Secure sharing aApps

( 05th July 2019 )

Today, I am talking about Cryptocurrency mining, or crypto-mining, It is a process in which transactions for various forms of cryptocurrency are verified and added to the block chain digital ledger. Cryptocurrency mining has improved both as a topic and activity as cryptocurrency usage itself has grown exponentially in the last few years.

Each time a cryptocurrency transaction is made, a cryptocurrency miner is responsible for ensuring the authenticity of information and updating the block chain with the transaction. The mining process itself involves competing with other crypto-miners to solve complicated mathematical problems with cryptographic hash functions that are associated with a block containing the transaction data.

The first cryptocurrency miner to crack the code is rewarded by being able to authorize the transaction, and in return for the service provided, crypto-miners earn small amounts of cryptocurrency of their own. In order to be competitive with other crypto-miners, though, a cryptocurrency miner needs a computer with specialized hardware as well as an optimized mining software that increases the mining hash rates which helps increasing the mining reward.

Figure 2-1: Block chain Life Cycle

In here, I’ll discuss the complete mining methodology which helps the beginners to learn and setup their own cryptocurrency mining environment by using multiple mining hardware (i.e. CPU, GPU and ASICs.

The cryptocurrency miners have used various types of mining hardware over time to mine blocks. Depending upon the network configurations and difficulty factor, hardware used for mining may include Central Processing Unit (CPU), Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) devices.

CPU Mining

Early Bitcoin client versions allowed users to use their CPUs to mine. The advent of GPU mining made CPU mining financially unwise as the hash rate of the network grew to such a degree that the amount of bitcoins produced by CPU mining became lower than the cost of power to operate a CPU. The option was therefore removed from the core Bitcoin client's user interface. CPU miners are now locked out of the Bitcoin mining ecosystem, but there are still many coins that can be mined via CPU alone. There are a number of factors that should be considered before CPU mining any coin, such as mining difficulty, price volatility, market capitalization, use cases, and developer background, but the blockchain ecosystem is home to hundreds of promising projects that rely on the efforts of exploratory, forward-leaning miners.

CPU Mining Rig

Other mining hardware will talk on tomorrow.

Enjoy your weekend!