How to mine Ethereum Classic (ETC) 2022, step by step setup

Since the advent of BTC, mining has become profitable because it is now a way to earn passive income. In addition, mining is the basis of Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoW) cryptocurrencies.

It is important to know that early adopters of Bitcoin benefited from mining due to its low difficulty and slow speed. But these days, the cryptocurrency market is saturated and mining cryptocurrencies is becoming a challenging task.

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Some cryptocurrencies allow solo mining, but the best way to mine is through mining pools. However, this guide will tell you about Ethereum Mining Classic and reputable mining pools that you can use to mine ETC.

What is Ethereum Classic mining?

The Ethereum Classic cryptocurrency is dependent on mining, as are BTC and LTC, which use PoW. It is also a decentralized and open source platform. This means that anyone can participate in the creation of ETC tokens. Even though Ethereum Classic uses PoW, it has not achieved the high complexity as seen in the Bitcoin network. However, this makes mining Ethereum Classic a good return on investment option for miners. Again, the tools used in Ethereum Classic mining are not as expensive as other cryptocurrencies and you can set them up quickly.

Gas price on the Ethereum network. Problems with payments (transfers)

At the beginning of August, the Ethereum network underwent an update, thanks to which part of the ETH coins, which previously went to miners, began to be burned - that is, simply disappear forever from the network. Another change is that pools can no longer take any transactions into their blocks as they please. Previously, pools could make payments to their miners and pay a minimum commission, but this is no longer possible. The pool could place payouts to miners in its blocks for free.

Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin

On the subject: London hard fork - what will EIP-1559 change for Ethereum ETH miners

We have already discussed several times on the blog how these changes affected the income of miners, and in our Telegram chat this is discussed every day.

In a nutshell:

1. Miners began to earn more. Despite the drop in earnings in ETH coins, the price of the cryptocurrency rose decently, resulting in an increase in overall profitability in dollar terms.
2. Payments from the pool are now made at the expense of miners.

Daily profitability of Ethereum miners

The issue of payments turned out to be more complicated than everyone thought. The pool has to take care of all the miners together, and each one pulls in its own direction - just like the Swan, Cancer and Pike from the fable. Some want payments as quickly as possible for any money, others are ready to wait, just to avoid paying a large commission.

The task would seem easy for them, but not everything is so simple. The pool has one and only wallet. All work with the Ethereum network is carried out through it. The pool receives a reward for it, and pays the miners from it. The Ethereum network works in such a way that transfers from one wallet can only be made in a strict order “one after another” - and nothing else.

Where are we leading with all this? The pool cannot allow its miners to choose the size of the commission when paying out. Let’s say Vasya is one of those who doesn’t want to overpay: he has set the commission amount below the plinth and is waiting for the Ethereum network to calm down and the price of transfers to fall. He waits for an hour, two, a day, a week. Together with Vasya, all the other miners of the pool are waiting. Until Vasya’s payment number 3 leaves, the pool cannot send any other payment, that is, number 4, 5, 6, and so on.

Where it leads? In the best case, the rest of the miners will say “What an asshole, Vasya” and tolerate it, in the worst case, they will simply leave the pool forever. We, of course, do not want to allow this to happen, so we have to look for a balance in the cost of payments. Currently, payments are configured in such a way that they cost miners no more than $5.

The most popular cryptocurrencies of the 2Miners pool

An important note to make is that if you use exchange addresses, payouts may cost more. Some exchanges do not use regular addresses, but smart contract addresses, and paying out to such an address requires more gas and, accordingly, commission. We recommend using direct Ethereum addresses. But it’s worth considering that not all exchanges have contract addresses; you can check this by following the link.

What should Vasya do, who is unhappy that the payment costs so much? The only option at the moment is to adjust the payment amount each time. Let's say he has accumulated 0.021 ETH. In this case, you need to increase the payment amount to a larger amount, for example 1 ETH, so that the payment does not go through. Next, wait until fees on the Ethereum network fall and remain low for some time. Then lower the payout size to 0.02 ETH, that is, make it below the accumulated balance so that the payout goes through.

