The article is prepared for those who do not fully understand the process and do not have several million rubles in their nightstand in order to immediately buy a mining hotel.
In this article you will learn
what do miners get paid for
how much can you earn
how much you need to invest
what equipment to choose
and how to choose a cryptocurrency for mining
What is mining in simple words
Mining is the process of adding new blocks to the blockchain .
For the system to function, someone must pack new transactions into blocks, and then attach them to the blockchain. This process is called mining .
How to add blocks to the blockchain?
A block is added to the chain only when solving a complex mathematical problem – it is precisely this task that miners, or rather, their mining devices, are busy solving. This device can be a home computer, a mining hotel, a server, or an entire data center.
Miners solve the problem in a race: whoever gave the right answer first, added the block, and, accordingly, received a reward for it.
What do miners earn: who pays them for mining?
There are two categories of money miners receive.
Transaction fee
Everyone who wants to conduct a transaction with a cryptocurrency (for example, transfer from wallet to wallet) pays the miner a certain amount for the transaction.
In Ethereum , this money is called Gas and is set custom for each transaction by the customer of the transaction. The more gas a client promises for a transaction, the more miners try to fulfill that order.
You can read more about Gas in our article about Ethereum .
New coin minted by the system itself
When a block is added, an emission occurs – for each added block, Ethereum issues 2 new ethers, which are received by the miner who added the block. The issuance of new coins is called emission.
This money is paid to the miner by the system itself.
As a result, the miner’s earnings consist of the commission for the operation + freshly minted coins – burned coins
Now that we have figured out what miners get paid for, let’s look at how mining itself works.
Solo mining and mining in pools: what is the difference
Solo mining
It implies mining alone on your own or rented equipment. This means that your device alone is trying to solve the problem and add a block.
If successful, all proceeds go to you.
Solo mining was relevant until 2013 – now the competition is so high that it is almost impossible to make money on solo mining.
But once a year the stick shoots.