What is Zcash
Zcash is an open-source cryptocurrency that guarantees a high level of privacy.
Secure transactions hide the sender, recipient, and volume of the transaction on the blockchain. Because of this, it is almost impossible to track the participants in the transfers. The developers draw a funny analogy between ZEC and BTC. If Bitcoin is http in the world of money, then Zcash is https with an additional layer of protection.
The coin appeared at the end of October 2020. It was then that its rate was at its peak and amounted to $4,293. Today they fetch about $290 per coin.
The market capitalization indicator is $1.098 billion. The coin is ranked 26th in the updated CoinMarketCap rankings and trades the equivalent of $54 million every day. There are over 3.88 million ZEC coins in circulation.
Benefits of mining zcash
- Simple mining algorithm, higher mining profitability compared to most other coins.
- Support for zec by many cryptocurrency exchanges, the possibility of direct exchange to BTS.
- A large number of pools for zec mining.
- A fairly high rate that ensures mining profitability.
It is better to mine ZCash with one video card on pools
. Today, zcash firmly occupies a place in the top ten cryptocurrencies, the market capitalization of the coin is $604.5 million, the rate is $127.23 (as of September 8, 2020).
Zcash mining equipment
You can mine Zcash using Nvidia video cards. AMD will also be suitable, but will perform worse. Since Zcash belongs to the Equihash algorithm, the same farms that mine Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Private, Zclassic and other similar coins will do.
There are also special models of ASIC miners for ZEC mining. These are Antminer Z9, Antminer Z9 mini and Innosilicon A9 ZMaster. In August 2020, manufacturers released a huge number of ASICs and took over the hashrate. Now there is practically no point in mining on video cards.
Zcash mining algorithm
The Equihash algorithm was developed by Alexander Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich. It is based on the concept of Generalized Birthday Problem.
Peculiarities:
- due to increased requirements for random access memory (RAM), in contrast to the Bitcoin algorithm (SHA-256), Equihash does not allow the use of ASIC equipment for mining;
- Blockchain Zcash provides zk-Snarcs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge) technology, which requires a minimum amount of disclosed information from users to confirm the transaction, the so-called. zero-knowledge proof;
- The calculation time for one block is 150 seconds. By comparison, Bitcoin takes ten minutes;
- mining Zcash cryptocurrency using this algorithm will be effective when using powerful video cards;
- The official Zcash client only works on Linux.
Like Bitcoin, Zcash uses the Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol. Previously in our articles we talked about how PoW differs from Proof of Stake and Proof of Capacity.
Profitability of Zcash mining
Traditionally, the WhatToMine service will help you estimate the possible profitability of mining the desired coin. For example, we take 6000 sol/s, which will be provided by a farm of eight Nvidia 1080Ti.
As of May 10th, this configuration provides about $22 per day. Monthly result: 655 bucks.
Zcash mining difficulty
Since the launch of Zcash, hashing difficulty on the network has been steadily increasing, but block confirmation times have remained the same. The blockchain platform automatically adjusts the difficulty so that the result is 2.5 seconds. was preserved.
The market decline in 2020 caused a decline in the price of cryptocurrencies, and along with this, trust in them, and zec is no exception. But as long as any gaming video card is suitable for mining this coin, and the rate remains quite high, the number of people who want to earn extra money from its mining will only grow.
Zcash mining settings on ASIC and video cards
Today, a solved block in the ZEC network gives 10 coins. The block time is 2 minutes 28 seconds.
If you have an ASIC, specify these settings. Fill out all three fields in the settings, that is, take everything that is written below.
Pool 1: URL: stratum+tcp://zec.2miners.com:1010 Worker: YOUR_ADDRESS.ASIC_ID Password: x Pool 2: URL: stratum+tcp://us-zec.2miners.com:1010 Worker: YOUR_ADDRESS. ASIC_ID Password: x Pool 3: URL: stratum+tcp://asia-zec.2miners.com:1010 Worker: YOUR_ADDRESS.ASIC_ID Password: x
We indicate your address instead of YOUR_ADDRESS and select a suitable name for the ASIC instead of ASIC_ID.
The address may be as follows.
t1dzbQ2bnAGwBVHZykfKYTQYyZY1AjrS1Mg.
This name is suitable for an ASIC.
ASIC-1.
For Nvidia video cards, download the latest version of EWBF's CUDA Zcash miner, for AMD - the good old Claymore's ZCash AMD GPU Miner. All miners are in this archive, password 2miners.
The correct bat file for EWBF Miner Zcash looks like this.
:restart @echo off TIMEOUT 5 miner —server zec.2miners.com —port 1010 —user YOUR_ADDRESS.RIG_ID —pass x —eexit 3 —pec —fee 0 ping 127.0.0.1 > nul goto :restart
And here is the file for Claymore's ZCash AMD GPU Miner.
ZecMiner64.exe -zpool zec.2miners.com:1010 -zwal YOUR_ADDRESS.RIG_ID
After running the bat file, we see approximately the following picture: the farm has connected to the pool, and the EBFW miner is working.
