According to the data from the CKB Explorer (https://explorer.nervos.org/en/charts/hash-rate), the total hashrate of Nervos CKB has exceeded 400 PH/s, setting a new historical high.
For blockchains using the PoW consensus mechanism, the higher the total hashrate, the more difficult it is to initiate a 51% attack, meaning the higher the hashrate, the safer the network.
I will simply introduce the relevant knowledge of CKB mining in an article. It is important to note that the legality of mining behaviors varies across different countries, and mining profits can be affected by various factors. The main purpose of this article is to educate and does not constitute any investment advice.
Introduction to CKB Mining Algorithm
CKB uses a PoW (Proof of Work) scheme, where the consensus protocol is NC-Max (an upgraded version of Nakamoto Consensus). NC-Max retains the advantages of NC (Nakamoto Consensus) while enhancing its performance limits and resistance to selfish mining attacks.
The CKB mining algorithm is based on the self-developed Eaglesong. Eaglesong is a new type of hashing algorithm specifically designed for Nervos CKB. It is the first hashing algorithm that successfully combines the three design requirements of innovation, simplicity, and security. Based on my previous reading and understanding of a large number of Nervos documents, several founders of Nervos have extensive POW and POS development experience, with a profound understanding of consensus mechanisms and mining algorithms. The one adopted by CKB can be said to optimize the consensus mechanism and mining algorithm, while retaining the POW mechanism of BTC, to best suit the attributes of Nervos.
CKB Mining Difficulty Adjustment Target
In simple terms, the mining difficulty is adjusted every Epoch, which is approximately 4 hours. The adjustment target is:
Current block time adjustment range: 8s ~ 48s
Target uncle block rate: 2.5%
According to my observations over the past seven days, the current mining difficulty of CKB is between 3.6-4 EH.
Introduction to CKB Mining Reward Mechanism
The block rewards for CKB miners include: base (issuance) rewards, secondary (issuance) rewards, submission rewards, and proposal rewards, as shown in the figure below:
Among them, the base reward comes from CKB's primary issuance (base issuance), with a total of 33.6 billion CKB, approximately halving every 4 years. The issuance mechanism is similar to Bitcoin. At the micro level, the base reward for each epoch is a fixed value, with a target time of 4 hours per epoch. This means that when the block interval time lengthens and the number of blocks produced decreases during an epoch, the block reward for each block will increase accordingly, and vice versa.
Secondary rewards come from CKB's secondary issuance mechanism, which synchronizes with the primary issuance. The fixed amount issued annually for secondary issuance is 1.344 billion CKB/year, and the portion allocated to miners is influenced by the state occupancy rate on the CKB chain; the higher the state occupancy rate, the higher the proportion of CKB miners can obtain from secondary issuance.
Submission rewards and proposal rewards are derived from transaction transfer fees on the CKB chain. The reason for dividing the transaction transfer fees into two parts is that NC-Max uses a two-step transaction confirmation scheme to eliminate the bottleneck of block propagation delays; this will not be elaborated on here.
It should be noted that the block reward for a block at height N will be distributed through cellbase at block N+11.
>.< Isn't it too convoluted? There are too many technical terms, right? It's okay if a tech novice can't understand this long paragraph. You can refer to my previous article, which mentioned the value capture mechanism of CKB tokens; understanding that part is sufficient.
All Methodologies Revealed: How I Made My First Pot of Gold on CKB
Current Status of CKB Mining
CKB mining started on May 18, 2019, after the CKB testnet Rylai went live. Before the CKB mainnet Lina went live, CKB mining had already undergone a transformation from CPU mining to GPU mining.
After the CKB mainnet went live, FPGA miners gradually began to emerge. The composition of CKB network's hashrate was in a period of coexistence between FPGA miners and GPU miners, and after March and April 2020, CKB mining gradually transitioned to the period of ASIC miners.
Now, mining CKB requires purchasing ASIC miners developed by third-party manufacturers.
In short, similar to Bitcoin mining, initially, you could mine while playing games, but later, as CPU mining became ineffective, everyone switched to GPU mining. Eventually, when GPU mining also became ineffective, they switched to more specialized FPGA (which I don't quite understand, it's something with computing power between GPU and ASIC?) and ASIC (application-specific chips) mining.
Due to the rapid updates of ASIC miners, Nervos has provided a third-party CKB mining pool page for everyone to check which miners can mine CKB:
Here, I didn't include a link because! No need to look for third-party mining pools! The CKB gold mine can be mined directly on Binance! Binance Pool provides a complete tutorial, which I have organized as follows.
How to Start Mining CKB on Binance
1. Create a Mining Account
Visit the official Binance Pool website and register a Binance Pool account to create a mining account. You can also create multiple sub-mining accounts as needed. For more details, please refer to 'How to Create a Mining Account'. Be sure to create a mining account before proceeding with mining.
2. Complete Mining Setup
2.1 Configure Mining Address (URL)
Pool 1: stratum+tcp://ckb.poolbinance.com:443
Pool 2: stratum+tcp://ckb.poolbinance.com:1800
Pool 3: stratum+tcp://ckb.poolbinance.com:3333
2.2 Configure Miner Name and Password
Create a miner name ("MiningAccount.Worker") and set a password. The miner name can be a combination of numbers or letters and numbers. For example, if your mining account name is MiningCKB, your miner name can be "MiningCKB.001". The password is optional.
2.3 Perform Miner Configuration
Taking Antminer as an example: After logging into the miner, click on [Miner Configuration] to enter the pool configuration page; enter the relevant information for configuration, and after completing the configuration, click [Save & Apply] in the bottom right corner to start mining. To ensure stable mining operation, it is recommended to set multiple alternative pool ports; when the default port fails to connect, the machine will automatically switch to the next group of ports to continue operation.
The following image shows the background page of Antminer, for reference only.
3. Check Hashrate
After the miner starts and runs, you can view performance statistics after about 10 minutes. Go to the [Miner] interface to check the active hashrate.
4. Profit Distribution
The settlement period is from 00:00 (UTC) the previous day to 00:00 (UTC) of the current day. The pool payment time is from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time daily.
After settlement, mining profits will be distributed to the user's Binance funding account. You can check the mining profit balance on the [Revenue] page of Binance Pool or go to [Wallet] - [Funding Account].
Woo, to summarize: 1. First, you need an Antminer (or cloud computing power, which can be purchased from third-party platforms); 2. Read this article and follow the steps. Of course, with the bull market approaching, if you feel that mining will cause you to miss out on the bull market, you can directly buy low on Binance.
This is the most direct method ><
Woo, that's all for today's sharing. Friends who like and share will surely get rich!