Ethereum is a smart contract platform where users can create tokens, smart contracts and DAPPS. Sia is a decentralized cloud storage solution. In this tutorial you will learn how to mine both Ethereum and Sia at the same time. This process is called dual mining. This is because Ethereum uses the ethash mining algorithm, while Sia uses the Blake 2b mining algorithm so it’s possible to mine these two algorithms without affecting the performance of each too much.
Currently, you can dual mine any ethash coin with the following 4 coins:
Now that we know the details about dual mining Ethereum and Sia, let’s get to mining some ETH and SC!
Some General Mining Tips
So before we start this tutorial, I have two tips for making the most out of your mining experience. First make sure you have the latest drivers for your GPU’s. Secondly, most mining software will get flagged as a virus from virus scanners. Because of this, if your mining on your normal everyday use or gaming computer that has an antivirus installed, you will want to exclude the mining software from the antivirus. What I like to do, is I make one folder and then put all of my mining software in sub folders. I then exclude the top level folder from the antivirus and that excludes all the mining software.
Mining Pools
The first thing we need is a mining pool. You can solo mine, but the payouts could take months depending on how powerful your mining rig is, and the mining pools usually charge a very small fee (1% or less). Using a pool will allow you to receive consistent payouts, multiple times per day.
For this tutorial we will use https://nanopool.org. I have chosen this pool because, Nanopool has an Ethereum and a Sia mining pool, so you can mine both coins at the same pool. Nanopool has a 1% fee for mining Ethereum and a 2% fee for mining Sia. As for their features, there a large sized pool and they have servers in US, EU, Asia and Australia.
Now that we have our pools, let’s start mining!
CPU Mining
We will not focus on CPU mining since it is not profitable, compared to GPU mining.
GPU Mining – Nvidia
For GPU mining there only seems to be one dual ethash mining software, and that is Claymore’s Dual Ethereum miner. The available coins that work with dual mining are listed in the readme file, that comes with the miner. The mining software is compatible with Nvidia and AMD GPU’s, as well as the Windows and Linux operating system. The mining software does come with a 1% Dev fee if you are ethash mining, or a 1.5% Dev fee if you are dual mining coins. You can find the official page and the download link at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1433925.0
Once downloaded, it is really simple to use.
Just create a new batch file (or script file if using Linux) inside the folder where the miner is and paste this into the batch file
EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool stratum+tcp://mining_pool:port -ewal wallet_public_key -eworker worker -epsw password -esm 0 -asm asm_option -mode mining_option -dcoin second_coin_abbreviation -dpool stratum+tcp://second_coin_mining_pool:second_coin_port -dwal second_coin_wallet_public_key -dpsw second_coin_password -gser 2 -allpools 1 -allcoins 1
Replace “mining_pool” with the server you want for your ethash coin (eth-eu1.nanopool.org, eth-eu2.nanopool.org, eth-us-east1.nanopool.org, eth-us-west1.nanopool.org, eth-asia1.nanopool.org, eth-jp1.nanopool.org, eth-au1.nanopool.org)
Replace “port” with 9999
Replace “wallet_public_key” with your wallet address for your ethash coin.
“Worker” is optional. Use this if you have multiple mining computers. For example I could do -eworker officecomputer for one computer and then -eworker gamingcomputer for another computer. This way you can keep track of them on the pools dashboard.
Replace “password” with x for your ethash coin. If you are using nicehash, replace it with #
Replace “asm_option” with 0 if your using Nvidia. If your using AMD use 0 to start out with, but try 1 to compare them performance wise. You may also need to use 1 if your AMD GPU has an error with using 0.
Replace “mining_option” with 0 if you just want to dual mine, and 1 if you do not want to dual mine.
Replace “second_coin_abbreviation” with the second coin abbreviation for the mining software.
- Use “dcr” for Decred
- Use “sc” for Sia
- Use “lbc” for LBRY Credits
- Use “pasc” for Pascal
Replace “second_coin_mining_pool” with the server you want (sia-eu1.nanopool.org, sia-eu2.nanopool.org, sia-us-east1.nanopool.org, sia-us-west1.nanopool.org, sia-asia1.nanopool.org, sia-jp1.nanopool.org, sia-au1.nanopool.org)
Replace “second_coin_port” with 7777
Replace “second_coin_wallet_public_key” with your wallet address.