Damn, how difficult it is,” Vasya will say. And he will be right. Who is to blame for this? We recommend blaming the Ethereum developers first. They broke a system that had worked for years. But that’s why they are developers, we hope that they know better.

Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin

What are we doing? We are currently making a smart payment system that should meet the needs of all miners. The release date is difficult to determine, but we hope to finish within 1-2 months.

Is it possible to mine Ethereum Classic?

Ethereum Classic can be mined in the same way as Ethereum itself, since they both use PoW. The good news is that mining Ethereum Classic is not that difficult thanks to GPUs and ASIC mining rigs.

A great place to find out how profitable it is to mine ETC coins on WhatToMine. ETC is often considered one of the best digital assets to mine on the platform. Mining Ethereum Classic through a pool is profitable today. But again, it's worth comparing the numbers at the time of reading this article.

Mining Ethereum Classic is still profitable if you believe in its potential. However, it is wise to mine this digital asset, send it to your ETC wallet and sell it at a higher rate in the future.

Consequences and features of this decision

The main consequence of the decision to endlessly issue Ethereum is the existence of inflation. Unlike alternative currencies, Eth will definitely begin to depreciate over time, as one day the existing money supply will exceed the needs of users. But now this is impossible, so potential investors should not worry about their own savings. The popular cyber currency has excellent growth prospects, which are not limited only by the laws of the market. Moreover, possible inflation will not begin soon, since the current market needs are far from being satisfied, and the demand for digital finance is actively growing.

What algorithm does Ethereum Classic use?

Both the Ethereum Classic blockchain and the Ethereum blockchain use the same mining algorithm because they use PoW. Both digital assets are mined using the Ethash algorithm, but the only difference is the hash rate, break-even mining power threshold, and block reward. Information may differ as you read the material, so it is best to compare your current knowledge of WhatToMine.

Why are Ethereum Classic miners so important?

Miners protect blockchain networks and also help them become more decentralized. How do miners protect blockchain networks? They deploy computing power to process transactions and protect the network from 51% (double spending) attacks.

An attacker would need to spend the same digital asset more than once for a double spend attack to occur. The action also occurs when an attacker steals funds or spends what has already been spent on the blockchain network.

Double spending typically occurs on small blockchain networks with little computing power or hash rate. It's easier to attack or double spend if you collect more than half of the network's total computing power.

To prevent double spending on blockchain networks, a distributed network of miners is needed. Ethereum Classic miners work together to detect valid transactions and ignore unverified ones. Incentives given to miners help compensate and motivate them to continue mining to protect the blockchain network.

How to mine Cortex

Cortex (CTXC) we use the CuckooCortex mining algorithm. Mining with this algorithm is highly dependent on the memory of the video card and gives a significant increase in speed on top Nvidia cards of each series - for example, 1080ti, 2080 or 3090.

Miner Cortex

The price of the coin and the difficulty of mining can change greatly even within a day, which is why the coin is loved by miners who constantly monitor changes in the difficulty of the network. If you are able to switch your mining power to a given coin for a few hours when the difficulty drops or the rate rises, Cortex is your choice.

The uniqueness of the CuckooCortex algorithm is its wide ability to change the energy efficiency of mining. For example, you can push the cards to the max, getting 80% hashrate while saving 40% of energy, or vice versa - overclock the cards by an additional 20%, but at the same time increase energy consumption by almost 1.5 times, which may make sense if you have cheap "socket".

The CTXC mining algorithm is demanding on the size of the video card memory. If you mine on Windows 7 or Linux, you need video cards with 8 GB or more memory. For mining on Windows 10 you need at least 10 GB - pay attention to this.

Cortex price chart for the year

• Mining algorithm: CuckooCortex (Cold ❄️)
• Minimum video card memory size: 8 GB
• Block reward: 7 CTXC
• Average block time: 13.5 seconds
• Traded on exchanges: Binance, Huobi, OKEx, CoinEx and others.
• Place in the cryptocurrency ranking: 679.

