Mining

Mining in the context of cryptocurrency such as gobyte refers to the process of searching for solutions to cryptographically difficult problems as a method of securing blocks on the blockchain. The process of mining creates new currency tokens as a reward to the miner. Mining is possible on a range of hardware. gobyte implements an algorithm known as neoscrypt, which the miner must solve in order to earn rewards.

The simplest and most general hardware available for mining is the general purpose CPU present in every computer. A CPU is designed to be versatile but offers less efficiency than a GPU, which is designed to rapidly calculate millions of vectors in parallel. While specific CPU instruction enhancements related to cryptography such as AES or AVX can provide a decent boost, GPUs offer a significant performance increase due to their multiple pipelines capable of processing the predictably repetitive calculations associated with cryptocurrency mining. Finally, ASICs are relatively inflexible and can only process the specific function(s) for which they were designed, but at an even faster rate than the more general purpose GPUs and CPUs. A number of neoscrypt ASICs are now available on the market, which have quickly made CPU and GPU mining uneconomic due to the increased difficulty of hashing arising from the rapidly increasing hash rate. The result is a currency which is more secure against brute force attacks on the gobyte blockchain.

The profitability of mining is determined by the hashrate of your mining device, the current network difficulty and the costs of your hardware and electricity. The following links provide up to date information:

Masternodes vs. Mining

GoByte, like Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies, is based on a decentralized ledger of all transactions, known as a blockchain. This blockchain is secured through a consensus mechanism; in the case of both GoByte and Bitcoin, the consensus mechanism is Proof of Work (PoW). Miners attempt to solve difficult problems with specialized computers, and when they solve the problem, they receive the right to add a new block to the blockchain. If all the other people running the software agree that the problem was solved correctly, the block is added to the blockchain and the miner is rewarded.

GoByte works a little differently from Bitcoin, however, because it has a two-tier network. The second tier is powered by masternodes (Full Nodes), which enable financial privacy (PrivateSend), instant transactions (InstantSend), and the decentralized governance and budget system. Because this second tier is so important, masternodes are also rewarded when miners discover new blocks. The breakdown is as follows: 25% of the block reward goes to the miner, 65% goes to masternodes, and 10% is reserved for the budget system (created by superblocks every month).

The masternode system is referred to as Proof of Service (PoSe), since the masternodes provide crucial services to the network. In fact, the entire network is overseen by the masternodes, which have the power to reject improperly formed blocks from miners. If a miner tried to take the entire block reward for themselves or tried to run an old version of the gobyte software, the masternode network would orphan that block, and it would not be added to the blockchain.

In short, miners power the first tier, which is the basic sending and receiving of funds and prevention of doublespending. Masternodes power the second tier, which provide the added features that make gobyte different from other cryptocurrencies. Masternodes do not mine, and mining computers cannot serve as masternodes. Additionally, each masternode is “secured” by 1000 GBX. Those gobyte remain under the sole control of their owner at all times, and can still be freely spent. The funds are not locked in any way. However, if the funds are moved or spent, the associated masternode will go offline and stop receiving rewards.

Mining Pools

Mining GoByte in pools is more likely to generate rewards than solo mining directly on the blockchain. Mining GoByte using P2Pool is strongly encouraged, since it is a good way to distribute, rather than centralize, the hashing power. The following site lists GoByte P2Pool mining pools near you, simply choose a pool with favourable fees and ping time and enter your GoByte payment address as username and anything as password.

If you would like to set up your own P2Pool, documentation of the process is available here and the code for p2pool-gobyte is available on GitHub. Other mining pools are listed below and may be advantageous for different reasons such as ping latency, uptime, fee, users, etc. A guide to using a typical mining pool can be found here.

DISCLAIMER: This list is provided for informational purposes only. Services listed here have not been evaluated or endorsed by the gobyte developers and no guarantees are made as to the accuracy of this information. Please exercise discretion when using third-party services. If you’d like to be added to this list please reach out to leon.white@gobyte.network

In addition to joining a pool, you will also need to create a gobyte address to receive your payout. To do this in gobyte Core wallet, see here.

CPU Mining

This documentation describes how to mine gobyte under the Windows operating system using just the CPU in your computer. Please note that the prevalence of GPU and ASIC miners mean that unless you have free electricity, this is highly unlikely to be profitable! Since this is the case, the software in this guide has not been updated in several years, and is intended for experimental purposes and testnet only.

This is a fairly simple procedure and examples will be given in order to achieve the fastest possible hash rate for your CPU, but remember that more optimized miners do exist, so we advise you to keep an eye out on mining sites such as these in order to keep up with the latest information and releases.

Mining software

The first step is to download appropriate mining software. A good basic miner for modern CPUs can be found here:

Our goal here is to choose mining software that supports the maximum possible instruction sets available on your CPU, and then try to increase the hash speed. Once you have made your choice, click Releases and download and extract the zip file. The different *.exe files indicate which specific processor optimizations they support. The folder should look something like this:

mining/img/cpu-miner-files.png

Executable CPU miners for gobyte

Configuration

Begin by selecting a mining pool and generating a gobyte address as described in the Mining Pools section above. Keep all your mining files in a single folder. In this example we will work from the Desktop. The node selected for this example is from the BSOD.pw list and is located in US, EU, RU or ASIA:

https://bsod.pw/en/pool/dashboard/GBX/

Next, open Notepad and type in on one line the command we will use to start the miner, followed by pause on the second line. The general format is as follows:

<minerd> -a <algorithm> -o <url> -u <username> -p <password> -t <threads>
pause

Where:

  • minerd = the executable miner daemon file you choose to use
  • a = algorithm, which is neoscrypt for gobyte
  • o = URL of your mining pool, including the protocol and port
  • u = username, usually the gobyte receiving address of your wallet or worker
  • p = password, can often be set to x
  • t = number of threads used
  • pause = keeps the window open in the case of errors

For the CPU in the example above, the command may be (for EU):

cpuminer.exe -a neoscrypt -o stratum+tcp://eu.bsod.pw:1932 -u GM9ygYxt8HHp4vVHHndv4cLPXDMv6FFgdw -p x
pause
mining/img/notepad.png

Notepad file showing an example command to start a CPU miner

Click File, then Save As. Change Save as type to All Files, then type the file name as startminer.bat and save it in the same folder as the unzipped minerd files.

