5 minutes.

A significant increase in difficulty is observed during periods when the value of a coin increases; the higher the price and the steeper the price curve climbs to new heights, the more miners switch their power to ZEC and the more difficulty increases.

go

Zcash – what is it?

Zcash (ZEC) is a cryptocurrency with an increased level of privacy. In the cryptocurrency blockchain, it is almost impossible to track a transaction, because during the transfer both the sender and the recipient, and even the amount of the transaction itself are hidden.

When the coin appeared, it immediately showed a ceiling in value. $4,293 is the historical maximum that was given for a coin in October–November 2016. Now the cost of the coin is less than $100, but this does not predict the cryptocurrency’s imminent death. The coin has a very large capitalization and daily trading volumes, which shows the life of the coin and active interest in it.

And first of all, the increased interest in the coin is manifested precisely due to its increased privacy. If we compare bitcoin and ZEC coins with streams on the network, the first will be http, and the second will be https due to hiding all data.

Profitability calculation. Zcash mining calculator

Despite the apparent simplicity of the mining issue, without careful calculation of the potential benefit, in various market situations, the risk of overall loss is very high.

Let's make general calculations to determine the threshold, overcoming which makes ZEC mining profitable.

There are quite a few algorithms on the network for calculating the potential profit from mining, however, most of them require a lot of information, which the user will spend a lot of time searching for.

We offer to make calculations using the service - whattomine.​com

To start calculations, select your existing video card or the model you were going to purchase to start mining.

Evaluate its performance in KHs, then make daily profit calculations in $ at the current ZEC rate based on the rates of key trading platforms.

The minimum threshold for the profitability of mining on one video card is considered to be $1.5 or more per day, net income.

Yes, the amount is not large, however, exchange rate fluctuations and the possibility of speculative trading on sites where you can send coins directly from the pool will significantly increase your profit.

If you are calculating the profitability of Zcash mining before purchasing equipment, decide on the models that have the best price/performance/lifetime ratio in your country.

After choosing the TOP 5 video cards for generating ZCash, conduct a repeated comparative analysis and rank the models by performance, cost and availability for you.

Note. At the beginning of the review, we mentioned that ZEC is more profitable to mine on NVidia cards rather than on AMD. This is due to the Equihash algorithm, adapted specifically to the card data. The performance of AMD video cards will be inferior to the alternative, for some models more, for others less. Here for the miner there is a question of availability and price balance, which again can be calculated using the link above.

Each GPU must have at least 1 GB of RAM.

In an ideal situation, the ratio of the number of cores and RAM should be 1.2 to one.

It is worth noting that, for example, mining Zcash on Radeon with 1 GB of RAM will be justified, since Ethereum requires at least 3 GB of RAM, only if the power consumption of the equipment does not take the process out of the payback zone.

Video cards that are 2-3 generations behind the flagships can still be used, since Zcash mining supports core overclocking.

As a recommendation. Explore the aftermarket graphics card market in your area.

Pay attention to the following families:

• Nvidia GTX 1060−6GB/1070/1080;
• AMD RX 470/480, RX 570/580, R9 of all models and HD 7990/7950.

When communicating with the seller, specify which system the video card is being sold from.

Give preference to boards from gaming PCs rather than from disassembled farms.

In the first case, there are offers for video cards that are still under warranty, when the new purchase did not suit the gamer according to some parameters, but the deadline for returning to the store has already expired. The price of such types can be reduced to 40% of the cost of new equipment. The important point is that the card has not been used for a long time under maximum load.

In the second case, the risk of purchasing a video card on your last legs is very high. It is extremely difficult to determine the condition of the card by sight, so it is better to refuse purchases from sellers who have a low reputation, sell only video cards and sell equipment without a guarantee and in large quantities. In such a situation, overpaying for a warranty video card will be more justified than buying a cheaper but risky model.

go

What methods of changing difficulty are used?

