Ethereum GPU mining?

[ozzy702]

So... The Cryptokitties game brought the entire etherium network to its knees.

That is severely disappointing. I'm at a loss for words...

Edit : oh it's only about 15-20% of Blockchain capacity... Still.. Can't have to many of these games going around.

Yep, that's why scaling solutions are so important. From the sounds of it 2018 will be the year of scaling.

 

[wege12]

I used it years ago for offline paper BTC wallets. But stopped using it after hardware wallets were released.

Excuse my ignorance, but how do hardware wallets work?

 

[thilanliyan]

Yep, that's why scaling solutions are so important. From the sounds of it 2018 will be the year of scaling.

Is there actually a plan to implement that?
I'm not well-versed in the eth tech.

 

[ozzy702]

Is there actually a plan to implement that?
I'm not well-versed in the eth tech.

Yes, several solutions like raiden and potentially sharding.

 

[Yakk]

Looks like Nicehash was hacked?

https://bitsonline.com/nicehash-hacked-btc-outage/

 

[thilanliyan]

Yep saw that. They've been down for about 12 hours now. Only now released a statement as to why.

 

[Yakk]

... And another outage at coinbase...

 

[Sonikku]

My imaginary internet monies are gone! And my estimated earnings are $0.00

 

[Yakk]

Sorry the hear that... Curious to see what Nicehash will do.

Everyone should really use Cold storage...

 

[VirtualLarry]

My imaginary internet monies are gone! And my estimated earnings are $0.00

Me too! I was going to get paid over $100 in BTC on the 15th.

 

[Charlie22911]

I lost a little over a hundred bucks, nothing major. I’m back to dual mining ETH+LBRY, mainly to cheaply heat my home for the winter.
Condolences to anyone who lost anything substantial, this is why I manage my own wallet.

 

[Aikouka]

NiceHash only handles my stuff on a weekly basis prior to the payout, so I didn't lose much. Although, the NiceHash subreddit was an interesting read with people talking about how the NiceHash CTO has a criminal past of running botnets and how this happened prior to some major event. They're all talking about it being an inside job, which seems like a plot in a bad SyFy movie, but hey... it could happen?

At this point, I guess I need to start mining on my own. Since I mostly have 1080 Ti cards and one 1060 that I use, I assume I'm best off mostly doing ZCash and Lbry with the exception of the 1060, which could still do Ethereum? Does anyone have a recommend resource on what I should read to properly start mining those?

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

Me too! I was going to get paid over $100 in BTC on the 15th.

yeah about the same here. easy come, easy go... poof

@Aikouka: i switched to mining hub pool its a multi algo pool and can auto convert to btc, among other coins. if you go to the zec page there are recommended miners and configs. i point my 1070 and 1070ti there and i use ewbf to mine. my amd cards are also on MHP and using claymores eth miner. just started there after the nicehack thing so still evaluating it.

 

[Madpacket]

Excuse my ignorance, but how do hardware wallets work?

Late reply (apologies). Hardware wallets keep the private keys (at all times) on a USB like stick device that requires at least a 4 digit password to unlock. Get the 4 digit password wrong 3 times and the device is wiped clean. Along with the hardware wallet you create a seed file (dictionary words) made up of 12, 18 or 24 words in length. The combination and order of the words is equal to the private key on the hardware wallet. This way you have essentially a "paper backup" in case you lose your hardware wallet.

There's more to it than this but the idea is that with the use of a hardware wallet (which plugs into a computing device) the transfer of digital currency is handled by it rather than your PC. Your PC or Smart Phone simply acts as a proxy to facilitate the payment.

Hardware wallets reduce or eliminate the possibility of keylogging or clickjacking which is a common method of how people lose passwords that protect their software wallets. It also protects you in that event the PC is infested with Malware, because the private key never leaves the hardware wallet (signing of transactions take place here) you have very little risk of having your funds stolen.

Tldr; if you have at least 1K USD worth of common crypto or more, buy yourself a hardware wallet. I recommend the Ledger Nano S.

 

[Aikouka]

i switched to mining hub pool its a multi algo pool and can auto convert to btc, among other coins. if you go to the zec page there are recommended miners and configs. i point my 1070 and 1070ti there and i use ewbf to mine. my amd cards are also on MHP and using claymores eth miner. just started there after the nicehack thing so still evaluating it.

Hm, I'll check that one out.

A friend of mine started talking to me about Monero, and interestingly enough, I heard about Monero during this whole NiceHash debacle. In a comment, someone had mentioned that if the hackers want to get the 4600 BTC out, they'll likely have to use Monero given its more private nature as various exchanges will simply refuse any transactions from the address. (People have already found the sole address where the hacker sent all of the BTC.) This makes me wonder... if Monero is useful for this, will its value go up in the next few weeks or months? In other words, we got screwed over losing money due to the hack, but maybe we can get something back if we mine or invest in Monero and its value goes up.