Testing

You are now ready to start! Keep an eye on your CPU usage in Task Manager (right click the taskbar to open this) and be careful that the CPU temperature does not exceed your maximum rating (around 64°C). If you have temperature or desktop stability problems, reduce t to ~2 threads and try that first. If t is left out, the machine will default to the maximum number of threads. After running the miner for a while, take a look at the hash speed and payouts in your mining pool. You can identify your miner by the wallet address on the page.

mining/img/cpu-mining.png

Example of CPU mining using CPUMiner on Intel Core i7

Tips

Reduce the number of threads for added desktop usability and heat reduction. If the CPU temperature is too high, consider fitting a new fan and check that the heat sink thermal paste on the CPU is adequate. Tweak the processor clock speed for added performance using a motherboard controller like AI Suite for Asus motherboards. Reduction of CPU core voltage will result in lower temperature but increased instability.

Try to select a pool that is nearby to reduce network latency. If the node appears slow, switch to another location. Please distribute the hashing power globally to different pools to avoid forking.

GPU Mining

This guide consolidates several other guides on how to use your GPU (the processor on your graphics card) to mine gobyte using the neoscrypt algorithm on Windows. Please note that the growing market for ASIC miners means that this if probably not going to be profitable! A lot of the software and binaries described here also have not been updated for several years, so this guide should be used for experimental purposes only.

This guide will cover the process of downloading and configuring the mining software, followed by some suggestions for optimizations. This technology can change rapidly, so we advise you to keep an eye out on mining sites such as these in order to keep up with the latest information and releases.

Mining software

As for CPU mining, a range of mining software is available for GPU mining. Most of it based on sgminer compiled with different optimizations specific to different hardware. A good approach is to identify your graphics hardware, then choose an appropriate build of sgminer. You can use GPU-Z to identify your GPU hardware:

mining/img/gpu-z.png

GPU-Z showing details for AMD Radeon Turks and NVIDIA Quadro GK104 class GPUs

Next, download the mining software. Most of these are based on the original sgminer, but this is not suitable for the neoscrypt algorithm, offers no compiled binaries and hasn’t been updated in years. We will describe using pre-compiled binary software maintained by newer developers only.

AMD

NVIDIA

Download your chosen release and extract the zip file to a known location. The folder should look something like this:

mining/img/gpu-miner-files.png

Executable GPU miners for gobyte

The sgminer file is the executable file, while the various files with .cl extensions define the various algorithms supported by sgminer. In this case, we are interested in the neoscrypt.cl and neoscrypt-mod.cl implementations of neoscrypt. Note that the name of the executable file may be different for miners with different optimizations, for example ccminer for NVIDIA cards.

Configuration

Begin by selecting a mining pool and generating a gobyte address as described in the Mining Pools section above. Keep all your mining files in a single folder. In this example we will work from the Desktop. The node selected for this example is from the BSOD.pw list and is located in US, EU, RU or ASIA:

https://bsod.pw/en/pool/dashboard/GBX/

Next, open Notepad and create the basic configuration. The general format is as follows:

{
  "pools" : [
    {
      "url" : "stratum+tcp://eu.bsod.pw:1932",
      "user" : "walletaddress",
      "pass" : "x",
      "algorithm":"neoscrypt"
    }
  ]
}

Where:

  • pools = defines a list of pools (in this case, only one) towards which the hashing power is directed
  • url = URL of your mining pool, including the protocol and port
  • user = username, usually the gobyte receiving address of your wallet or worker
  • pass = password, can often be set to x
  • algorithm = hashing algorithm to use, in this case neoscrypt (for historic reasons) or neoscrypt-mod

For the pool above, the configuration may be:

mining/img/gpu-config.png

Configuration file for a gobyte GPU miner

Click File, then Save As. Change Save as type to All Files, then type the file name as sgminer.conf and save it in the same folder as the unzipped sgminer files.

Testing

Double click your sgminer.exe and a Command Prompt window should appear immediately. If it disappears too quickly, check your configuration for missing commas, unclosed brackets or incorrect file name. The program will compile a special binary specific to your GPU and store it in the folder, then begin hashing.

mining/img/gpu-mining.png

Example of GPU mining using sgminer on nVidia Graphics card

FPGA Mining

FPGA stands for Field-Programmable Gate Array is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – hence the term “field-programmable”. FPGAs are a popular choice for mining cryptocurrency because they can offer a higher efficiency than CPU or GPU miners, resulting in higher profit.

Please note that the information on this page may become obsolete very quickly due to the rapidly changing market and difficulty of mining GoByte. You are responsible for carrying out your own research and any listing on this page should not be considered an endorsement of any particular product. A good place to begin your research is the mining section of the GoByte Forums.

The following NeoScrypt FPGA miners are available on the market today, click the product name to visit the manufacturer’s website:

Name Hash rate Power Weight Dimensions (mm) Price
CVP-13 by Bittware 10.5 MH/s 1600 W ? Standard Size $$5,495

FPGA resellers may also have miners avaiable: