The uniqueness of this coin is its high level of anonymity. Unlike the popular Bitcoin, zcash transactions cannot be tracked due to the nature of the protocol used to create them.
The development of the cryptocurrency was carried out by the company Zerocoin Electric Coin , positioning it as the most likely competitor to Bitcoin. And there are reasons for these statements:
- the minimum unit is zatoshi, which is 10¯⁸ of the main ZEC coin;
- the total number of all coins that will be released into circulation is 21 million. Like Bitcoin, their supply is limited.
Unlike Bitcoin, the time required to form a block during mining is only 2.5 minutes, which is much less.
ZeroCash protocol was developed as an addition to the existing Bitcoin protocol, so it is not surprising that this coin gained popularity immediately after its entry into the cryptocurrency market.
According to the results of the first trading, the cost of Zcash was 3,200 bitcoins per 1 ZEC. But after the initial rise, there was a fall and now its value is steadily fluctuating at the level of $270 - $300 . The design and development of ZEC is carried out by an international group of cryptographers, who receive a percentage of the miners' income. In this way, the developers provided themselves with reliable “backs” that do not require an additional injection of funds or the organization of an ICO.
The anonymity of ZEC is due to the use of the zk-SNARK protocol, which implements the principle of zero-knowledge proof. When applied, either party (whether sending or receiving) has evidence that the transaction was completed, but does not have any information about the sender or recipient, as well as the amount of the transfer. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, whose transaction information is publicly available, Zcash users can hide data on the blockchain, depending on their preferences.
In addition to the above, it is worth noting the following advantages of ZEC:
- protection of coins from industrial mining. It is impossible (now, and according to the developers in the future) to create a specialized ASIC miner - mining is carried out only on video cards;
- ease of learning - from receiving to selling and exchanging;
- high reward - 90% to miners, 10% to developers.
- EWBF Zcash Miner
What is Zcash
Zcash is an open-source cryptocurrency that guarantees a high level of privacy. Secure transactions hide the sender, recipient, and volume of the transaction on the blockchain. Because of this, it is almost impossible to track the participants in the transfers.
The developers draw a funny analogy between ZEC and BTC. If Bitcoin is http in the world of money, then Zcash is https with an additional layer of protection.
The coin appeared at the end of October 2016. It was then that its rate was at its peak and amounted to $4,293. Today they fetch about $290 per coin.
The market capitalization indicator is $1.098 billion. The coin is ranked 26th in the updated CoinMarketCap rankings and trades the equivalent of $54 million every day. There are over 3.88 million ZEC coins in circulation.
Cryptocurrency terminology
Before you start mining Zcash, it’s worth getting acquainted with the basic terminology of this method of earning:
- the word “zek” or “zek” refers to the coin itself - from the abbreviation ZEC, which in turn comes from the name of the cryptocurrency developer company (Zerocoin Electric Coin);
- “zatoshi” (similar to “satoshi” for Bitcoin) – one hundred millionth of Zcash, the minimum part of the coin;
- “block” is a group of files containing information about transactions during mining;
- “blockchain” is a chain of blocks built according to certain rules;
- “salts” – mutable elements of Zcash blocks;
- “pool” – servers that unite groups of miners into one common network to obtain more coins.
Knowing what salts are in Zcash mining, you can understand the principle of cryptocurrency mining. Sequential search of these elements allows you to obtain certain chains (hash sums). When the required hash value is reached, it is considered that a group of miners (or, more precisely, the computing equipment they use) has mined 1 block. According to the network rules, it takes 2.5 minutes to find one unit. The earnings of the entire miner community is 12.5 ZEC.
Zcash mining equipment
You can mine Zcash using Nvidia video cards. AMD will also be suitable, but will perform worse. Since Zcash belongs to the Equihash algorithm, the same farms that mine Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Private, Zclassic and other similar coins will do.
There are also special models of ASIC miners for ZEC mining. These are Antminer Z9, Antminer Z9 mini and Innosilicon A9 ZMaster. In August 2019, manufacturers released a huge number of ASICs and took over the hashrate. Now there is practically no point in mining on video cards.
How to start mining (instructions)
In order to start mining Zcash you need to:
- install the necessary drivers and configure the equipment;
- create a wallet (both official and on any of the web services, or on the exchange);
- download and configure the software;
- if necessary, change the operating system settings;
- select a mining pool;
- run the program.