Correction is made in the following ways:

1. Increase/decrease difficulty after mining a certain number of blocks. For example, such a system is implemented in Bitcoin mining. As well as Litecoin built on its basis. Moreover, when selecting a new value, the final time required to find the hash will remain exactly the same.
2. Accounting for the total power of the mining network in “hashrates” (H/s). An increase in the indicator indicates an increase in capacity (more participants). Also about increasing complexity, and when it drops, the opposite is true.

In the graph below you can see the average increase in difficulty over one year using BTC as an example:

In the following graph, corresponding to the second method of difficulty correction, you can see the change in value. It is the same for all network users mining a specific coin:

The second option is obviously less fair. In particular, to small farms. Because the addition of more computing power by other participants in the mining process will make mining more difficult for everyone.

Setting up Zicash mining

The basis for the most productive Zicash mining is the operation of equipment on fresh, correctly working drivers.

The load experienced by the graphics core is maximum and constant, therefore drivers that are inappropriate for the version or installed incorrectly will significantly reduce performance.

Therefore, setting up Zikesh mining begins with installing the latest drivers for the purchased video card model.

When working with a farm into which several cards are connected, there are two options for configuring their operation:

• Pre-installation of drivers. The miner downloads the current version of drivers for each installed video card model, and then adapts the equipment for them, after the system automatically finds them;
• Sequential installation. Here, drivers are installed for each video card in turn. The miner installs one card, installs drivers for it, checks functionality and repeats the procedure with all cards in the farm. The disadvantage of the second option is that driver conflicts or other software errors may arise in the process and the work will have to be redone from the beginning.

If inconsistencies or errors occur, you must completely remove all drivers from the system and only then reinstall them.

go

Setting up a DSTM miner for Zcash

An alternative to the EBFW miner for Nvidia cards is the DSTM miner. What to choose - decide for yourself.

@echo off

TIMEOUT 5

zm —server zec.2miners.com —port 1010 —user YOUR_ADDRESS.RIG_ID —pass x

After running the bat file we see approximately the same thing. The farm has connected to the pool and the DSTM liner is working.

Today, with the 2Miners pool, more than 5,000 miners mine simultaneously, and payouts amount to millions of dollars.

Getting the Zcash wallet address

Zicash coins obtained during mining must be periodically withdrawn from the pool, since pool managers pay much less attention to ensuring the security of user accounts than exchanges or multi-currency wallets.

Cases often arise when one or another account of a user mining cryptocoins is hacked, and the funds are transferred in an unknown direction.

Most pools support automatic payouts to a specified account, either on a time schedule, such as once a week, or when the account reaches a certain amount. The accounts to which you can set up payment are multi-currency wallets, cold storage, or addresses of cryptocurrency exchange accounts corresponding to the coin.

go

Comparison of Zcash and Bitcoin

Zcash (ZEC) uses new technology that includes a zero-knowledge proof method that allows someone to prove something (such as that they own more than 10 ZEC) without revealing sensitive information (such as the total number of ZEC they own ). Anonymous transactions made using this technology in Zcash are called shielded.

This is in stark contrast to Bitcoin: if your Bitcoin address is publicly available, anyone can view your balance, as well as which addresses you have ever interacted with. Even if you haven't posted your address, software from companies like Chainalysis and Elliptic can help reveal it and your identity if you've interacted with addresses that aren't anonymous.

Imagine everyone you know and even strangers being able to see how much money you have in your bank account and how you spend it. Even though these transactions are completely legal, you probably still wouldn't want the whole world to know about them.

Bitcoin analysis provided by Elliptic. This shows the network of transactions between known Bitcoin addresses. Finding out who made a particular transaction is like finding the missing piece of a puzzle: it becomes easier because most of the “puzzle” has already been solved.