Cortex mining profitability on Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti

A ready-made bat file for mining can always be found on the “How to start” page of the Cortex pool. Here is an example of a bat file for AMD video cards - lolMiner miner.

lolMiner.exe --coin CTXC --pool ctxc.2miners.com:2222 --user YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_ID pause

Gminer for Nvidia video cards.

miner.exe --algo cortex --server ctxc.2miners.com --port 2222 --user YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_ID pause

A guide to Cortex mining is available here.

What do you need to mine Ethereum Classic?

Keep an ETC wallet handy to store tokens.

Mining Ethereum Classic involves the same process as mining other PoW coins. There are certain things that you will need when mining Ethereum Classic. To get started, you will need a wallet to store your Ethereum Classic tokens. To store your ETC tokens, you will need an ETC wallet. For this article, we recommend Exodus Wallet or Cobo Wallet. It is important to know that you can also use a hardware wallet to store ETC tokens.

Set up mining equipment.

In addition, you will need mining equipment. At the moment, the most popular hardware for mining Ethereum Classic is the GPU. The processors are outdated. You will need Nvidia graphics cards such as 1080 and 1080i. Alternatively, you can also use AMD GPUs, but they are less efficient for mining Ethereum Classic. Another thing you'll need is at least 4GB of RAM, either dedicated video memory or system RAM. The best rig is one that has multiple GPUs such as the Bitman Antminer E3, AMD VEGA 64, or AMD VEGA 56 when mining Ethereum Classic.

Select your mining software.

Additionally, it would be helpful if you also have mining software. The top-notch software miners you can use are Claymore Dual Ethereum miner, GMiner, and NBMiner. These software miners support dual mining. You can also use NVIDIA and AMD GPUs with them.

Another mining software you can use is Ethminer. Ethminer also allows the use of NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. You should know that this software supports both Windows and Linux devices.

For a simpler process, you can use MinerGate. This software requires no installation and, again, all you have to do is download it and tell the program which ETC address you want to send your ETC tokens to. Even though MinerGate is a bit simple, it offers the lowest ROI or profit.

Decide whether you want to mine alone or use a mining pool.

Another thing you need to consider when you want to mine ETC is whether you want to mine solo or in a mining pool. If you want to join a mining pool, remember that mining pools take a certain percentage of your profits. But if you combine your hash power with other miners, you will make more profit. You can use Nanomine, Ethermine or F2pool because these are popular mining pools that you need to consider when it comes to mining Ethereum Classic.

Before we get into mining Ethereum Classic, here's how to set up your hardware.

How mining works on different video cards

Let's take a quick look at a few popular GPUs you can use on your farm in 2022. All of them are equipped with a memory capacity of more than 4 GB, since with less it simply will not be possible to mine Ether due to the new era.

Ethereum mining on Nvidia:

Ethereum mining on AMD:

We deliberately did not consider AMD RX 6*** video adapters, since at the time of writing the review, 90% of ETH miner programs do not support it, and due to crude drivers in mining, it sometimes performs worse than the previous generation. The table also does not take into account overclocking and undervolting capabilities, which can increase profitability by up to 20% on some GPUs.

Setting up mining equipment

Here's a quick guide to setting up your mining hardware.

Setting up your ASIC miner (Antminer E3)

First, connect the LAN cable to the LAN port of your miner and then turn it on.

Select your mining pool

Select a pool for ETC mining. We have already listed some recommended mining pools in this article. Please note that Nanopool has an average commission of 1%, while F2Pool has an average commission of 4%.

Find the IP address

After connecting the Internet cable, your device will automatically obtain an IP address from the network. To find the IP address, you need to access your internet router's DHCP server or download the IP Reporter software from the Bitmain website. Once you have extracted the file, double click IP Reporter, you will see the following windows, then click Start. Once this is done, press and hold the button that says “IP Reporter” on the ASIC device and once this is done, a window will pop up on your screen with the IP address of the machine.

