TON mining guide

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This information may be out of date and no longer useful. Feel free to omit it.

Introduction

This document provides an introduction to the process of mining Toncoin using PoW givers. Please visit ton.org/mining for up-to-date status of TON mining.

Quick start

To start mining right away:

1. Get a computer suitable for mining.
2. Install Ubuntu 20.04 desktop or server distribution.
3. Install mytonctrl in lite mode.
4. Check your hardware and expected mining income by running emi command within mytonctrl.
5. If you do not yet have one, create wallet address using one of the wallets.
6. Define your wallet address as a mining target by executing set minerAddr "..." in mytonctrl.
7. Chose a giver contract from the list available on ton.org/mining and set your miner to mine it by executing set powAddr "..." in mytonctrl.
8. Start mining by executing mon in mytonctrl
9. Check the CPU load on your computer; the process called pow-miner should use most of your CPU.
10. Wait to get lucky; the output of step 4 should have told you approximately what your chances are to mine a block.

Basics

Toncoin are distributed by so-called PoW Givers which are smart contracts with certain amounts of TONs assigned to them. Currently, there are 10 active PoW givers on the TON Network. Givers hand out coins in blocks of 100 TON each. In order to receive such a block, your computer needs to solve a complex mathematical challenge issued by a giver and do that as fast as possible; you will compete against other miners for the reward of 100 TON. If someone manages to solve the problem before you, all the work your machine has done is in vain, and a new round/race begins.

It is important to understand that profits from mining do not "trickle in" as your machine does the works, they come in batches of 100 TON for every successful solution of giver challenge. This means that if your machine has a 10% chance to calculate a block within 24 hours (see step 4 of Quick start) then you will probably need to wait for ~10 days before you will get a 100 TON reward.

The process of mining is largely automated by mytonctrl. Detailed information about the mining process can be found in PoW givers document.

Advanced

If you are serious about mining and wish to operate more than one machine/mining farm, then you really need to learn TON and how mining works; please see the HOWTO section for in-depth information. Here is some general advice:

• DO run your own node / lite server on a separate machine; this will ensure that your mining farm does not depend on external lite servers that can go down or not process your queries in a timely fashion.
• DO NOT bombard public lite servers with get_pow_params queries, if you have custom scripts that poll givers status in high frequency you must use your own lite server. Clients that violate this rule risk having their IPs blacklisted on public lite servers.
• DO try to understand how mining process works; most larger miners use their own scripts that offer many advantages over mytonctrl in environments with multiple mining machines.

Miner hardware

The total network hashrate of TON mining is very high; miners need high-performance machines if they wish to succeed. Mining on standard home computers and notebooks is futile, and we advise against such attempts.

CPU

Modern CPU that supports Intel SHA Extension is a must. Most miners use AMD EPYC or Threadripper-based machines with at least 32 cores and 64 threads.

GPU

Yes! You can mine TON using GPU. There is a version of a PoW miner that is capable to use both Nvidia and AMD GPUs; you can find the code and instructions on how to use it in the POW Miner GPU repository.

As for now, one needs to be tech-savvy to use this, but we are working on a more user-friendly solution.

Memory

Almost the entire mining process happens in the L2 cache of the CPU. That means that memory speed and size play no role in mining performance. A dual AMD EPYC system with a single DIMM on one memory channel will mine just as fast as one with 16 DIMMs occupying all channels.

Please do note that this applies to the plain mining process only, if your machine also runs full node or other processes, then things change! But this is outside the scope of this guide.

Storage

Plain miner run in lite mode uses minimum space and does not store any data in storage.

Network

Plain miner needs the ability to open outgoing connections to the Internet.

FPGA / ASIC

See can I use FPGA / ASICs?

Cloud machines

Many people mine using AWS or Google compute cloud machines. As outlined in the specs above, what really matters is CPU. Therefore, we advise AWS c5a.24xlarge or Google n2d-highcpu-224 instances.

Income estimates

The formula for calculating the income is quite simple: ($total_bleed / $total_hashrate) * $your_hashrate. This will give you current estimate. You can find out the variables on ton.org/mining or use the estimated mining income calculator (emi command) in mytonctrl. Here is sample output made on August 7th, 2021 using i5-11400F CPU:

Mining income estimations
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Total network 24h earnings:         171635.79 TON
Average network 24h hashrate:       805276100000 HPS
Your machine hashrate:              68465900 HPS
Est. 24h chance to mine a block:    15%
Est. monthly income:                437.7 TON

Important: Please do note that the information provided is based on network hashrate at the moment of execution. Your actual income over time will depend on many factors, such as changing network hashrate, the chosen giver, and a good portion of luck.