Replace “second_coin_password” with x. If you are using nicehash, replace it with #
For example my setup is: EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool stratum+tcp://eth-us-west1.nanopool.org:9999 -ewal 0x620a96aeabdcee834cfb258b80e6a32b04c2a861 -eworker officecomputer -epsw x -esm 0 -asm 0 -mode 0 -dcoin sc -dpool stratum+tcp://sia-us-west1.nanopool.org:7777 -dwal 1755c3c6c50b04ee069a793334e51c382224ca6f5e8692b0d91b4b18fdf9db2a98b96088f394 -dpsw x -gser 2 -allpools 1 -allcoins 1
Double click the batch file to run the miner, and you should see something like this
The first image shows that the miner should pickup all of the GPU’s in your system (The 1 GTX 1080 GPU in my example)
The red arrow indicates the GPU speed and total speed for your ethash mining.
The blue arrow indicates the GPU speed and total speed for your second coin mining.
The green arrow indicates the GPU temperatures and fan speed.
GPU Mining – AMD
For GPU mining there only seems to be one dual ethash mining software, and that is Claymore’s Dual Ethereum miner. The available coins that work with dual mining are listed in the readme file, that comes with the miner. The mining software is compatible with Nvidia and AMD GPU’s, as well as the Windows and Linux operating system. The mining software does come with a 1% Dev fee if you are ethash mining, or a 1.5% Dev fee if you are dual mining coins. You can find the official page and the download link at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1433925.0
Once downloaded, it is really simple to use.
Just create a new batch file (or script file if using Linux) inside the folder where the miner is and paste this into the batch file
setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 1
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool stratum+tcp://mining_pool:port -ewal wallet_public_key -eworker worker -epsw password -esm 0 -asm asm_option -mode mining_option -dcoin second_coin_abbreviation -dpool stratum+tcp://second_coin_mining_pool:second_coin_port -dwal second_coin_wallet_public_key -dpsw second_coin_password -gser 2 -allpools 1 -allcoins 1
Replace “mining_pool” with the server you want for your ethash coin (eth-eu1.nanopool.org, eth-eu2.nanopool.org, eth-us-east1.nanopool.org, eth-us-west1.nanopool.org, eth-asia1.nanopool.org, eth-jp1.nanopool.org, eth-au1.nanopool.org)
Replace “port” with 9999
Replace “wallet_public_key” with your wallet address for your ethash coin.
“Worker” is optional. Use this if you have multiple mining computers. For example I could do -eworker officecomputer for one computer and then -eworker gamingcomputer for another computer. This way you can keep track of them on the pools dashboard.
Replace “password” with x for your ethash coin. If you are using nicehash, replace it with #
Replace “asm_option” with 0 if your using Nvidia. If your using AMD use 0 to start out with, but try 1 to compare them performance wise. You may also need to use 1 if your AMD GPU has an error with using 0.
Replace “mining_option” with 0 if you just want to dual mine, and 1 if you do not want to dual mine.
Replace “second_coin_abbreviation” with the second coin abbreviation for the mining software.
- Use “dcr” for Decred
- Use “sc” for Sia
- Use “lbc” for LBRY Credits
- Use “pasc” for Pascal
Replace “second_coin_mining_pool” with the server you want (sia-eu1.nanopool.org, sia-eu2.nanopool.org, sia-us-east1.nanopool.org, sia-us-west1.nanopool.org, sia-asia1.nanopool.org, sia-jp1.nanopool.org, sia-au1.nanopool.org)
Replace “second_coin_port” with 7777
Replace “second_coin_wallet_public_key” with your wallet address.
Replace “second_coin_password” with x. If you are using nicehash, replace it with #
For example my setup is: EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool stratum+tcp://eth-us-west1.nanopool.org:9999 -ewal 0x620a96aeabdcee834cfb258b80e6a32b04c2a861 -eworker officecomputer -epsw x -esm 0 -asm 1 -mode 0 -dcoin sc -dpool stratum+tcp://sia-us-west1.nanopool.org:7777 -dwal 1755c3c6c50b04ee069a793334e51c382224ca6f5e8692b0d91b4b18fdf9db2a98b96088f394 -dpsw x -gser 2 -allpools 1 -allcoins 1
Double click the batch file to run the miner, and you should see something like this
The first image shows that the miner should pickup all of the GPU’s in your system (The 3 Vega GPUs in my example)
The red arrow indicates the GPU speed and total speed for your ethash mining.
