ASICs are coming fast, and we must act soon to prevent long term damage to the Dogecoin community. Please read and help convince others that something needs to be done soon!
This part is probably the hardest part of putting together the mining rig, but it can also be fun. Just take your time and think about different options before you go forward, no need to rush. Continue reading
While CPU mining through the dogecoin client is a good start to grabbing a few dogecoins, it really doesn’t compete with mining with a dedicated graphics cards(GPU) instead. With a CPU you may get a few hundred coins a day, a GPU with the current difficulty of around 350 you can get thousands or even hundreds of thousands, depending on the card.
Just a little warning before you start: Like CPU mining, GPU mining is very intensive on the computer. I would not recommend running very high settings unless you have adequate cooling. Both may reduce the lifespan of your computer components as well, if you are running the mining program 24/7, so keep that in mind when deciding whether or not you want to mine.
GPU Mining with CGMiner
As commenter SoShibe suggests, those with NVidia cards may want to check out cudaMiner instead. So this tutorial may not apply to you. But those with ATI cards will want to check this out.
If you haven’t already signed up for a mining pool, be sure to do so, as instructed here. We will use this information to further configure CGMiner. You may wish to sign up for a second pool if you want a backup incase the first pool goes down. This way you will continue to mine even if the first pool is unavailable.
1. The first thing you will want to do is download a program called CGMiner. CGMiner only supports GPU mining in versions up to 3.7.2.(3.6.0 used in tutorial but it should be nearly the same). So make sure you don’t download anything newer than this. For general downloads, you can find them here. For the recommended download for windows, you can find it here.
The official links for these downloads are down, I have added my links here:
The program may be flagged as a virus by your antivirus program, but its not. Its because some of the tools used to build it are commonly used in malicious programs. You can see more information about this here and here. If chrome blocks it, you will need to go to your downloads page and reconfirm that you want to download it.
2. After you download the proper version of CGMiner, extract it to a directory.
3. Open up the location that you have extracted the files and look for a file titled “example.conf”.
4. Open it with notepad or a text editing program. You should see something like this:
5. To get started quickly, We can strip the file down, because most of the configuration probably won’t be correct for you. Important: We also need to add a line to tell it to use the proper method for mining dogecoin. “scrypt” : true, (Delete everything and copy and paste this if you want):
{
"pools" : [
{
"url" : "http://url1:8332",
"user" : "user1",
"pass" : "pass1"
}
],
"scrypt" : true,
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"
}
If you have backup pools, keep additional locations so that you can configure those as well.
6. Now lets edit this to have our own pool information (this assumes you already signed up for a pool, described here) to the file:
{
"pools" : [
{
"url" : "stratum+tcp://www.suchcoins.com:3333",
"user" : "weblogin.WorkerName",
"pass" : "workerPassword"
}
],
"scrypt" : true,
"kernel-path" : "/usr/local/bin"
}
6. When finished, save the file and close it.
7. Rename the example.conf file to cgminer.conf.
8. You should now be able to start mining. Simply launch cgminer.exe in the same directory as the config file, and you should get something like this:
The defaults for CGMiner should be pretty safe, but be sure to monitor your GPU temperature. If it goes over 80C for a long period of time, I’d recommend stopping the program and reading about the advanced settings for CGMiner so that you can reduce the strain on your graphics card. For example, you might want to check out “intensity” and “temp-target” for starters. The same goes for getting the most out of your cards for mining. There are several settings you can tweak for getting more performance out of your cards.
In general though, I really wouldn’t recommend mining 24/7 with any older graphics cards. If it is more than a few years old, chances are that the dogecoin you will mine won’t be worth the electricity costs and possible damage to your computer, unless you are running it on very safe settings. But if you want to give it a quick try and see how it all works, just make sure you are running at safe temperatures and it shouldn’t be any more straining than playing an intense 3d game.
If you want to get serious about mining, you may want to think about picking up a new graphics card, check out my automatically updating list of good graphics cards for mining.
You can also check out my guide on building a dogecoin rig for just 1000 dollars.
I myself run 3 7950s and get around 50000-70000 a day.
Check out the advanced guide to CGMiner here.
Joining a Dogecoin Pool
I pulled this information out of the CPU mining guide so that it can be more easily accessible.
There are two types of ways to get coins through mining with Dogecoin. You can either “solo mine”, which means you will mine by yourself. This is considered “Herd Dig” by the program. Or you can use a pool, which means you mine in coordination with other people. The second choice is usually the best, and the benefits usually trump trying to mine dogecoin solo. If you go by yourself, you will get a big payout if you discover a block, but the odds of finding one keep getting harder and harder. With several people, the payout is split, but there are much better chances that you will find a block. Mining without a pool is kind of a waste of time, so you are much better off joining a pool.