Log in to the miner interface

Enter the IP address into your browser and a dialog box will ask for your username and password, which default to "root".

Enter your Ethereum Classic mining pool information.

Once you are logged in, go to Miner Configuration / General Settings. Once there, you will need to set up your mining pools. Complete two or three Ethereum Classic mining servers to switch to another pool if the first one fails. For example:

Pool 1 - URL: stratum + tcp://eu1-etc.ethermine.org:4444 - ethermine for Europe

Pool 2 - URL: stratum + tcp://us1-etc.ethermine.org:4444 - ethermine for the eastern US

If pool 1 goes down, the miner automatically connects to pool 2. The username is your Ethereum Classic wallet address followed by "." and the employee's name. Please note that you can leave the password field blank.

Click save and apply

In a few minutes you will be able to view complete information about the “Status of Miners”. Also, if you see your hashrate, then your ASIC is working correctly.

How to choose an ETH pool for mining

There are quite a lot of them, so you need to understand what parameters you should pay attention to. For ourselves we do the following:

• Duration of existence. The longer it works, the higher the trust.
• Hashrate. The higher the better, as the performance is greater.
• Number of miners. More is better, because the speed of decrypting a block and receiving a reward depends on it.
• How payments are made. On some resources you can withdraw your ETH only after 0.1, which is quite a lot even for the owner of a home farm with video cards.

If you are wondering where to mine Ether, here is a list of verified pools for 2021:

• Ethermine;
• Sparkpool;
• F2pool;
• Spiderpool;
• Nanopool;
• 2Miners;
• MinerGate;
• NanoPool.

Mining Ethereum Classic with F2Pool

This section will discuss in detail how to mine Ethereum Classic using the F2Pool mining pool. Here's what you need to do if you want to use F2Pool.

Buy the right mining equipment

As stated earlier in this guide, we recommend using the Bitman Antminer E3, AMD VEGA 64 or AMD VEGA 56 mining hardware. This mining hardware is suitable for Ethereum Classic mining, no matter which mining pool you use.

Get your wallet

You can use the Exodus wallet or the Cobo wallet as we recommended earlier in this guide. You can also choose an exchange such as Binance or Huobi.

Get Mining Software

You can use Clayminer, GMiner and NBminer. But in this section we will focus on GMiner and NBminer for this mining pool.

Set up your mining software

After downloading GMiner or NBminer, you need to extract it, find the start.bat or start.cmd file, right-click it and select Edit. Then replace the existing commands with the following. Please note that these commands are for each of them.

For GMiner software use this command: miner.exe –algo etchash –server etc. F2pool.com:8118 –user(wallet_address.worker_name). For NBMiner use this: nbminer -a etchash -o stratum + tcp://etc.f2pool.com: 8118 -u (wallet_address.worker_name). Also, replace wallet_address with your Ethereum Classic wallet address.

Once you're done, save the start file and exit, then double-click the start file to start mining immediately.

Mining Firo cryptocurrency

Until recently, the FIRO coin used a very heavy MTP algorithm, which required more than 5 GB of video memory. It also generated significant internet traffic for the pool and the miner, as each share reached 200KB in size, which is hundreds of times larger than the shares of any other algorithm.

Miner Firo (Zcoin)

On October 26, the developers carried out a global update of the algorithm and replaced the MTP algorithm with FiroPoW. FiroPoW is a modification of the ProgPoW algorithm, which was developed for the Ethereum network, but was never implemented. It is the “brother” of the KAWPOW algorithm, which Ravencoin uses.

FIRO's FiroPoW is almost identical to the RVN coin algorithm. The only difference is that the DAG file size is larger and currently FiroPoW requires a little more than 4 GB of video memory. The DAG file will grow by 1 GB every 1.5 years, which should make mining on cards with 6 GB of video memory impossible by the end of 2024.

Firo exchange rate chart for the year

• Mining algorithm: FiroPoW (Hot