With the ETH merge into PoS it is a good time to look into the alternative coins to mine. We will go over how to mine ETC with popular software such as NiceHash, Cudo Miner, T-Rex, NBMiner, lolMiner and more! Ethereum Classic is an open source, blockchain distributed computing platform with smart contracts. Applications are ran exactly as programmed without the possibility of being censored or having any downtime. ETC is a continuation of the unaltered history of the original Ethereum chain and exists to preserve the principle of "Code is Law".
Hardware Requirements
Currently any GPU with a minimum of 4GB of dedicated video RAM can mine ETC. The current DAG file size of ETC is 2GB, this will be bumped up to 3GB on June 18, 2022 and then up to 4GB on October 3rd, 2025. Keep on the dag file sizes of PoW coins here.
What Software Can I Mine ETC With
There are many different programs you can run to mine ETC, some of them are easier to set up than others. In the Easy to Set-up category we will include software that you can just install, set an overclock/undervolt and start mining. In the more Advanced setup section we will include software that requires manually entering in commands, setting up a wallet and picking which mining pool to go with.
Easy to Set-up Software
NiceHash
To start using NiceHash all you have to do is create an account, download the miner, get your NiceHash mining address (from the online webpage) and put it into the miner you just installed. Now NiceHash might not let you select ETC directly to mine, however it does this because of the Auto profit switching functionality. This is by far the most widely used piece of software for people who are just getting into Crypto mining and simplifies the process immensely.
Cudo Miner
Cudo miner is another program that allows you to mine with ease. All you need to do is create an account, install the program, enable third party miners and hit start. Cudo miner implements a wallet for you that you can withdraw from to any other wallet address when you want to and has the same functionality of profit switching.
What is the difference between Cudo Miner and NiceHash
While they are both auto-profit switching mining software's there are some key differences.
For instance NiceHash does not allow you to select what coin you get to mine, it automatically picks for you but you can choose what coin you get paid out in. Cudo Miner allows you to select what coin you mine by disabling other coins and also has the built in functionality to pay you in whatever coin you want.
NiceHash supports over 50 Cryptocurrencies while Cudominer only supports a handful of the larger coins.
NiceHash has the option to Mine, buy/sell hash power and a cryptocurrency exchange built in while Cudominer just has the option to mine.
More Advanced Software
With the more advanced software it wont be as easy as clicking a button to just start mining away. There will some extra setup involved but also some major benefits to spending the extra time getting this set up.
T-Rex Miner
T-Rex miner supports mining over 30 algorithms including ETC and has some extra built in features to help miners gain an advantage. The program is mainly created to support Nvidia cards on Windows and Linux but also has support for AMD cards. Check out my guide for more detailing information on how to setup T-Rex miner here, and a following guide on how to setup the web interface here.
Extra Features:
Mainly Supports Nvidia
Built in OC
Dual Mining
Built in Overclocking
LHR Unlock
Web interface for monitoring and updating
NBMiner
NBMiner is built for both AMD and Nvidia cards and is made to be simple for miners to get started. NBMiner also supports a plethora of coins to mine including ETC. For a guide on how to use NBMiner and the LHR unlock check out my guide here.
Extra Features:
Aims to support both AMD and Nvidia
Built in OC
Dual Mining
Built in Overclocking
LHR Unlock
lolMiner
lolMiner is a great miner for AMD GPUs but does also work with Nvidia GPUs. In my opinion lolMiner is known for its stability and is always a good fall back for when a new release of another miner comes out and start to show unstable amounts of shares. The Developer Lolliedieb just recently went full time with developing the software and was the one and only to tell us how the 100% LHR unlock truly worked. Check out this 2miners guide on how to get lolMiner setup here.
Extra Features:
Mainly Supports AMD
Built in OC
Dual Mining
Built in Overclocking
LHR Unlock
Web interface for monitoring and updating
Crypto Wallets to use
With the more advanced software mentioned above you will have to link your miner to an external wallet. To do this is very simple, you will just enter in your ETC wallet adders into the miner config file. Below we will discuss the 3 main types of wallets and which ones are recommended for storing ETC.