Zcash and Bitcoin have a total supply of 21 million coins, and they are obtained through the process of so-called mining. It is noteworthy (and unique) that the corporate development team (Zcash, CEO Zuko Wilcox) and the non-profit Zcash Foundation (Chairman Andrew Miller) are funded directly from the blockchain. This is achieved by the fact that 20% of the reward for mining Zcash during the first four years is sent to the co-owners of the company (founders, employees, consultants, investors), which is 10% of the total supply of coins. This Founder Reward provides funding and support for Zcash as a whole.

Installing the miner

At the beginning of the material, we mentioned that the era of complex settings with a lot of variables is becoming a thing of the past and pools offer the use of pre-configured software for work.

The best, according to most miners, is EWBF Zcash Miner.

Important! There is a lot of information about the zetcash miner on the Internet. For the most part, reviews and descriptions contain up-to-date information, but the links that suggest downloading the miner can lead the user to downloading fraudulent or modified programs that send funds to other wallets and in other ways that deceive customers.

The way out of this situation is to download the EWBF Zcash Miner from the corresponding BitcoinTalk forum thread or resources that have a high level of customer trust.

Another point that is important to pay attention to is the reaction of the antivirus to downloading the miner.

Software for generating netcash, like other cryptocurrencies, is often blocked by antiviruses and firewalls and must be added to the list of exceptions before downloading.

go

What innovations has ZEC undergone?

The main changes since the release of cryptocurrency to the masses have been updates:

• Overwinter. The update took place in early summer 2022 and among the general updates it is worth highlighting the transaction expiration function, designed to provide protection against repeated transactions.
• Zcash Sapling. In the fall of 2022, the anonymity of transactions was first updated, which should give the blockchain network of this cryptocurrency the possibility of greater scalability.

It is worth noting that all updates are not a fork of the cryptocurrency, but are aimed at improving the speed and quality of information processing in the blockchain network.

Setting up a system for mining Zetcash

Even if the OS is installed specifically for use on a mining farm, it has standard settings for home use that are not suitable for a miner.

A few changes need to be made:

• Disable sleep mode. Putting the farm into sleep mode will disconnect it from the process and to restart it you will have to start everything again. To disable this function, you need to go to the “power management” section and set the “sleep mode” parameter to “never”;
• Increasing the swap file. This is required to increase the working capacity of RAM by allocating an area for storing temporary files on the hard drive. To do this, you need to go to the properties of the “My Computer” shortcut, to the “Advanced settings” section, then, “performance” and specify the number as the size of the paging file - 16384 MB (16GB);
• Disable updates. Their automatic installation during operation can change the firewall parameters and block the work of the miner. There are no performance benefits from updates, so it’s better to turn them off;
• Antivirus exceptions. Add the folder with the miner to your antivirus exclusions. For systems used exclusively for mining, without browser access to the network, the antivirus can be completely disabled.

go

How can you mine ZEC?

As we noted above, after the release of ASICs from Bitmain, which are designed to work on the Equihash algorithm, to the masses, mining coins on video cards became practically unprofitable. Now the most energy efficient in Zcash mining are: Antminer Z9, Antminer Z9 mini, Innosilicon A9 ZMaster and of course Antminer Z11.

Although, if you decide to try mining a coin on a video card, we recommend using Nvidia cards for this. They are capable of producing more hashrate than AMD GPUs, which means their profits will be higher.

Selecting pools for ZCash mining

Independent Zikesh mining is unlikely to bring the expected profit since the power of an ordinary miner drowns in the total mass.

It is much more profitable to join a pool and, by paying a participation fee, become part of a high hashrate and quickly receive payments.

TOP pools for ZCash mining:

• FLYPOOL;
• SUPRNOVA;
• NANOPOOL;
• COINMINE;
• DWARFPOOL;
• F2POOL

Each of them has its own benefits for attracting new clients, as well as ready-made settings for the miner, which we talked about in the material.

Let's look at the process of connecting to a pool using FlyPool as an example.

Step. 1. After registration, go to the “Windows => NVidia” tab and copy the finished setting for working with the pool to the clipboard.

