How to mine Zencash
What is ZenCash?
A decentralised blockchain platform, ZenCash is a privacy-centric network which can be used for public, private, and anonymous transactions, communications, and publishing. The platform works on the zk-SNARKs, domain fronting, and TLS integration to ensure that the users’ digital assets, communications, and publications are protected.
The network primarily operates on 3 systems:
- ZenHide which enables circumnavigating the blockchain with the help of domain fronting.
- ZenChat which provides for a customised and secured communications network.
- ZenPub which is an anonymous document publishing platform.
Highlights
- Privacy: Zen coins can successfully be sent through off-the-grid transactions with anonymous and private messages providing a context to each payment.
- Secure Node Operations: the ZenCash node communication is encrypted by the inter-node communications to make sure that the former appears to be similar to any other encrypted internet traffic thereby securing activities on the ZenCash network.
- Untraceability: ZenCash is privacy-centric and hence shields all transactions therefore the sender, receiver, and amount information is protected.
ZenCash Trading
ZenCash is traded on some of the major crypto exchange platforms including Binance, Bittrex, and OKEx. Other than that, this coin can also be bought, sold, and/or traded on BiteBTC, Upbit, COSS, Trade Satoshi, Cryptopia, DragonEX, and Graviex.
Token Value Information
At the time of writing, the Zen coin has the following statistics:
Total Supply: 21,000,000 ZEN
Circulating Supply: 4,506,238 ZEN
Market Cap: $83,640,288 USD
ICO Price: $21.80 USD
All-time High Price: $65.14 USD
Current Price: $18.56 USD
Mining ZenCash
For a smooth mining experience, it is important to get the basic things right. This means to ensure that you have the most updated CPU and the latest drivers installed for your GPU. Next step is to ensure that you exclude the mining software you will be using from the antivirus that is installed on your device since most antiviruses flag mining software.
Solo vs Pool Mining
The debate between solo and pool mining has long been settled with pool mining emerging the obvious winner. In order to mine ZenCash successfully, it is recommended that you join one of the available ZenCash mining pools.
ZenCash is one of those coins which are mined on multiple pools and give miners the freedom to choose their playground. For ZenCash, the available mining pools are:
- ZenMine Pro
- LuckPool
- pro
- Miningspeed
- Mining Pool Hub
- TreeFog Mines
- MineZ Zone
- HebUsio Pool
- SuprNova
- Owl Miners’ Club
- Nibiru Pool
- Catspool
- 2miners
- Cash EU Pool
- MinerBay
- Ambit
- Luxor
- E-hashs
- SoloPool
- Equipool
- Zuzuca
- Power Mining Pool
- 247mines
- Hebusio
- Equihash-Pool
- Equigems
- FirstOrder Miner Outlook
Once you have decided on the mining pool of your choice, the mining process begins.
Getting Started
The first step always is setting up a ZenCash wallet. This can be done on the ZenCash platform. The most recommended pool for ZenCash mining is Miningspeed because of its smorgasbord features and low mining fee (about 0.4%) as well as the fact that it is a community-oriented pool.
CPU Mining
Even though it is not as profitable, ZenCash can be mined through CPU using either the Minegrate or the Nicehash nheqminer software.
GPU Mining
For a coin like ZenCash, which is an equihash-based GPU mining cryptocurrency, it only makes sense to employ a GPU for its mining.
With Nvidia
A number of miner software are available for GPU mining ZenCash with Nvidia but EWBF’s CUDA miner is one of the best. This miner works with both Linux and Windows and is really simple to use.
- Download the miner.
- Create a new batch file in the same folder as the miner and into the batch file paste the command miner –server mining_pool –port port –user wallet_public_key.worker –pass x –pec.
- Replace ‘mining pool’ with the pool server of your choice and ‘port’ with the port that you wish to use.
If you are mining on a CPU, the port would be 3061; 3062 for GPU; 3063 for GPU mining farm; 3064 for SSL; and 3065 for nicehash.
- Replace ‘wallet_public_key’ with your wallet address.
- After the setup is complete, run the batch file.
- On the screen, you will be able to see the GPU’s that have detected on your device, the speed, temperature, and the power usage of each GPU along with the total speed.
- And that’s it! Now you are mining.
With AMD
For GPU AMD mining, Claymore’s ZCash miner is simply one of the best.
- Download the miner.
- Create a new batch file in the same folder as the miner and into the batch file paste the command
setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 1
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
ZecMiner64.exe -zpool mining_pool:port -zwal wallet_public_key.worker -zpsw x -allpools 1 -i 8 -asm 1
If you are mining on Linux, all the setx commands must be removed.
- Replace ‘mining pool’ with the pool server of your choice and ‘port’ with the port that you wish to use.
If you are mining on a CPU, the port would be 3061; 3062 for GPU; 3063 for GPU mining farm; 3064 for SSL; and 3065 for nicehash.
- Replace ‘wallet_public_key’ with your wallet address.
- After the setup is complete, run the batch file.
- On the screen, you will be able to see the GPU’s that have detected on your device, the speed, temperature, and the power usage of each GPU along with the total speed.
- And that’s it! Now you are mining.
To keep a track of your mining statistics, you can type in your public key into the dashboard of the mining pool.
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.