Web 3 Wallets
Recommended for small to medium holdings you plan on exchanging for other coins.
A web 3 wallet is a tool for accessing the web 3 economy. This wallet grants you lots of control and anonymity as it is a non-custodial wallet. This means you can store digital assets securely without needing to trust a third party, this also avoids the KYC/AML process in most cases. However with this amount of control and anonymity you are taking full responsibility for the safekeeping of your assets and ultimately the seed phrase. Some great wallets for this are MetaMask, Brave, Nifty Wallet, Opera, and Saturn Wallet.
Hardware wallets
Recommended for long term holds with large amounts of Crypto.
An important step in understanding what a hardware wallet is, or is meant to be, is to consider the type of information a person or organization wants to securely store or keep on a computer or mobile device. If you’ve ever stored a credit card number or other private information on a piece of paper – including your email address – you’ve made a physical representation of something that is only accessible to you once you’ve signed that credit card statement in a physical location. A hardware wallet is similar to a USB drives except that instead of a credit card your information is actually stored on a piece of hardware in the actual form of an NFC (Near Field Communication) tag. The value of the cardholder’s information in the card is made up of a series of random numbers and letters (your credit card number), and is not accessible to anyone other than you. The importance of this is that the wallet needs to be physically plugged in and the seed phrase entered in order to access the funds. Some good hardware wallets are Bitski, CoolBitX, Ellipal, Ledger, SagePal, and Trezor.
Exchange Wallets
Recommended for fast exchange from Crypto to Fiat.
Exchange wallets are simply wallets hosted on a platform that is used for the buying and selling of Cryptocurrencies. These wallets do not give you full control of your crypto as there is no seed phrase and the wallet is a sub wallet held under the exchanges wallet. Some of the top Crypto exchanges are FTX, Coinbase and Crypto_com.
Software Wallets
Software wallets are secure, private databases online that are used to hold funds in your name. Software wallets create a “key pair” for each wallet. A key pair is basically a pair of keys that the wallet uses to access its databases and keep track of the coins that you have in it. Software wallets are great for storing large amounts of crypto with less worry of some hardware failing as you can create backups and store them on multiple USB drives. This is possible because in order to access your wallet, you first must sync with what block the chain is currently on and then validate your transactions. Some good software wallets for ETC are ABRA, Alpha Wallet, AToken, Atomic Wallet, BTCPOP, Guarda and Trust Wallet.
What Mining Pool To use
Check out the mining pool stats listed here on minerpoolstats. Generally speaking it is best to go for one of the larger mining pools (with more hash rate) as these pool will more reliable earn rewards.
It is important to keep in mind that latency does have an effect on your profitability for mining. In order to check your latency before joining a pool make sure you open up CMD and ping the pool address, if you have a high latency there is more probability for stale shares. Check out my guide here on how to reduce stale and rejected shares.
It is also important to know that some mining pools have difference featured. For example the 2miners pool lets you mine ETC but pays out in BTC. They also have a mining pool that is specifically made just for users trying to solo mine ETC. The Ezil pool allows you to mine ETC but uses the Ezil blockchain to pay you out in ETH or BTC and avoid higher transaction fees.
Profitability
Currently as of 6/13/2022 on a single RTX3070, using 115 watts at 60mh/s the daily revenue of mining ETC is at $0.58 which leaves us with $0.31 after $0.1 $/kwh. This is not great but not awful, at least we are still making some money here.
With the unfortunate news of ETH moving to PoS we have to look at the daily block rewards and figure out if this will still be profitable post merge. This is where things get very hairy, as ETH currently pays out close to $23 million a day and ETC is the 2nd highest in payouts at a measly $499,000. If most miners switch over to mining ETC post merge these rewards will be split between tens of millions of GPUs and drastically decrease the price, more than likely by 98%. We will end up paying more in electricity then we mine per day, however if a coin gets miners to rally behind it then there might be a fighting chance. A lot of the more experienced miners will continue to mine even if they are just earning an extra $0.1 a day from it and HODL the coins until they start to go up in value. A decrease in market volatility, especially now, might show signs of strength in a coin and cause the value to rise.