The blue arrow indicates the GPU speed and total speed for your second coin mining.
The green arrow indicates the GPU temperatures and fan speed.
If there are problems, you can try a few things.
- Use -asm 0 or don’t use the asm flag instead of using -asm 1. Note for Vega cards you have to use -asm 1 otherwise you will get an error.
- Try not using the setx commands. For Vega cards I got an openCL error before I used these options.
- If you get a invalid pool error try adding or removing the -allpools flag.
- If your miner crashes after a while try to lower the intensity by using -ethi 6 instead of -ethi 8
- You may not have enough virtual memory. You may need 16GB of virtual memory (for Vega GPU’s you need more like 16GB per GPU) to change this go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> System and the click Advanced system settings on the left. From there, click settings under the advanced tab. Next click change, and then on the third screen, uncheck automatically manage, choose custom size, and type in the size (in MB) for both text boxes. Then press the set button, and then the ok button.
General Troubleshooting
One thing to monitor for is stale or rejected shares. If you see a lot of stale shares, you may want to try a server that is closer to you. If you see a lot of rejected shares, try to lower the intensity of the miner if available.
How much ETH and SC will I earn per day?
To figure this out, you would go to http://whattomine.com and use their calculator. The calculator does provide a rough estimate, so you may get paid a higher or lower amount than what the calculator actually says. In this case, the ETH calculator is located at https://whattomine.com/coins/151-eth-ethash and the SC calculator is located at https://whattomine.com/coins/161-sc-blake-2b
Most of the values are already correctly entered, and you only need to edit a few values.
Hash rate: Enter your total speed (in megahashes per second for Ethereum and in gigahashes per second for Sia) for all of your mining computers. This would be the “total speed” value in your mining software. Make sure to add up all of the computers your using for Ethereum and Sia mining.
Power: Enter the total amount of power (in watts) that your mining rig is using. Some mining software will measure this for you. You can also measure total power consumption for your computer using special software, or a kilowatt meter. I prefer using a kilowatt meter, because I find it to be the most accurate. Make sure to add up all of the computers your using for Ethereum and Sia mining.
Cost: Enter the cost per kilowatt hour that you pay to your electricity company. I was able to find this info in my monthly bill, as well as on their website.
Pool fee: Enter the pool fee + the miner software dev fee. For our example you would enter 1 + 2 + 1.5 = 4.5
Hardware cost: Enter in the total cost of all of your hardware.
Using my AMD Vega system for an example, I will show you how to read the data. In the above image there is really 3 things that I look for.
- Look at the Difficulty 24h and the Difficulty 7 days. We want these to be around the same, which they are. This tells us that the calculations we will look at in the second image below, will be accurate for days to come, as long as the price is not volatile.
- Look at the EX. volume 24h and the Market Cap. Generally, the bigger these are, the less volatile the price will be. We want the price to not be volatile so our calculations will be accurate for days to come. In this example, the market cap is large for both of the coins.
- Look at the Create 1 BTC in and the Break even in. It is always interesting to see how long it will take your mining rig to create 1 BTC. The break even in, will show you a rough estimate of how long it would take to pay off your mining rig, by mining this particular coin. This is great to use before you build your mining rig, to see how long it will take until you will see profits.
In this image, we can quickly see how many coins and USD value we will make in certain time frames. You want to look at the Profit column, since this is the value after paying for your electricity usage. I usually just focus on the daily payout in USD. By just focusing on this number, you can run the calculator for a few different coins, and quickly see which coin is most profitable for your mining rig setup. Keep in mind you also want to weigh the daily payout with the market cap. A low market cap coin may be really profitable one day, and then could have half the payout tomorrow.
One thing to make note of, make sure dual mining is profitable for you. For my setup I noticed that the Vega rig lost 2 MH/S compared to mining just Ethereum. So what I did was I typed in 2 MH/s into the Ethereum calculator and looked at the BTC pay for one year. I then typed in 3.9GH/S into the Sia calculator and it was less than the Ethereum calculation, so it was not worth it in my case. However my 1080 GTX lost just a little hashrate (within a margin of error) so I would consider dual mining with that rig. You also need to compare your total power consumption for Ethereum mining vs dual mining and factor this in as well.
That’s it. You should now be mining Ethereum and Sia! Make sure to type in your public key into the mining pool’s dashboard, to keep track of your statistics.
