Ethereum Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - v1.05, by Herong Yang
4-Thread Miner not Able to Mine Blocks
This section describes the 4-thread miner not able to mine a new block.
I waited for another hour with my 'geth' miner running 4 threads. But it is still not able to mine the pending block.
During this mining period, my laptop is running at 100% CPU. And I can hear the CPU cooling fan running with no stops.
I could increase the number of miner threads to 8 to make it more fast. But I don't want to see my CPU get overheated and burned out.
So what's the solution? How can I create a private Ethereum network and mine new blocks with my laptop?
The answer is to lower the blockchain hash requirement on the network. The block hash requirement is measured by the blockchain difficulty level.
By default, "geth" starts a new Ethereum network with the difficulty level set to a value around 17171480576.
> eth.getBlock(0).difficulty 17179869184
This difficulty level is too high for the "geth" miner running on any home computer today.
In general, a blockchain is more secure, if it has a higher difficult level. But a higher difficult level requires more powerful computer to generate new blocks.
See the next tutorial on how to re-create the private network with a much lower difficulty value.
Table of Contents
►64-Bit "geth" for Private Ethereum Network
Download and Install 64-bit "geth"
Run 64-bit "geth" with Miner Module
Run "geth" Miner in Multiple Threads
►4-Thread Miner not Able to Mine Blocks
Private Network with Custom Genesis Block
Transferring Funds between Ether Accounts
MetaMask - Browser Based Ethereum Wallet