Grin, which incorporates a version the mimblewimble protocol (Jan 15, 2019,) is the second coin to be launched. This protocol has a lot of information, but the most important points are: – Increased privacy – Scalability, and a smaller blockchain size. This coin uses a more community-driven, decentralized approach than Beam. Everybody who wishes to mine this coin should read the article. It explains how they were able to do it, and how it differs from Monero or ZCash.
Let’s see…
Grin uses the Equihash algorithm. It is written in Rust. They are ASIC resistant to the point that they will have to fork every six months, just like Monero.
You may have heard of Beam, which was the first cryptocurrency that released a version the mimblewimble protocol. Grin’s architecture is quite different from Beam. Grin allows IP, file, and address-based transactions. Beam uses temporary ID’s to help wallets communicate with one another. Grin can also create permanent ID’s because regular ID’s change after each connection. This increases privacy.
We now have all the information about Grin. Let’s start mining some GRIN!
General Mining Notes
However, I want to mention at top of the tutorial that you will need at minimum a 5.5GB card for mining grin. If you want to mine using ASIC protocol, you will need 11GB cards.
Before we begin this tutorial, here are two tips to help you get the most out your mining experience. Second, most mining software will be flagged by virus scanners as a virus. First, make sure you have the most recent drivers for your GPU’s. I prefer to create one folder and then place all my mining software into subfolders. This is why you should exclude mining software from your antivirus if you are mining on a regular computer or gaming computer with antivirus. The antivirus then removes the top folder and this excludes all mining software.
We will also show you how to set up a wallet in this tutorial. We are going to cover the setup of a wallet in this tutorial because the mimblewimble protocol coin is designed differently than other cryptocurrencies. Grin has addresses and private keys. However, this is a completely different system than most people are used to. This is why Grin isn’t using addresses. Grin allows you to send and receive via an IP address, email, or a grin address. One of the most important design differences is that there are no addresses in the system and the wallets communicate with each other (they don’t have to be online) to send crypto. This tutorial will cover all three options.
Ubuntu Installation
At the moment, there seem to be only Linux wallets available. You need a full node in order to run and there are none for Windows.
You can use a spare Linux computer or a virtual machine running on Windows if you don’t have one. VMware player (free) is what I am using. After you have downloaded and installed it, you will need to download a Linux distribution. I will be using Ubuntu 18.04 server edition.
The server edition is faster to download, takes up less space, and is more responsive. (We will install a GUI). Once you have downloaded the ISO file, follow these steps to create virtual machines.
Setup
It is very easy to set up a virtual machine.
Select Customize Hardware from the last picture. I would increase the HD to at most 50GB if I had the space. Also, I would reduce the RAM and CPU usage by 50-75%. For example, if you have a computer with 4 cores (8GB), I would choose to use 2 cores and 4GB ram for the VM.
Once your virtual machine has been started, you can accept all the default settings of the Linux setup and use the entire disk as a VM.
Login is required to access the terminal. This is a server installation. Now we want to install our GUI. I will be using XFCE
This will take approximately 650MB. Once this is done, you can start the GUI by using
This is how we log in to the VM the next time. Enter the username, password, and then startx. Now your Linux is installed and booted.
Grin Wallet Installation
First, we must open a terminal
We now need to install the packages we need. First, we need a web browser so that you can load the docs in the VM. To pull the source from Github, we also need git.
Let’s create a launcher once you have installed Firefox & git. Right-click on the desktop to create a launcher. Next, select the Create Launcher Firef… then click create.
Open firefox and select mark as executable to stop the warning from appearing again.
You can load the tutorial in Firefox to copy and paste the next steps
These will be needed to build the wallet and run it. For more information, visit the official wallets GitHub. This will install all the software we need in a single command
If it asks for installation options, press enter. The entire operation will install approximately 700MB of packages.
We will use a community-built wallet for the wallet. This is because I believe the community wallet is easier to use and send and receive payments from. It is more like the monero CLI in that it has a similar interface. I will be using this wallet for the tutorial. Another reason we are not going to use the official wallet is that it requires a lot more files to be changed. The community wallet also has better documentation about how to use it.