Step. 2. Go to the folder with the EWBF miner, find in it the bat file responsible for launching the miner called flypool.​bat, right-click on it and select the “edit” option.

Step. 3. Paste the line copied from the pool into the document that opens. On the screen we see the cryptocurrency address after the word “user” - this is the address of the wallet to which the pool will withdraw funds. We talked about wallet options above. Insert your own instead of the preset address and save the file. Please note that you need to save the file with the bat extension. To do this, when saving, select the “all files” option and enter the extension manually.

Step. 4. Create a shortcut to this file and send it to your desktop for ease of use.

go

Installing a mining client

Official versions of applications for Zcash mining are published on thematic forums. For example, the latest version of Optiminer can be downloaded from bitcointalk.org. You can mine the Zcash cryptocurrency using three programs:

1. Optiminer. The client runs on Windows and Linux OS; after unpacking the archive, the user must specify the server (Set Pool), the address of the wallet for storing tokens (Set User) and the access password (Set Password). The mining mode is optionally selected, after the -i key the number of used video cards is indicated.
2. Claymore's. The client is configured in the config.txt file; the miner should enter the server address (after the zpool key), wallet number (after zwal) and password (zpsw). The intensity of extraction is written after -i. The Claymore's miner allows you to simultaneously mine several types of coins if you install additional pools in the pools.txt file. The user enters addresses and wallet numbers in order to mine several types of digital tokens in parallel.
3. EWBF Cuda Miner. The mining client has separate bat files for setting the parameters of each pool. The farm owner enters the name of the server (select after the -miner parameter), user number (-port) and wallet (-user parameter). The templimit key allows you to limit the heating temperature of video cards.

Mining starts after opening the miner.exe file. It is recommended to check the stability of network access and connect an uninterruptible power supply.

READ User reviews about Bitcoin

Let's start mining

After that. Once all the preparations are completed, it’s time for the first start.

Double-click on the bat file shortcut and wait until the miner starts and initiates calculations.

The work progress is tracked directly on the pool website by inserting the wallet address into the pool search bar and clicking the “Check Status” button.

go

Setting up an EWBF miner for Zcash

:restart

@echo off

TIMEOUT 5

miner —server zec.2miners.com —port 1010 —user YOUR_ADDRESS.RIG_ID —pass x —eexit 3 —pec —fee 0

ping 127.0.0.1 > nul

goto :restart

After running the bat file, we see approximately the following picture: the farm has connected to the pool, and the EBFW miner is working.

Development team. Plans and prospects

The development team that was initially involved in the development of the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company is almost at full strength and has continued to work on the ZCash cryptocurrency. In general, the development team consists of scientists, engineers, consultants and investors.

Founder and CEO

Zooko Wilcox. He has more than 20 years of experience working with open and decentralized systems, cryptography and various startups.

The team includes a large number of different employees: researchers, scientists, programmers, advisors, and so on. It should be noted that Vitalik Buterin appears among the project’s advisers.

The team of scientists includes:

• Eli Ben-Sason.
• Alessandro Chiesa
• Christina Garman.
• Matthew Green.
• Jan Myers.
• Eran Tromer.
• Madars Virza.

Advisors to the Zcash ZEC project
The team actively publicizes its activities on the project. On the official website (which, by the way, has many language versions), there is a section with a blog where developers regularly publish reports on their achievements.

The site has a clear and understandable interactive road map, which outlines the main stages and plans for the future.

Prospects for the development of Zcash

Zcash forecasts for 2022 - 2025

Beyond 2022, Zcash's long-term forecast also provides insight into whether it is a profitable investment vehicle. The Zcash (ZEC) price forecast for the investor's wallet is expected to be $511 over 5 years. This is higher than the average price quoted in other Zcash forecasts. In 2025, Zcash will reach $328.41 in the long term, and by 2028, it will trade at $483.66. The Long Forecast has already stated that by 2025 the exchange rate of the coin. will be twice as low as today

Factors influencing the Zcash rate

Volatility is a dominant feature of digital assets. However, this instability does not just happen; it is motivated by certain variables. Identifying and monitoring these variables will help in predicting prices.

