Mining Guide

Zcash Mining Guide

Welcome! This guide is intended to get you mining testnet currency, a.k.a. "TAZ", on the Zcash Beta testnet. The unit for mining is Sol/s (Solutions per second).

If you run into snags, please let us know. There's plenty of work needed to make this usable and your input will help us prioritize the worst sharpest edges earlier. For user help, we recommend using our forum:

https://forum.z.cash/

Setup

First, you need to set up your local Zcash node. Follow the Beta Guide up to the end of the section "Compiling", then come back here. (You can also do the "Testing" section if you want!)

Configuration

Create the ~/.zcash directory using mkdir -p ~/.zcash. Then place a configuration file at ~/.zcash/zcash.conf with the following contents:

testnet=1
addnode=betatestnet.z.cash
rpcuser=username
rpcpassword=password
gen=1

By default, zcashd uses one thread for mining. To use a defined number of threads (e.g. 2), add the following to your zcash.conf:

genproclimit=2

If instead you want as many mining threads as you have CPU cores, use:

genproclimit=-1

Mining

Now, run the daemon!

$ ./src/zcashd -daemon

You should see the following output in the debug log (~/.zcash/testnet3/debug.log):

Zcash Miner started

Congratulations! You are now mining on the testnet.

Spending Mining Rewards

Coins are mined into a t_addr (transparent address), but can only be spent in a private transaction to a z-addr. Refer to our Beta Guide for instructions on how to use the z_sendmany command to send coins from a t-addr to a z-addr. You will need at least 4GB of RAM for this operation.

Modifications

Mine to a single address

The internal zcashd miner uses a new transparent address for each mined block. If you want to instead use the same address for every mined block, find the following line in both src/miner.cpp (in the function ProcessBlockFound()) and src/wallet/wallet.cpp (in the function CommitTransaction()):

reservekey.KeepKey();

Remove or comment out that line in both places.

Use P2PKH transactions

The internal zcashd miner inherited from Bitcoin uses P2PK for coinbase transactions. The trend in the Bitcoin blockchain has been to use P2PKH instead; we are considering changing the internal miner to use P2PKH, but not for the 1.0 release.

If you want to use P2PKH for your coinbase transactions, find the following line in src/miner.cpp (in the function CreateNewBlockWithKey()):

CScript scriptPubKey = CScript() << ToByteVector(pubkey) << OP_CHECKSIG;

Change it to:

CScript scriptPubKey = CScript() << OP_DUP << OP_HASH160 << ToByteVector(pubkey.GetID()) << OP_EQUALVERIFY << OP_CHECKSIG;