I read on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1290358.0 the following: Command-line wallet - For more advanced users, we have a command-line wallet, dcrwallet. dcrwallet allows users to mine PoS and collect rewards by participating in the PoW/PoS consensus system. Simple GPU miner - A simple AMD GPU miner that connects to a local daemon will be available before launch. In the future, proper getblocktemplate functionality will be enabled and pool software will be made available. Does that mean that once the command-line wallet is released (not sure if released yet) that we will be able to solo mine like BTCcore? The Colorado Cryptocurrency Center is buzzing over being able to mine something other than Blakecoin (and merged coins) with our Blake256 setups. Please advise at to the soonest possible available method to mine decred.
Happy to hear about your association's interest! The condensed version of the mining process/state right now: PoW mining - Point cgminer at an instance of dcrd (decred daemon). PoS mining - dcrwallet (again running as a daemon) will lock coins to buy tickets which are called upon via random lottery to vote on PoW blocks and rewards are issued for doing so. The concepts behind the hybridized PoW+PoS system are explained in more detail here: https://wiki.decred.org/Introduction#Hybrid_Proof-of-Work_Proof-of-Stake The final push is on to move everything from proof-of-concept to ready for public consumption. As mentioned elsewhere, the goal is to have testnet launched in the next few weeks with mainnet following shortly afterwards. So the code you will need to mine will be publicly available very soon so you can compile/run/test and prepare on testnet before migrating to mainnet.
The miner is a fork of an older version of cgminer with a rewritten kernel. It has been built and tested on both AMD and Nvidia cards. Performance on Nvidia cards can probably be increased by forking and modifying a CUDA-based miner like ccminer/CudaMiner.
Should be possible with some modifications. For instance, decred uses 14 rounds: https://wiki.decred.org/Introduction#Blake-256_Hashing_Algorithm
Totally noob question but would it be of any value to run mining on a single computer just for the sake of it or the chances to be awarded will be too low to bother?
Hard to give a firm answer to that without knowing what hash rate your computer is capable of, what the total network hash rate will be, and what your expectations/motivations are. In my opinion, there's always value in learning something new even if it doesn't necessarily produce immediate monetary rewards. The test network will be up in the next couple of weeks. That will provide a good opportunity for those new to mining to get setup and learn about the process and see if they find it enjoyable and worth their time. Then once the main network is up, you could jump over and see how it goes and take it from there.
Say I wanted to start mining by buying some specific hardware, as in dedicated mining rigs, best suited for this. What would be some good examples? Hope I'm not asking any wrong questions.
The best value in terms of mining cards right now is probably the AMD Radeon R9 Nano which can be bought for ~$510-530 USD: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/comments/3x4org/gpu_powercolor_radeon_r9_nano_510_53020mir/ Building a mining rig is mostly about performance per dollar. Some motherboards will allow you to have 6+ GPUs which requires a ~1200+ watt power supply. I would definitely caution against spending thousands of dollars on a mining rig unless it's a hobby instead of an investment and you know 100% what you're getting yourself into.
Awesome, thank you for the information. I was interested in a mining rig for helping possibly keep a steady, small flow of fresh funds, even if the profit is very small. I really want to do trading and purchasing. But trading the most. I recently joined Cryptsy and am very excited to start trading. Now I need to purchase some funds or somehow get some starting currency to begin.
Glad to hear there is some initial support for Nvidia cards. Will there be any guidance on hashrates? Perhaps in the wiki?
I have question about mining (hope not stupid question ). Could we use an old obsolete BTC mining machines (maybe with some modifications in cg miner software) like USB keys or maybe Antminer S1?
As Bitcoin is SHA256 and decred Blake256 the most simple method to mine decred using the older bitcoin machines would be a multipool such as xpool (though I seriously doubt xpool has integrated decred yet). http://www.xpool.ca/ (or eobot?) Alternatively, you could sell your SHA256 hashrate and use that income to purchase Blake256 hashrate on services like miningrigrentals.