In this post would like to explain how to get started with mining on an Electroneum mining pool, what a mining pool is and how it can help you in earning coins.
Background
If Electroneum is your gateway to the world of cryptocurrencies you've probably come across the term "mining" or even "mining pool" for the first time. In financial terms mining is putting your hardware/PC to work to verify and add new blocks to the blockchain and releasing new currency as a reward for the miners.
Initially mining was done in a solo fashion where everybody had their own mining rig setup and was searching for a block of their own. As the difficulty went up, the chance for a solo miner to find/add a block to the chain was getting slimmer and slimmer. This is where mining pools enter the playing field.
A mining pool is the answer to the ever rising difficulty where a group of people work together to find/add a block to the chain. This collaboration of miners resulted in a much higher hashratee which still made it feasible for people to mine and make some coins.
The initial goal of mining works the same in a mining pool, the only difference is that you're now collecting shares and once a block is found, you will get as many coins as shares you have had confirmed meaning that if you've got a lot of "hashing power" you will get more coins as you contributed more.
How can a mining pool help you?
As already mentioned, when sharing hashing power with a group of miners, the chance of finding a block is higher. This means that you would see returns quicker and don't have to wait months until you find a block on your own.
Getting started
In order to get started with mining and a mining pool you need to figure out whether you want to mine with your CPU or GPU. Electroneum uses the Cryptonight algorithm which get's the hashing power of CPU's and GPU's closer together. However, when you've got a good GPU you will probably get more teturns from your GPU than your CPU.
It all depends on what kind of PC/laptop/phone you've got lying around to enter the game.
Obviously, in order to know what's best for you, you need to test around with it and you can only do so by setting it up anyway. I wrote a couple of articles on getting starteed with CPU and GPU mining here:
To get a bit of a feeling with mining in general, I would advise to go with CPU mining as it is easier to setup.
Joining a pool
Joining a pool is as easy as defining your wallet (described in the articles above) and setting the right server address (also described in the articles below). After that initial configuration you're all set and ready to mine your first Electroneum.
Things to look into when joining a pool is mostly the pool fee. When a pool has a high fee, the returns you get are obviously lower. For example, the official Electroneum pools have a fee of 4%, this means that of all the coins you mine, the official pool will get 4%. This makes it an obvious choice to look into pools with a lower fee.
If you woud like to join a low fee pool, I would advise you to look at https://etnpool.net . We've just started yesterday and obviously are looking for more hashing power. We have a 0% block fee and 3% payment fee and are looking to enhance/expand the functionalities of the pool.
If you're interested in joining our Telegram group, you can join over here: https://t.me/etnpool
You can join our pool by using the following addresses:
For more specific details on setting up Claymore or XMR Stak Miner, I will refer you to the posts above.
Selling your coins
When you've accumulated a lot of coins by mining you would eventually like to sell them for another cryptocurrenecy that you like or to cash out to current world currencies such as Euro's or USD. To do so you can follow this post I have writteen as well:
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@draiden/getting-your-electroneum-coins-to-an-exchange
Conclusion
With the curent difficulty rate of Electroneum you would need to have a very strong PC/Computer/Rig to be able to find a block fast. With my own mining rig of 3 GPU's and 1.9 KH/s I have to keep it running for at least a month to find a block.
Because of this, it is necessary to join a pool to see your returns on your wallet quicker.
Don't wait any longer and join our pool at https://etnpool.net