The use of appropriate drivers is one of the most important conditions for the correct (and even possible) operation of a video card for mining. So, some video cards only work with a certain version of drivers:
- AMD R9 series and earlier ones require 15.12;
- AMD RX 400 - work correctly only with versions 16.9 and 16.10;
- AMD RX 500 - with the latest versions;
- All NVIDIA cards require the appropriate latest driver, which can be downloaded from the official support page.
The official Zcash wallet is only available for installation on Linux systems, so for Windows systems the only option is to use web services or hardware wallets such as Cryptonator or Trezor. When installing an official wallet, you must remember that it requires about 10Gb of free space to work.
The software has been discussed above, so there is no need to repeat it. It is enough to indicate that:
- EWBF Zcash Miner is used for NVIDIA cards;
- Claymore Zcash Miner - for AMD cards;
- Claymore Dual Miner - for simultaneous mining of two cryptocurrencies.
When setting up your computer, you need to change some of its parameters:
- disable sleep mode;
- change the paging file size to a fixed value of 16 GB;
- disable automatic updates;
- If you have anti-virus programs, add folders with the miner to exceptions.
Since pools have already been mentioned, it is only worth noting that the flypool and nanopool are the most popular. To configure their use, there is an official page where you can select the necessary equipment and copy the corresponding configuration settings for the program’s batch file.
Profitability of Zcash mining
Traditionally, the WhatToMine service will help you estimate the possible profitability of mining the desired coin. For example, we take 6000 sol/s, which will be provided by a farm of eight Nvidia 1080Ti.
As of May 10th, this configuration provides about $22 per day. Monthly result: 655 bucks.
Calculation of profitability and payback of production
We will show you how to independently calculate the profitability of Zcash mining using the example of an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video card. The Whattomine calculator, which we wrote about above, will help us with this.
The GPU tab looks like this:
Our task is to calculate the profitability of Zcash mining, so the procedure is as follows:
- Deselect all algorithms that are highlighted in blue, except for Equihash (you need to click on each one).
- We find the field with “1080Ti”, click on it so that it is highlighted in green and indicate the quantity - 1 (accordingly, in all other fields there should be - 0, there should be no highlighting).
- In the “Selected exchanges” field we leave the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges that Russian users have access to.
Thus, we got the following picture:
The calculator makes calculations based on the following characteristics of the device's GPU:
- hashrate NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (hereinafter referred to as 1080 Ti) - 685 h/s;
- power consumption 1080 Ti - 190 W;
- electricity tariff is $0.1 per kWh.
10 cents per kWh (5.7 rubles / kWh at the exchange rate as of November 1, 2017) is a slightly overestimated figure, because the cost of a kilowatt-hour, for example, in Moscow is 4.06 rubles / kWh. In our article we will neglect accuracy, because... It is more important for us to understand the principle.
Earlier in our review of video cards, the 1080 Ti hashrate was set at 630 Sol/s with a power consumption of 250 W. These were the characteristics of nicehash. The performance indicators Sol/s (solutions per second) and h/s (hash per second) are the same. And if the power consumption in practice may indeed differ, why calculators may show different hashrates is unknown. Use different calculators.
Click the “Calculate” button and find Zcash at the bottom of the page:
1080 Ti with an income of $2.58 has a daily profit of $2.13 (electricity costs are taken into account). Profitability = $2.13 / $2.58 = 83% (excluding the cost of the card itself).
The calculator doesn’t tell us how well the “card” will behave over a longer time horizon and how quickly it will pay for itself, but we will calculate it ourselves. The cost of one 1080 Ti is about $900. Annual income from Zcash mining including electricity costs = $2.13 x 365 = $777. Thus, the simple payback period is $900 / $777 ~ 1 year and 2 months.
Again, please note that this calculation does not take into account changes in mining difficulty and network speed. It is quite difficult to take this parameter into account, because an increase in the Zcash rate may attract miners of other algorithms to reconfigure their equipment to mine ZEC. We believe that for these purposes it is fair to use a coefficient of 0.7. In terms of indicators, we will have a payback period of 1080 Ti = $900 / ($777 x 0.7) ~ 1 year and 8 months.
Summarize. We have the following results for calculating the profitability of Zcash mining:
- cost of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti = $900;
- Zcash mining income = $2.58 per day;
- profit = $2.13 per day;
- profitability (excluding depreciation) = 83%;
- simple payback (at current complexity) = 1 year and 2 months;
- payback taking into account a coefficient that takes into account a possible change in the complexity of production = 1 year and 8 months.