FAQ

General

Is TON PoS or PoW network?

TON Blockchain uses the Proof-of-Stake consensus. Mining is not required to generate new blocks.

So how come TON is Proof-of-Work?

Well, the reason is that the initial issue of 5 billion Toncoins were transferred to ad hoc Proof-of-Work Giver smart contracts. Mining is used to obtain Toncoins from this smart contract.

How many coins are left for mining?

The most actual information is available on ton.org/mining, see bleed graphs. PoW Giver contracts have their limits and will dry out once users mine all the available Toncoins.

How many coins have been mined already?

As of August 2021, about 4.9BN Toncoins have been mined.

Who has mined those coins?

Coins have been mined to over 70'000 wallets, owners of those wallets are not known.

Is it difficult to start mining?

Not at all. All you need is adequate hardware and to follow the steps outlined in the quick start section.

Is there another way to mine?

Yes, there is a third-party app—TON Miner Bot.

Where can I see mining statistics?

ton.org/mining

How many miners are out there?

We cannot say this. All we know is the total hashrate of all miners on the network. However, there are graphs on ton.org/mining that attempt to estimate quantity of machines of certan type needed to provide aproximate total hashrate.

Do I need Toncoin to start mining?

No, you do not. Anyone can start mining without owning a single Toncoin.

I mine for hours, why my wallet total does not increase, not even by 1 TON?

TON are mined in blocks of 100, you either guess a block and receive 100 TON or receive nothing. Please see basics.

I've been mining for days and I see no results, why?

Did you check your current Income estimates? If field Est. 24h chance to mine a block is less than 100%, then you need to be patient. Also, please note that a 50% chance to mine a block within 24 hours does not automatically mean that you will mine one within 2 days; 50% applies to each day separately.

Are there mining pools?

No, as of now there are no implementations of mining pools, everyone mines for themselves.

Which giver should I mine?

It does not really matter which giver you choose. The difficulty tends to fluctuate on each giver, so the current easiest giver on ton.org/mining might become the most complex within an hour. The same applies in the opposite direction.

Hardware

Will a faster machine always win?

No, all miners take different roads to find the solution. A faster machine has a higher probability of success, but it doesn't guarantee victory!

How much income will my machine generate?

Please see Income estimates.

Can I use my BTC/ETH rig to mine TON?

No, TON uses a single SHA256 hashing method which is different from BTC, ETH, and others. ASICS or FPGAs wbich are built for mining other cryptos will not help.

What is better, a single fast machine or several slow ones?

This is controversial. See: miner software launches threads for each core on the system, and each core gets its own set of keys to process, so if you have one machine capable to run 64 threads and 4 x machines capable to run 16 threads each, then they will be exactly as successful assuming that the speed of each thread is the same.

In the real world, however, CPUs with lower core count are usually clocked higher, so you will probably have better success with multiple machines.

If I run many machines, will they cooperate?

No, they will not. Each machine mines on its own, but the solution finding process is random: no machine, not even a single thread (see above) will take the same path. Thus, their hashrates add up in your favor without direct cooperation.

Can I mine using ARM CPUs?

Depending on the CPU, AWS Graviton2 instances are indeed very capable miners and are able to hold price/performance ratio alongside AMD EPYC-based instances.

Software

Can I mine using Windows/xBSD/some other OS?

Of course, TON source code has been known to be built on Windows, xBSD and other OSes. However, there is no comfortable automated installation, as under Linux with mytonctrl, you will need to install the software manually and create your own scripts. For FreeBSD, there is a port source code that allows quick installation.

Will my mining become faster if I run mytonctrl in full node mode?

Calculation process by itself will not be faster, but you will gain some stability and, most importantly, flexibility if you operate your own full node/lite server.

What do I need to / how can I operate a full node?

This is out of scope of this guide, please consult Full node howto and/or mytonctrl instructions.

Can you help me to build software on my OS?

This is out of scope of this guide, please consult Full node howto as well as Mytonctrl installation scripts for information about dependencies and process.