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Mining
- So what is mining anyway? (main wiki)
- Mining with geth
- GPU mining
- Resources
When you start up your ethereum node with geth it is not mining by default. To start it in mining mode, you use the -mine command line option. The -minerthreads parameter can be used to set the number parallel mining threads (defaulting to the total number of processor cores).
geth -mine -minerthreads=4
You can also start and stop mining at runtime using the console.
> admin.miner.start()
true
> admin.miner.stop()
true
In order to earn ether through you need to have a coinbase (or etherbase) address set. This etherbase defaults to your primary account. Note that miner will not complain if you got no etherbase address set, however money then will be sent to a zero address meaning you are not gonna receive the mining reward.
> eth.coinbase
'0x'
> admin.newAccount()
The new account will be encrypted with a passphrase.
Please enter a passphrase now.
Passphrase:
Repeat Passphrase:
'ffd25e388bf07765e6d7a00d6ae83fa750460c7e'
> eth.coinbase
'0xffd25e388bf07765e6d7a00d6ae83fa750460c7e'
Note that your coinbase does not need to be an address of a local account, just an existing one.
eth.accounts
[]
eth.coinbase = 'a4d8e9cae4d04b093aac82e6cd355b6b963fb7ff'
There is an option to add extra Data (up to the limit of 1Kb) to your mined blocks. By convention this is interpreted as a unicode string, so you can set your vanity tag.
admin.miner.setExtra("ΞTHΞЯSPHΞЯΞ")
...
admin.debug.printBlock(131805)
BLOCK(be465b020fdbedc4063756f0912b5a89bbb4735bd1d1df84363e05ade0195cb1): Size: 531.00 B TD: 643485290485 {
NoNonce: ee48752c3a0bfe3d85339451a5f3f411c21c8170353e450985e1faab0a9ac4cc
Header:
[
...
Coinbase: a4d8e9cae4d04b093aac82e6cd355b6b963fb7ff
Number: 131805
Extra: ΞTHΞЯSPHΞЯΞ
...
}
You can check your hashrate with admin.miner.hashrate , the result is in KH/s (1000 Hash operations per second).
> admin.miner.hashrate()
712
After you successfully mined some blocks, you can check the ether balance of your coinbase account. Now assuming your coinbase is a local account:
> eth.getBalance(eth.coinbase).toNumber();
'34698870000000'
In order to spend your earnings on gas to transact, you will need to have this account unlocked.
> admin.unlock(eth.coinbase)
Please enter a passphrase now.
Passphrase:
true
TODO Using a graphic card processor chip for mining.