Zcash mining settings on ASIC and video cards
Today, a solved block in the ZEC network gives 10 coins. The block time is 2 minutes 28 seconds.
If you have an ASIC, specify these settings. Fill out all three fields in the settings, that is, take everything that is written below.
Pool 1: URL: stratum+tcp://zec.2miners.com:1010 Worker: YOUR_ADDRESS.ASIC_ID Password: x
Pool 2: URL: stratum+tcp://us-zec.2miners.com:1010 Worker: YOUR_ADDRESS.ASIC_ID Password: x
Pool 3: URL: stratum+tcp://asia-zec.2miners.com:1010 Worker: YOUR_ADDRESS.ASIC_ID Password: x
We indicate your address instead of YOUR_ADDRESS and select a suitable name for the ASIC instead of ASIC_ID.
The address may be as follows.
t1dzbQ2bnAGwBVHZykfKYTQYyZY1AjrS1Mg.
This name is suitable for an ASIC.
ASIC-1.
For Nvidia video cards, download the latest version of EWBF's CUDA Zcash miner, for AMD - the good old Claymore's ZCash AMD GPU Miner. All miners are in this archive, password 2miners.
The correct bat file for EWBF Miner Zcash looks like this.
: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
And here is the file for Claymore's ZCash AMD GPU Miner.
ZecMiner64.exe -zpool zec.2miners.com:1010 -zwal YOUR_ADDRESS.RIG_ID
After running the bat file, we see approximately the following picture: the farm has connected to the pool, and the EBFW miner is working.
Pool selection
Almost all major pools provide the opportunity to mine Zcash. But what attracts one miner is not suitable for another. What parameters should be used to select the most suitable one?
First of all, you should pay attention to the technical characteristics:
- Ping. A capacious concept characterizing response time. The lower the ping, the faster the exchange of information with the pool occurs; accordingly, having approximately the same power, the winner will be the miner who sends the calculated block to the pool faster. For productive work, it is recommended to work with a pool whose ping time is no more than 50-60 ms. Ideally - 25-30 ms.
- Pool hashrate. The more power, the better. Especially if payments are made (or selected) using the PPLNS system, which implies a reward for the number of blocks found in accordance with how many shares were sent. The more miners are connected, the higher the power of the pool.
- Number of miners. The other side of the coin of pools with a high hash rate is if the distribution of profits is based on the principle of dividing profits evenly between participants.
- Commission, statistics. Less important, but playing a big role in receiving rewards. Serious pools charge no more than 2.5% commission. A good number of confirmed blocks suggests that you can make good money on this pool. A small number of participants will not allow you to effectively calculate confirmed blocks - there is no effect of accessing them.
Top 5 popular Zcash mining pools:
| Pool | Commission | Hashrate |
| Flypool | 1% | 60MH/s |
| Suprnova | 1% | 7MH/s |
| Nanopool | 1% | 8MH/s |
| Coinmine | 1% | 1.5MH/s |
| Dwarfpool | 1% | 680 KH/s |
| F2pool | 5% | 45 MH/s |
Flypool, Suprnova and Dwarfpool are very popular among miners due to their anonymity, low number of block losses, and the presence of an instant payout system. F2pool has an automatic payment system, but also the highest commission. Although, these are the only ones presented above that work with the PPS payment scheme, which is especially important for those who mine from time to time.
Cloud mining Zcash ZEC
You can also rent mining power on NiceHash and MiningRigRentals.
Zcash mining settings for NiceHash.
Algorithm: EQUIHASH Pool Host: zec.2miners.com:1111 Workername: YOUR_ADDRESS Password: x (!LETTER X!)
And here is MiningRigRentals.
Algorithm: EQUIHASH Pool Host: zec.2miners.com:1010 Workername (-u): YOUR_ADDRESS Password (-p): x (!LETTER X!)
Today, with the 2Miners pool, more than 9,000 miners mine simultaneously, and payouts amount to millions of dollars.
Summarizing
Considering ZEK mining as a way to earn money, we can draw conclusions about the need to work in the pool. Cryptocurrency mining alone is less profitable. The main thing is to choose the best pools for Zcash mining with a high level of reliability and a convenient form of payments. The main advantage of choosing this particular currency is that there is no need to purchase expensive ASICs. An additional advantage is the slower growing difficulty of Zcash mining, which makes it easier to recoup investments made in currency mining.
How profitable do you think Zcash mining is? Share your opinion in the comments.
