Ethereum Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - v1.05, by Herong Yang
Ways to Mine Ether with Your Computer
This section describes ways to mine Ether with your own computer, Standalone Mining and Pool Mining.
There are 3 ways to mine Ether with your computer: Standalone Mining, Pool Mining and Cloud Mining.
1. What is Standalone Mining? Standalone Mining is to build an Ethereum node at home, and run it as a miner on the Ethereum network.
However, you probably will never win the right to sign an Ethereum block and get paid. This is because you are competing with many other miners on the network with very powerful computers.
To be able to win Ether, you need to have a computer system with about 100 or more GPUs. You have to spend a lot of money to buy computer equipments and cooling system to prevent overheating. You also have to pay for the high electricity consumption.
So don't try this at home.
2. What is Cloud Mining? Cloud Mining, also called Cloud Hashing, is to to purchase mining capacity of hardware and software in data centers. Ethereum cloud mining enables people to earn Ethereum without managing hardware, software, electricity, bandwidth or other offline issues. Then all Ethereum mining is done remotely in cloud.
Some popular Cloud Mining providers are:
Swiss Gold Global, http://company.swissgoldglobal.com/en/products - They offer several levels of contracts starting from $0.00. Yes, you can sign up for a free Ethereum cloud mining contract. But you have to share a large percentage of your earnings with them at the end of the month.
Swiss Gold Global, https://www.nicehash.com/nicehash-miner - They offer several levels of contracts starting from $0.00. Yes, you can sign up for a free Ethereum cloud mining contract. But you have to share a large percentage of your earnings with them at the end of the month.
Nice-Miner, https://www.nicehash.com/nicehash-miner - They also include a free Ethereum cloud mining contract, similar to Swiss Gold Global.
Ethereum Miner, https://ethereumminer.net/ - They also include a free Ethereum cloud mining contract, similar to Swiss Gold Global.
Genesis Mining, https://www.genesis-mining.com - You can pay $499.99 for 2 years for the starter contract.
3. What is Pool Mining? Pool Mining is to mine together with other miners as a single pool to win the right to sign a Ethereum block. Then you share the reward with other miners. Of course, your share of reward is proportional to the mining power of your computer.
If you want to join a mining pool, you need to consider these main 3 factors:
Some popular Ethereum mining pools are:
Ethermine, https://ethermine.org - Ethermine has about 128,306 miners, charges 1% management fee and uses PPLNS payout.
F2Pool, https://www.f2pool.com - F2Pool is an older Ethereum mining pool. It charges 2% management fee and uses PPS payout.
Sparkpool, https://www.sparkpool.com - Sparkpool has about 221,300 miners, charges 1% management fee and uses PPLNS payout.
Nanopool, https://nanopool.org - Nanopool has about 37,000 miners, charges 1% management fee and uses PPLNS payout.
Nanopool, https://nanopool.org - Nanopool is a smaller mining pool, charges 1% management fee and uses PPLNS payout.
ethereumfaucet.info, http://ethereumfaucet.info - ethereumfaucet.info was a mining pool claimed to use only your Web browser to participate the mining pool and get rewarded with Ether.
Table of Contents
64-Bit "geth" for Private Ethereum Network
Private Network with Custom Genesis Block
Transferring Funds between Ether Accounts
MetaMask - Browser Based Ethereum Wallet
►Mining Ether with Your Computer