How to mine Zcash

What is Zcash?

Zcash is a rather innovative decentralised and open source crypto currency that is privacy-centric because of its zero-knowledge proof construction. The crypto currency protects the transactions on its blockchain in such a way that the transactions are listed but the traders details are not.

Zcash is cryptogaphicaly private and has been built on the Bitcoin protocol with an additional layer of security that offers the users a choice to hide the sender, receiver, and amount details of a transaction.

Highlights:

Choice of Privacy (not private by default; but offers a combination of shielded and transparent transactions.)
Proof of Work algorithm.
Zero-knowledge Proof (zk-SNARKS guaranteeing the creation of a nullifier that can authentically validate and verify transactions.)

Zcash Trading

At the time of writing, the Zcash coin ZEC is among the top 20 crypto currencies according to market capital. The coin is traded on crypto exchange platforms such as Huobi, HitBTC, Bitfinex, Bit-Z, YoBit, LBank, LocalTrade, Bithumb, Kraken, Poloniex, OKEx, CoinEx, Coinroom, Gemini, Exmo, Upbit, Ovis, Cryptopia, Gate.io, BitBay and several others.

Token Value Information

At the time of writing, the Zcash coin ZEC has the following statistics:

Circulating Supply: 4,573,169 ZEC
Market Cap: $591,054,863 USD
ICO Price: $5,941.80 USD
All-time High Price: $3,191.93 USD
Current Price: $129.24 USD

Mining Zcash

Zcash Mining usually works on the following combination of hardware and software:

CPU with Minegrate or NiceHash
AMD GPU with Claymore’s Miner
nVidia GPU with EWBF’s CUDA Zcash Miner

CPU Mining

Let’s talk about the most basic one first. If you’re planning to mine Zcash with your CPU, you can use either NiceHash or Mingrate. But CPU mining for Zcash hasn’t proven that profitable so our focus will be GPU mining.

AMD GPU Mining

If you wish to mine Zcash with your AMD GPU, you need to install Claymore’s Miner. The first step is to set up a Zcash wallet then download the miner and then configure it.

Configuration requires joining a Zcash Pool. Zcash is currently mined at Flypool, Dwarfpool, and Nanopool.

Once you have the pool of your liking, we begin configuration.

In the configuration text, you insert the pool name along with the port number and add your wallet address.
Then you need to ensure that the correct virtual memory (minimum 16 GB) is enabled on your GPU so you’ll need to go to the Advanced System Settings on your computer and follow the Advanced Settings again under Performance Settings. You change the virtual memory input the custom size in the initial and maximum size columns.
Once this is done, you are all set to mine Zcash on an AMD GPU. All you need to do is launch your batI and the mining starts.

nVidia GPU Mining

Moving on, we will talk about those who wish to use the nVidia GPU to mine Zcash. After the wallet set-up, you need to download and configure EWBF’s miner. Again, you need to choose a pool before you begin configuring it.

To configure this miner, edit the bat file and enter your server address as well as Zcash public address.
Enter the pool name along with the port number.
Enable the correct virtual memory (minimum 16 GB). go to the Advanced System Settings on your computer and follow the Advanced Settings again under Performance Settings. You change the virtual memory input the custom size in the initial and maximum size columns.
And now, you are mining for Zcash with nVidia GPU. All you need to do is launch your bat file and the mining starts.

Read this blog to know An Intro To Anonymous Cryptocurrency : Monero, Dash & Zcash

Hitesh Malviya

Hitesh Malviya is the Founder of ItsBlockchain. He is one of the most early adopters of blockchain & cryptocurrency enthusiast in India. After being into space for a few years, he started IBC in 2016 to help other early adopters learn about the technology.
Before IBC, Hitesh has founded 4 companies in the cyber security & IT space.