How to solo mine any Altcoin – Solo mining new and low difficulty coins

That feeling when you get in early before a large group of miners join the party and raise the difficulty is something special. Isn’t it? You’ll find such opportunity once in a while and it always leads to profit in a short period of time.

In Crypto getting in early is the key so keep looking at Altcoin announcement thread of Bitcoin Talk to find out newly launched coins. Once you found the gem, setup the miner, and start mining solo to hit a block on your own. Believe it or not, solo mining is very much possible and even with a single GPU you can hit a block. What!? Let’s get into the details.

Here this is a beginners guide and a quick tutorial on how to solo mine cryptocurrencies. Before we get in to solo mining guide we’ll see if solo mine really works out and if so what type of coins comes under this solo mining category.

How easy is it to solo mine altcoins?

They always say that solo mining only works out for a lucky few. Yes, it is. But theoretically there is math involved and the answer to this question completely depends on the network hashrate and your hardware power.

Solo mining is just like winning a lottery and there is no magic number that’ll guarantee results. You could either mine a block or you could never solve a block even after mining for a long time. However technically there is a chance of mining a block if you maintain proper communication with the network and keep submitting shares constantly. We can’t tell how long as It all depends on several factors. A suitable comparison would be lottery.

Totally forget about Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Monero, Zcash and all other popular Cryptocurrencies. Apply this solo mining guide only on coins in which you could expect results. The most suitable ones are the newly launched altcoins where the network difficulty will be too low.

There are tons of new coins that you can choose from if you head over to Bitcoin Talk announcement thread. Not all of them have attained its popularity and not all of them have mining pools setup initially. Once you found one, do your research before you get in to the mining scene. If you feel the coin is worth your time then quickly setup the mining environment and start solo mining.

Solo Mining requirements:

This guide assumes that you have your hardware ready (CPU, GPU or ASIC). The process to solo mine is very simple:

1. Find a new coin and ensure the network hashrate is low to solo mine.
2. Grab the QT wallet.
3. Create a config file, config the RPC port, ensure the server is setup and allows the IP address of your hardware.
4. Configure the miner and point it to RPC IP / Port of the computer where the wallet is running.
5. Profit.

Safety Measures:

• Take a backup of your wallet
• Encrypt your wallet
• Never add any external IP to your config file.

How to solo mine?

For this tutorial we’ve chosen Ravencoin. Solo mining Ravencoin is not possible due to high network difficulty but anyways we are just showing the method and this applies to every proof of work cryptocurrencies. So to solo mine other altcoins all you have to do is apply the same procedure. We’ll show you how to GPU solo mine but the same also applies to CPU as well as ASICs.

Also in this guide there are two methods involved 1. Solo mining using same computer where the wallet runs 2. Solo mining using mining rig where you don’t have your wallet setup.

For pool mining no client is needed. Just the pool address, username and password is enough. However to solo mine you need to setup local environment and enable RPC port. Follow the steps below to setup a solo mining environment.

Solo mining on same machine as wallet

1. First Download and install the QT wallet of the coin that you’d like to solo mine.

2. Once done let the wallet to synchronize completely. Wait until you see the check mark at the bottom right corner of your wallet and says “synchronization finished” or “up to date”.

3. Once the blockchain has been downloaded completely, close your wallet and open the wallet configuration file. Please go through that guide if you don’t know where the config file is located.

4. Now within the configuration file input the following commands.

rpcuser=USERNAME
rpcpassword=PASSWORD
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
rpcport=9999
server=1
listen=1
daemon=1

You can change the username, password and port to anything you wish.

Example:

Explanation:

rpcallowip is the local IP of your system. For security reasons never ever allow any external IPs. Only allow IPs that are connected to your private network. Example of private IP: 127.0.0.1,  192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.*

rpcport is basically a way of identifying a machine. This is the address where your wallet will be listening for network connection and requests.

These 4 details such as username, password, IP and port that you’ve entered in your wallet config file should be the same in your miner configuration file as well.

5. Here we’ve used ccminer as an example. Download the mining software that supports solo mining and configure it appropriately.

Example:

ccminer -a x16r -o http://127.0.0.1:9999 -u coinguides -p x --coinbase-addr=RRgNXzz76y8P2aF5PDbTKnPb2PxTK2er6 -i 19
pause

If you take a look at the above config then you’ll notice that the IP, Port, Username and the Password will be same as the wallet config file.

6. Save the batch file and run the miner. That’s it! You are now solo mining!

Solo mining on different machine or a mining rig where wallet is not setup

For safety purpose most don’t install wallets on their mining rig. In this case how do you solo mine? Actually you don’t need a wallet installed on your mining rig. To solo mine using your mining rig all we need to do is connect the miner to your PC where the wallet is running. For this we’ll need two information.

1. Internal IP of your PC where wallet runs and
2. Internal IP of your mining rigs.

Your WiFi router will automatically assign a local IP address for your computer and each of your mining rigs. This local IP address can only be accessed within your private network and is normally hidden from the outside world. So it is completely safe.

To know the internal IP; open command prompt. Now in the command window input ipconfig and hit enter. You’ll find something called Ipv4 address which is the internal address of that particular machine.

Fetch this IPv4 address of both your mining rig and your PC. If you have more than one rig then fetch all of its IP address. Next follow the steps below.

Step 1: First close your wallet, then open your wallet config file and allow all those IP. Once done, save the file and keep the wallet open and running.

Step 2. Now in your mining rig enter the IP address of your wallet machine in the URL field of your batch file. Save it and then run it.

ccminer -a x16r -o http://wallet-machine-ip:9999 -u coinguides -p x --coinbase-addr=RRgNXzz76y8P2aF5PDbTKnPb2PxTK2er6 -i 19
pause

If it works then use the same batch file setup for all your mining rigs that you’d like to solo mine.

Checking if solo mining is working:

First to ensure if you are on the right track check the block height that you are mining currently. Open your wallet, go to Debug console window and enter getmininginfo which will return the block height. In addition to this you can also use the block explorer.

Next unlike pool mining you won’t see accepted shares or rejected shares when solo mining. All you see is your hardware hashing continuously and when you hit a block you’ll see a message saying yes! The reward for the block which you solved will reflect immediately in your wallet address that you entered in your miner batch file.

Common Errors:

Empty data received in JSON-RPC call
get_work failed, retry after 30 seconds

unknown option -- coinbase-addr=

These are the two common errors that you’d come across when you solo mine. It means either the coin that you are mining or the mining software that you are using don’t support solo mining. Research on this as most of the new forked coins have removed getwork command, they only support getblocktemplate.

Currently getblocktemplate is only supported by sgminer, cgminer and some forked ccminer. If you can’t find a miner that supports solo mining then for such coins either setup a node stratum pool locally or join a mining pool which is the only solution.

Other than that to make your work simpler there are certain mining pools that provide a means to solo mine. Search for such pools and start mining solo.

Each and every client is a little bit different so you may encounter some errors at the start. However if you understand this setup then with few tweaks you can get them working. Hope this guide helps and we hope you’ve started to solo mine!

Good Luck Mining Solo!