Factors can be external or internal. For Zcash, here are the factors motivating its prices.

Supply and demand

Nothing influences the market more than supply and demand . For a digital asset like Zcash, which has a limited supply, the effect is more pronounced. These two factors work hand in hand to determine the value of Zcash. However, other factors influence supply and demand. Thus, it can be considered as an overarching factor. It is important to study and pay attention to supply and demand, especially when you are investing.

Halving

Halving is a phenomenon that applies to mined cryptocurrencies. This means that every four years the mining reward will be cut in half. This is a way to control inflation and the total number of units in circulation.

The first halving for Zcash occurred in November 2022. Generally, halving causes the price to increase as supply decreases. This has happened with Bitcoin several times.

In the first Zcash halving, something similar also happened: from November 9 to November 23, the price increased from $61.50 to $76.39.

Technological improvements

Another factor influencing the rate is updates to the underlying technology of the cryptocurrency. It has been observed that even a simple announcement of future updates can raise the price.

Adoption

Acceptance is closely related to public opinion. One of the factors that has continued to push Bitcoin higher is its adoption. The more investors, especially institutional ones, are attracted, the higher the price. This concerns not only the increase in demand, but also the increase in confidence that many investors will receive from such implementation. Those who have not yet invested will also want to participate so as not to miss out.

Zcash rate forecast for 2021

Hani Predicts Zcash's Possible Goals for 2022

TARGET1: US$220

TARGET2: US$350

TARGET3: US$680

TARGET4: 2190

The one quality that almost all cryptocurrencies have in common is their volatility. This is why retail investors are getting involved in the hope of making huge profits. This is also why institutional investors avoid them. But most importantly, this is why it is difficult to predict future value.

This requires technical analysis and study of market trends, but sometimes this is not enough. There are so many variables involved. For example, no one knew that Doge would reach the new heights that it managed to achieve, simply because no one could have predicted that Elon Musk would encourage people to buy Dogecoin.

However, the best way to determine the future price of a cryptocurrency is to study various expert opinions on its price. Using them, it's easy to get a general idea of ​​how things will turn out. That's what we do here.

Wallet Investor forecasts the year-end rate to be $186.151.

It’s not just WalletInvestor who shares this optimism. DigitalCoinPrice also shares the same point of view. In his opinion, the forecast for the ZCash cryptocurrency in 2022 will increase and could reach $161.83.

CryptoGround.com Zcash forecast is $165.

Looking at all these forecasts, it seems that analysts are particularly optimistic. This shows how market volatility can cause Zec's price forecast to fluctuate. Previsioni Bitcoin crypto platform is very positive about Zcash, despite the poor performance of the entire market in recent weeks.

According to his forecasts, ZEC will reach $566,035 by 2025. This projected growth is quite optimistic considering how static ZEC prices have been in recent years. But this is a cryptocurrency market, and anything can happen.

Previsioni predicts that the price of Zcash from July to September will be between $197 and $208 and will continue to rise until it reaches $284 in December, more than doubling.

Another Zcash forecast is the Long Forecast, which has the most pessimistic view of Zcash (ZEC) and starts at $109-$135 in January 2022. By mid-2025, Zcash is expected to be between $31 and $39.

Zcash: To invest or not to invest?

The decision to purchase Zcash is a personal one, and forecasts and data will only help you with this. In the short term, investing in Zcash looks difficult . This is because the forecasts are not uniform. Some believe it will grow, others believe it is a bad short-term investment.

However, opinions on long-term investments are fairly uniform . Almost every forecasting platform, including WalletInvestor, expects the price to rise in two to five years.

If you decide to invest, there are many cryptocurrency exchange platforms that have Zcash, such as ours in our crypto exchange rankings.