Grin Wallet Setup
Let’s now run the wallet and get synchronized up. You can use this command to either start the wallet every time or create a launcher, like we did with firefox.
Let’s now make a new wallet! You will need to enter the grin box address as well as the private seed words. Although grin has an address system, it is possible to use grin without an address. However, this makes it much easier. You can then check your balances by simply typing.
We need to run the listener in order to receive any new payments that you have received since the last time you loaded your wallet.
The image above shows the commands that the wallet can respond to. The red box contains the seedwords (private keys) for the wallet. These keys are only for you. If they are given to others, they could spend your funds. The public key (red arrow) is the green payment address. This allows you to pay others. The balance of my wallet is shown by the blue arrow.
Grin Wallet Usage
There are three ways to send and get payments in Grin
- HTTPS
- File based
- Grin box address
Once the listner is up, the wallet will automatically receive any https payment or grinbox address payment sent to it. To receive https, you will need to forward your ports behind your router. The wallet 713 doesn’t support https-based payments at the moment so we won’t cover it.
Grin Mining Pools
For this tutorial we will use https://grinmint.com/pages/index.html I have chosen this pool because they will have 0% fees for a short time after launch (Jan 15, 2019)
This is not a profitable area so we won’t be focusing on it.
GPU Mining – Nvidia, AMD
There aren’t many options available right now to mine GRIN. GrinGoldMiner seems to be the best choice at the moment.
This mining software requires a 2% development fee. This mining software requires that you install.NET 2.
Click the “Download.NET Core Runtime” button
Once.NET has been downloaded, launch the miner and edit the values according to the options below
Replace “my*****@**il.com with your email address. “rig1” should be replaced with something that can identify the mining computer, such as officecomputer. Replace “strongpassword” with a password.
Next, open the config.xml folder in the same directory and verify that it has saved the settings and correctly detected your GPU.
Run the miner software, and you will see something similar.
I have also logged in to the mining pool website. Here you can request a payout. You can request a payout to an IP address or email address using the mimblewimble protocol Grin uses.
Get a Mining Pool payout
Log in to your dashboard and enter the password. Next, click on email payout. An email will be sent to you containing a file. The file will be sent to your email.
This will create a transaction.tx.response file which you need to return to the sender. Go back to the dashboard, type the password again, then click on finalize transaction. Then select the transaction.tx.response file and upload it. The payment should be sent to your email address.
In the wallet
You can try a few different things if your mining setup is having problems.
How much GRIN can I make per day?
To figure this out, you would go to https://www.coincalculators.io/coin.aspx?crypto=grin-mining-calculator and use their calculator. Although the calculator provides a rough estimate, you might get paid more or less than what it actually estimates.
Hash rate: Enter the total speed (in megahashes/second) for all your mining computers. This is your mining software’s “total speed”. Add all the computers you use for Grin mining.
Power: Enter the power (in watts), that your mining rig uses. This can be measured by some mining software. A kilowattmeter, which is a special software that measures total power consumption for your computer, can also be used. A kilowattmeter is my preferred method of measuring power consumption. It is the most accurate. Add up all the computers you use for Grinmining.
Pool fee
Pay the pool fee and the miner software development fee. This would be 0 + 2. = 2%
This image shows how many dollars and coins we will make in a given time frame. The Profit column is where you should focus, as it represents the amount after you have paid for your electricity usage. I tend to focus on the USD daily payout. This number can be used to run a calculator for several coins and quickly determine which coin is the most profitable for your mining setup. Remember to also consider the market cap and the daily payout. A coin with a low market cap may be very profitable, but could only have half of the payout tomorrow. You should also consider the hype factor and inflation factors when deciding whether to mine and sell immediately or hold some.
That’s it. Now you can start mining GRIN. To keep track of your statistics, make sure you enter your public key into your mining pool’s dashboard