Here is a list of pools, for this example I am using http://doge.pool.webxass.de/. But ideally not everyone should use the same pool. So pick any of those from the list.
So go over to the pool website and make an account really quick. Most all pool websites look the same.
After you create the account, the next thing you will want to do on the site, would be to create your worker.
1. Go to Worker in the Sidebar of the Pool Website:
2. Put in a worker username and password, and add the worker.
3. Go to the “Getting Started” Page in the right sidebar of the pool. You should see something like this.
We will use this information to configure your mining program.
As “anaon” has posted in the comments below,
Username: Weblogin.Worker means that you would use TheUserNameForthePool.Workername for the username of your configuration.
See the details in the CPU or GPU mining guides for what to do next.
Just a quick update. CPU mining on a small scale isn’t really viable anymore, and I would not recommend it. The rise of difficulty in getting coins is too high now. But I will leave this guide for now. If you have a good graphics card I would recommend my other guide for GPU.
This guide is for CPU mining, if you want to mine using your graphics card, check out this guide. Regardless, you should still have a copy of the program even if you will be mining with the GPU, so this guide could be useful. CPU Mining is usually for slower computers or computers that don’t have very good graphics.
Warning before you go forward, mining can be stressful to your CPU/GPU, as it makes it work at full speed in attempt to mine coins. Be careful and make sure your computer has adaquate cooling. It is possible to damage your computer doing this!
Setting up the Program
Getting started with mining or “digging” in Dogecoin with the CPU is pretty easy. You simply need to download the program supplied on the main website for Dogecoin, which is located here. Extract the zip file to a directory and you are ready to get started.
1.Once unzipped, open the folder and open the file titled “dogecoin-qt.exe”.
2. You should see something like this.
3. Head over to the tab titled “Dig” and you will see something like this:
So from here you can do 1 of 2 things. Either “solo mine”, which means you will mine by yourself. This is considered “Herd Dig” by the program. Or you can use a pool, which means you mine in coordination with other people. The second choice is usually the best, and the benefits usually trump trying to mine dogecoin solo. If you go by yourself, you will get a big payout if you discover a block, but the odds of finding one keep getting harder and harder. With several people, the payout is split, but there are much better chances that you will find a block. Mining without a pool is kind of a waste of time, so you are much better off joining a pool.
Download CPUMiner
To mine through the client, you will also need to download a tool called CPU miner. You can find it here.
Extract the files you download into the same folder as your wallet program. It may ask you to overwrite some files, press no and restart the Dogecoin program.
Joining a Pool
The best pool I have found so far is http://doge.pool.webxass.de/. But ideally not everyone should use the same pool. I’ll be listing others shortly, so rich shibes, calm down.
So go over to the pool website and make an account really quick. Most all pool websites look the same. The next thing you will want to do on the site, would be to create your worker.
1. Go to Worker in the Sidebar of the Pool Website:
2. Put in a worker username and password, and add the worker.
3. Go to the “Getting Started” Page in the right sidebar of the pool. You should see something like this.
Now to Start Mining
It looks like CPU mining in the client is bugged right now. I have crossed out part of the post until it is fixed. I added a bug report here. Looks like its fixed now, you can scroll down to try and mine through the client as well. But we can still mine outside of the client pretty easily. Earlier you should have downloaded CPU miner and extracted it into your wallet directory.
1. In Windows, go to Start and in search just type “cmd” to open a command window.
2. Type in cd YourDogecoinClientProgramLocation and press enter like below:
Now we will activate CPU miner by typing the following:
minerd --algo scrypt --scantime 99 --url stratum+tcp://www.suchcoins.com:3333 --userpass weblogin.workername:workerpassword --threads 99 --retries 1 -P
Notice that you are joining the url to the port with a : and the user to the password with a :
Filling in the parameters properly, you should start mining. If you see any “failures” then you may have something typed in wrong, but otherwise it should be working.
I think this is fixed now:
4. Using this information, go back to your client, and fill it in like this. The username consists of your login name for the pool, and the workername, added together with a period. So if my user name for the website login is user and my worker name is worker, my username for the program is user.worker and the password is your WORKER password, not the website password.
After that, click “Start Dig” and you should be moving. If you go to “Dashboard” on the pool website, you can see the speed at which you are submitting your attempts to discover the block.
Yours will not be nearly this fast, as this is mining with 3 graphics cards instead of the CPU which the dogecoin client uses. But it will give you an idea on what speed you are submitting the attempts.
Now you will want to make sure you set up things so you can get paid!