Mining

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This page provides guidance on mining Ravencoin with the KAWPOW algorithm. Keep yourself and your software up to date by joining the community. Subscribe to the Ravencoin Updates mailing list. Join the Discord or the Telegram server and request mining help. Pass on your expertise where you can. This is your community too. The following information is current and accurate as of May 5th, 2020.

Quick Start

  1. Download the latest Ravencoin wallet from Ravencoin github or Ravencoin official website. Install it and get a receiving address. Be sure to back up your wallet. Remember to check the Best Practices page to keep your coins safe. Note: do not use special characters for your passphrase when encrypting the wallet.
  2. Select a pool from the Pools page. Broadly speaking, your mining rewards should average out over time, whether you join a large pool or a small one. Please consider pointing your miner(s) at smaller pools so as to distribute the hashrate and improve network health/security. You can check pool sizes here. Choosing a pool near your geographic location is suggested.
  3. Download a GPU miner. Several are available, but for the purposes of this quick start guide, we are going to use Ravencoin Community open-source miner kawpowminer (Nvidia+AMD).
  4. Extract the kawpowminer folder, there is no .bat file included, so we'll have to make one ourselves. Create a text-file, and rename it to RVN.bat (make sure it's not RVN.bat.txt - you may have to disable "hide extensions for known file types" on Windows). Edit the newly created .bat (right click the file and select edit).
kawpowminer -U -P stratum+tcp://<WALLET_ADDR><.WORKER><:PASSWORD>@HOSTNAME:PORT
pause

Replace values in <> with yours. Worker and password are optional. For AMD use -P instead of -U. Use the hostname and port that your pool provided you.

  1. Double-click "RVN.bat" in the kawpowminer folder. After a brief delay, text should begin scrolling (and your GPU(s) will begin generating a bit of heat and noise). If your configuration is correct, you will see your hashrate displayed in Megahash per second (MHs). Otherwise, any errors will display and you may need to reconfigure appropriately.
  2. If you cannot resolve these issues through your own research/trial and error, consider reaching out to the community of miners on our Discord or Telegram servers (linked above).

Miners

Nvidia and AMD

Nvidia only

AMD only

Please note that all of those alternative miners are closed source and should be used at your own risk. Best practice: do not use closed source mining software on a machine containing personal or sensitive data.

Overclocking

Optimization NVIDIA

Most miners use graphics card overclocking software to optimize their power and hashrate. One such program is MSI's Afterburner, which will let you adjust your power, memory, core, and other settings. Install this software, and consider using the following settings as a stable and efficient starting point:

  • Power Limit: 70%
  • Core: +30
  • Memory: +100

Optimization AMD (outdated)

  • Memory: Stock or 1500
  • Voltage drop allowed: 800-950. Seal recommends 850. Experiment to find what is stable for you.
  • Core: As high as possible. Experiment for stability with voltage and Mhz.
  • Power limit: stock (+0%)
  • Stock BIOS or mem/voltage adjusted BIOS are recommended. Ethash BIO Swith low core voltage are not recommended.


Radeon Wattman

Set GPU Workload to compute

Set P7 state as first and last. Keep an eye on your temperatures. High heat will reduce performance. Try to stay in the 65 degree range. Your mileage may vary.

Additional info:

  1. To get your miner to auto start on reboot, press ' win + r ' and type in ' shell:startup ' then create a shortcut of your bat file in the startup folder. Set your BIOS to reboot automatically after a power outage. This will minimize downtime due to power interruption or reboot.
  2. Use the failover option in your RVN.bat file to select a backup stratum for your first choice mining pool (you can add multiple pools via multiple -P options).
  3. Likewise, use the failover option to select a second pool you are registered with. These steps will keep you mining if/when your chosen stratum/pool go down


Make sure you're downloading software from trusted sources. There have been reports of some miners possibly including malware. Malware comes in different forms. Be skeptical and vigilant.

Pool Provided Mining Guides

Many pools provide brief guides and example configuration files to mine Ravencoin with the kawpow algorithm on their pool. Some examples follow.


Setting up Ubuntu for NVIDIA mining

A complete guide to set up Ubuntu 18.04 with NVIDIA CUDA drivers can be found here. (outdated)


Troubleshoot

If it is not working try our Troubleshoot reach out to the community of miners on our Discord or Telegram servers (linked above).

Earning calculators

Profit Calculators on Tools Page


More information

Why mine Ravencoin

Ravencoin Youtube playlist by Crypto Explorer how to get started and beyond with Ravencoin

Ravencoin Explorers

Want to help fund the development? Donation Address: RBjAZ4fgoXfMC1ujzs7XKreMxJAL1r9fhT


Best Practices

  • Only run software from known reputable developers, preferably peer reviewed and audited code.
  • Download only from the links provided by the developer, preferably from the developers own site or their own github repo.
  • The inherent danger of a malicious miner app is that by design it already has all the tools needed to be very harmful, including upload and download capabilities, there will not necessarily be anything we can detect immediately, as a malicious miner app can be triggered by something as simple as a specific network block number being reached or other delayed mechanisms.
  • Any computer on our network(subnet) could be a potential threat towards our hot wallet.
  • There is no way to know if our wallet.dat/private keys are compromised, unless we always keep them safe guarded.
  • The above holds true for any software we download and use.

Troubleshooting

All miners

Crash on startup.

Check if Antivirus/Windows defender has deleted your miner.exe file, check if the .exe file is still in your folder. Fix by setting an exception. Make sure you have latest drivers installed.

Crash/reboot after some time

Check the power limit for the cards, 65% - 85% is common. Remember that the TDP for a card is an average draw of the card and in short spikes the total draw can be much higher. This is why the GPU manufacturers recommends much higher watt PSU than the TDP listed wattage of the cards would otherwise suggest.

Naming Your Rig on the pool

Most pools usually set name by WALLET.rigname like: <USERNAME/WALLET_ADDR><.RIGNAME> A comma is used to separate arguments, try not to use special character or spaces in your rig name. If that doesn't work, check pool specific information about setting rig name.


When troubleshooting it is helpful to have pause at the end of our bat file, so you can see the errors from console. 

kawpowminer -U -P stratum+tcp://RQZS8LBvv2VWuAEWF5BXoRikoG6MRp5asH.test:x@HOSTNAME:PORT
pause

A certain pool gives error on launch

Check that you have created a worker on pool website and supplied a password, if required, ask a question to support of that pool.

Getting a lot of "rejected" shares

A rejected share means 2 possibilities:

1. The submitted share was invalid (bad hash of good data). This is caused by a GPU error on your end.

2. The submitted share was stale (good hash of bad data). This is caused by latency or lost data over the network between you and the pool.

If you're tweaking your GPU a lot (customizing power/frequency/voltage/etc.) then try backing down a bit and see if you get less errors. You should also check to make sure connected to the closest pool possible (e.g., don't connect to a pool in Europe if you live in the USA).

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