Anyway, I also bring that up, because in looking up Monero, I found another solution that's very similar to NiceHash called MinerGate. I haven't tried it yet, but it does also allow you to mine Monero along with other types of coins. Although, I don't know if it pays in BTC like NiceHash does, but I would assume so.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

So since the great Nicehash magical money printer collapsed, I've had to actually learn how pool mining works. I think I've got a system set up correctly, using Awesome Miner, linked to MiningPoolHub. I somehow managed to actually get it working to do profit switching correctly, so now it's automagically mining misc coins for me the way Nicehash did, and as a bonus I'm making about 30-40% more. That probably has more to do with BTC going off the rails over the last 48 hours though.

 

[ozzy702]

Hm, I'll check that one out.

A friend of mine started talking to me about Monero, and interestingly enough, I heard about Monero during this whole NiceHash debacle. In a comment, someone had mentioned that if the hackers want to get the 4600 BTC out, they'll likely have to use Monero given its more private nature as various exchanges will simply refuse any transactions from the address. (People have already found the sole address where the hacker sent all of the BTC.) This makes me wonder... if Monero is useful for this, will its value go up in the next few weeks or months? In other words, we got screwed over losing money due to the hack, but maybe we can get something back if we mine or invest in Monero and its value goes up.

Anyway, I also bring that up, because in looking up Monero, I found another solution that's very similar to NiceHash called MinerGate. I haven't tried it yet, but it does also allow you to mine Monero along with other types of coins. Although, I don't know if it pays in BTC like NiceHash does, but I would assume so.

Anonymity is one of the reasons I've added quite a bit of XMR to my stack. I think XMR will do very well in the coming year, especially given how hard the IRS will go after BTC.

 

[Yakk]

Lots of good things coming out soon for XMR too, very active Dev community, very technical stuff over there. One of the reasons for their price breaking out too.

 

[Aikouka]

So since the great Nicehash magical money printer collapsed, I've had to actually learn how pool mining works. I think I've got a system set up correctly, using Awesome Miner, linked to MiningPoolHub. I somehow managed to actually get it working to do profit switching correctly, so now it's automagically mining misc coins for me the way Nicehash did, and as a bonus I'm making about 30-40% more. That probably has more to do with BTC going off the rails over the last 48 hours though.

Hm, I'm trying that out, but I'm seeing a lot of variance among the machines. I have two machines with a 1080 Ti, and I'm seeing it choose completely different coins. According to the program, due to it choosing Ethereum on the one, I'm supposedly making half as much. I'm not sure if I'm just missing part of the setup or something.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Hm, I'm trying that out, but I'm seeing a lot of variance among the machines. I have two machines with a 1080 Ti, and I'm seeing it choose completely different coins. According to the program, due to it choosing Ethereum on the one, I'm supposedly making half as much. I'm not sure if I'm just missing part of the setup or something.

Make sure you've benchmarked both, and assigned the new values of the benchmark to the profile that's being used (that way it knows which coins you mine the fastest).

Note: You can probably get away with just benchmarking one, and copying over the benchmark values to the profile of the other... might even be a way to just extract/export/xml copy the values if they're stored somewhere.

 

[IEC]

I never liked the concept of Nicehash or their fees which is what kept me away from them. Sorry for those whose earnings went poof.

OT: I am temporarily donating most of my "hash power" (read: 1080 Ti cards) to TeAm AnandTech's Folding@Home race going on in the Distributed Computing subforum. I figured with my roots being in DC I can cross over from time to time to help out. Due to a stats crediting bug right now it looks like we are winning when in reality we are likely losing "bigly", so if anyone is willing to donate some GPU power (even if just for week or two) to the TeAm I know they would appreciate it!

 

[thilanliyan]

A question about hardware wallets:
Since the wallet has to have "apps" running on it, couldn't the "apps" be theoretically programmed with "bugs" to steal coins during transactions?

 

[Charlie22911]

Power supply in one of my rigs went belly up, failed gracefully. This is why I buy quality stuff, it was a olderAntec high current pro that’s spent its entire operating life mining; system resets over 250w load.

Moved two of the 1070s to open spots in another rack, I don’t think I’m gonna replace the PSU; going to do some tests on the remaining cards for stability and sell them off.

 

[DrMrLordX]

A question about hardware wallets:
Since the wallet has to have "apps" running on it, couldn't the "apps" be theoretically programmed with "bugs" to steal coins during transactions?

Assuming you're talking about Ethereum here:

Short answer is: no. You can use a standard wallet rather than a smart contract, in which case your wallet is basically secure. A multisig wallet is going to be a smart contract, and if it has Parity-like bugs then yes, there could be problems. Hence the need to audit contracts before agreeing to use them.

 

[thilanliyan]

Assuming you're talking about Ethereum here:

Short answer is: no. You can use a standard wallet rather than a smart contract, in which case your wallet is basically secure. A multisig wallet is going to be a smart contract, and if it has Parity-like bugs then yes, there could be problems. Hence the need to audit contracts before agreeing to use them.

Does this apply to hardware wallets like the Ledger Nano S? It has "apps" on it.