Zcash mining profitability calculator on a video card
It is advisable to mine cryptocurrencies using the Equihash algorithm (including ZEC) using any of the top 5 video cards with a large amount of RAM memory. GPUs are not much ahead of NVIDIA in terms of efficiency, so if you choose between AMD in relation to Equihash, the best solution would be a video card from the first manufacturer. You can always check these statements in online calculators:
- Coinwarz - https://www.coinwarz.com/calculators/zcash-mining-calculator;
- Whattomine - https://whattomine.com/coins/166-zec-equihash.
The listed calculators are simple and understandable, but nevertheless they have a significant drawback: they do not take into account changes in mining difficulty and network speed, as well as a decrease in the reward for creating a block. This is due to the large hype around cryptocurrencies among the world’s population, which makes it quite difficult to predict changes in mining parameters. The rate increased - everyone rushed to mine ETH, the rate fell - they stopped mining Ethereum and started mining Monero.
Therefore, the results calculated by these calculators should be taken indicatively. Apply a correction factor (approximately 0.7) to calculate income. Add a couple of months “on top” to the payback.
Cloud mining Zcash ZEC
You can also rent mining power on NiceHash and MiningRigRentals.
Zcash mining settings for NiceHash.
Algorithm: EQUIHASH Pool Host: zec.2miners.com:1111 Workername: YOUR_ADDRESS Password: x (!LETTER X!)
And here is MiningRigRentals.
Algorithm: EQUIHASH Pool Host: zec.2miners.com:1010 Workername (-u): YOUR_ADDRESS Password (-p): x (!LETTER X!)
Today, with the 2Miners pool, more than 9,000 miners mine simultaneously, and payouts amount to millions of dollars.
Popular Zcash mining pools
Let's highlight the most common pools among miners:
- Nicehash is a service that is rightfully included in the ranking of the best pools. Guarantees payment of 0.5755 BTC/MSol per day.
- Flypool - according to many miners, this is the best pool for Zcash mining. Its servers are located in Europe, the USA and China. The fees are only 1%, and the minimum payout threshold is 0.001 ZEC.
- Dwarfpool is also a fairly popular pool for ZEC mining. The advantages include the anonymity of cryptocurrency mining, high server power, the availability of detailed statistics, as well as support for Z- and T-wallets.
- Nanopool. The fee is 1%, the minimum payment is 0.01 ZEC.
Video - the best pools for cryptocurrency mining:
Among the cloud mining pools, it is worth highlighting Hashflare. The site provides annual contracts.
The video explains why you should not buy cloud equipment rental contracts:
Mining Zcash. Claymore for ZEC
Today, for a solved block in the ZEC network they give 10 coins - more than $2900. The block time is 2 minutes 28 seconds.
Even if you have five farms with 8 Nvidia 1080Ti units each, they will only allow you to find one block per month. This is very small and most likely futile. You can find out the result for your rigs on the desired coin by following the link .
We recommend going solo for very large players. For others, it is more logical to mine a coin on a pool. For Nvidia video cards, download the latest version of EWBF's CUDA Zcash miner, for AMD - the good old Claymore's ZCash AMD GPU Miner.
Download the configured bat file for mining cryptocurrency on our 2Miners pool here. The archive password is 2miners.
Be sure to change the wallet address in the file /EQUIHASH/AMD/zec-pool.bat
or
/EQUIHASH/NVIDIA/zec-pool.bat.
You can edit the data using notepad or any other text editor.
Setting up zcash mining
To get started, you will need the following equipment:
- a computer with an operating system running 64-core Windows 7 or higher;
- RAM 4 GB or more. Today, almost all laptops are equipped with this amount of RAM, except for inexpensive models for offices;
- video card 4 GB +;
- a processor that must match the characteristics of the video card (the model and number of cores are not important);
- the latest versions of drivers for video cards (they can be downloaded from the nVidia and AMD websites. If you encounter problems with installing control programs, old versions of the software for the adapter must be uninstalled manually or use the Display Driver Uninstaller utility.
If you already have a modern graphics adapter or gaming video card, you won't need to purchase additional hardware. If not, then you have to choose a suitable video card. You need to start your choice by calculating the profitability of the model.
How is zcash different from bitcoin?
ZEC has a different hashing algorithm (Equihash), so this currency cannot be mined on ASIC equipment. Equihash is ideal for GPU mining and has high RAM requirements. Thanks to the zk-SNARKS privacy protocol, private data is protected, which can make zcash a leading currency.
The hashing speed of zcash has been constantly growing since its inception: from 80 million operations per second in May 2020 to 300 million operations per second in September of the same year. The calculation time for one block is not reduced by automatically increasing the block complexity. Calculating one block takes about 2.5 minutes. Block difficulty increases in proportion to the hash rate. From May to September 2020, it increased from 2 to 6 million. The sharp increase in difficulty is associated with an increase in the price of the coin. The price of ZEC affects the growth of hash rate and block difficulty. In June-July 2020, there was a rapid rise in prices, which spurred interest in the currency around the world. In just six months, the cost of 1 ZEC increased 8 times.
