How to start test mining our upgraded testnet

Mining
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How to test mining on test-pool.bitcoingold using the new EWBF miner, step by step.

  1. Create a testnet wallet for yourself from h4x3rotab’s Online Paper Wallet
  • Before generating your wallet, be sure to go into Settings and change the Network to Bitcoin Gold (testnet), and click on “Submit”.
  1. Download EWBF’s Cuda Equihash Miner from here: EWBF’s Cuda Equihash Miner
  • download links above reference the recent v0.2 release which supports Equihash-BTG. CUDA8 or CUDA9 depends on your GPU model.
  1. Unzip EWBF archive and locate miner.cfg. Edit with text editor so it looks like this:
# All the parameters here are similar to the command line arguments

[common]
cuda_devices 0 1 2 3 4 5
intensity    64 64 64 64 64 64
templimit    80
pec          0
boff         0
eexit        0
tempunits    C
log          3
logfile      miner.log
api          127.0.0.1:42000
algo         144_5
pers         BgoldPoW

# The miner start work from this server
# When the server is fail, the miner will try to reconnect 3 times
# After three unsuccessful attempts, the miner will switch to the next server
# You can add up to 8 servers

# main server
[server]
server test-pool.bitcoingold.org
port   3857
user   paste_your_testnet_wallet_here
pass   x

# additional server 1
[server]
server btg-testnet.miningspot.net
port   3857
user   paste_your_testnet_wallet_here
pass   x

After you save, you can directly run miner.exe. If you properly edited the miner.cfg your miner will start mining on the BTG testnet.

Alternately, if you want to use command line switches:

miner.exe --algo 144_5 --pers BgoldPoW --server test-pool.bitcoingold.org --user paste_your_testnet_wallet_here --pass x --port 3857

or

miner.exe --algo 144_5 --pers BgoldPoW --server btg-testnet.miningspot.net --user paste_your_testnet_wallet_here --pass x --port 3857

Please note: hashrate - when mining on the new PoW algorithm the reported hash rate of your GPU will be dramatically lower than the hashrate under the old PoW algorithm. The miner is working fine and others are seeing the same decreased hashrates - it’s simply because the new alogrithm is much more memory-hard than regular Equihash. See the EWBF post above for expected performance.

Please note: memory - the EWBF implementation the new PoW algorithm requires 2.2 GB VRAM on your graphics card. GPUs with 3 GB VRAM work under Linux, but may have difficulty loading under Windows because of overhead (depends on the Windows version and the mining software being used.)

For reference, my 1070:

|         EWBF's Eqihash CUDA miner. v0.2         |
+-------------------------------------------------+
18:45:03 INFO: Used config file: miner.cfg
18:45:03 INFO: Current pool: btg-testnet.miningspot.net:3857
18:45:03 INFO: Selected pools: 2
18:45:03 INFO: Algorithm: 144_5 "BgoldPoW"
18:45:03 INFO: Devices: User defined.
18:45:03 INFO: Temperature limit: 80
18:45:03 INFO: Api: Listen on 127.0.0.1:42000
---------------------------------------------------
18:45:03 INFO: Target: 00a0000000000000...
18:45:03 INFO: Detected new work: d1bc
18:45:04 CUDA: Device: 0 GeForce GTX 1070, 8192 MB i:64
18:45:25 INFO: GPU0 Accepted share 3ms [A:1, R:0]
18:45:33 Temp: GPU0: 67C
18:45:33 GPU0: 29 Sol/s
18:45:33 Total speed: 29 Sol/s
18:45:38 INFO: GPU0 Accepted share 3ms [A:2, R:0]
18:45:51 INFO: Detected new work: d1bd

Lastly, please also note that at this time we are not aware of any released AMD miners which support the new PoW alogrithm.

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Additional notes:

Regarding testnet (active)

Coins mined on testnet are testnet BTG, not real BTG. They have no value, cannot be traded on exchanges, and cannot be used on the mainnet like real BTG. (This question comes up frequently among people new to mining. The purpose of a testnet is for testing miners and all the other software which runs on BTG without risking real coins or impacting the production network.)

Block reward on testnet is 50 BTG. This is simply because the testnet is only about 15,000 blocks high. BTG (and Bitcoin) both started with a reward of 50 coins per block, halving that to 25 after 210,000 blocks, and halving again to 12.5 after another 210,000 blocks (at height 420,000). It will halve again at height 630,000, roughly two years from now.

Regarding mainnet (future, post-upgrade)

The lower hashrate does not mean miners earn less. The hashrate under Equihash-BTG (which is Equihash<144,5>) is much lower than under regular Equihash (Equihash<200,9>). But hashrate doesn’t determine your earnings; hashrate determines your share of the earnings. Because all miners will see lower hashrates on the new algorithm, their relative shares of the earnings will stay the same as long as they all continue mining under the new new algorithm.

There will no change to the block reward / inflation rate / coin distribution model for real BTG on mainnet. There will continue to be 12.5 BTG of mining reward per block, which is 100% paid to the miner (or pool.)

  • If half as many miners are mining BTG when the Upgrade comes, then those few miners will be earning roughly twice as many coins as they do now.
  • If just as many miners are mining BTG after the upgrade as before, they’ll be earning the same number of coins as they do now.
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Which miners will support Equihash-BTG and which pools?

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Next release of Funakoshi-Miner will support Equihash-BTG.
It will be released before the end of June.

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Is it for AMD gpu’s?

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Funakoshi-Miner is for CUDA gpu’s.

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All your questions can be answered if you read the entire post carefully. Including the two pools we made available to public for testing as well as information about miners.

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In other words Nvidia. Alright :slight_smile: The list of miners that supports Nvidia GPU’s increasing. Too bad we still don’t have entrance for AMD GPU support.

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I think he meant to ask which pools will be supporting BTG mining on Equihash-BTG after the mainnet upgrade. (He didn’t specifically say this and he posted here this thread about testnet, so it’s not clear that’s what he meant.)

The short answer is that we expect all or most of the currently active pools to continue supporting BTG, but that’s their decision to make and announce. Make sure to ask your favorite pools, and please share any responses you get here.

Same goes for miners - you can see Funakoshi telling us today that his miner will be out soon. (A little birdie tells me it’s a fast one, too.) We’ll do our best to compile the information on miners supporting the new algos, but it’s really up to the miner developers to choose when and what to announce.

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