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Bitcoin => Development & Technical Discussion => Topic started by: Andre_Goldman on August 19, 2017, 11:41:34 AM



Title: is it possible to mine bitcoins testnet on CPU ?
Post by: Andre_Goldman on August 19, 2017, 11:41:34 AM
Hi,

I am doing a research (nothing deep, just a casual reading) on some types of benchmark at TPC-C

http://www.tpc.org/information/benchmarks.asp (http://www.tpc.org/information/benchmarks.asp)

Does anyone knows any benchmark related to ARM Core CPU's family ?

ps-> my temporary testnet address is 2N8A71SAuzjuiLFAipMcMFhghs92QAtv5Vp


Title: Re: is it possible to mine bitcoins testnet on CPU ?
Post by: achow101 on August 19, 2017, 05:43:56 PM
The difficulty on testnet can vary wildly. There may be times that you are able to CPU mine on testnet, other times you won't be able to as the difficulty increases.


Title: Re: is it possible to mine bitcoins testnet on CPU ?
Post by: mocacinno on August 19, 2017, 06:10:32 PM
Last week somebody was mining on the testnet using an S9, compared to 13 Th, the couple Gh you get with your cpu won't give you high odds of hitting a testnet block.

By the way: testnet addresses start with m or n


Title: Re: is it possible to mine bitcoins testnet on CPU ?
Post by: achow101 on August 19, 2017, 07:09:59 PM
Last week somebody was mining on the testnet using an S9, compared to 13 Th, the couple Gh you get with your cpu won't give you high odds of hitting a testnet block.
The difficulty resets to 1 if a block is not found in 20 minutes, so you can CPU mine then. The difficulty can also be gamed to be set to 1 for an entire retarget period, and it can only increase at most by a factor of 4, so CPU mining is viable at those times.

By the way: testnet addresses start with m or n
Testnet P2SH addresses start with 2.


Title: Re: is it possible to mine bitcoins testnet on CPU ?
Post by: Andre_Goldman on August 20, 2017, 10:17:15 AM
Last week somebody was mining on the testnet using an S9, compared to 13 Th, the couple Gh you get with your cpu won't give you high odds of hitting a testnet block.
The difficulty resets to 1 if a block is not found in 20 minutes, so you can CPU mine then. The difficulty can also be gamed to be set to 1 for an entire retarget period, and it can only increase at most by a factor of 4, so CPU mining is viable at those times.

By the way: testnet addresses start with m or n
Testnet P2SH addresses start with 2.

thanks achow101, yesterday I saw diff 1, today is much much higher ( getmininginfo ) I missed the opportunity because I was trying to isolate the energy consumption of "bitcoind.exe" on CPU core ... (on Visual Studio there is a tool called "performance profiler" on debug tab .. but I'm not sure if the metrics are that precise, even Microsoft makes a note regards to it, metrics is good enough for batteries consumption thought ...    

ed; typo


Title: Re: is it possible to mine bitcoins testnet on CPU ?
Post by: achow101 on August 20, 2017, 03:08:26 PM
thanks achow101, yesterday I saw diff 1, today is much much higher ( getmininginfo ) I missed the opportunity because I was trying to isolate the energy consumption of "bitcoind.exe" on CPU core ... (on Visual Studio there is a tool called "performance profiler" on debug tab .. but I'm not sure if the metrics are that precise, even Microsoft makes a note regards to it, metrics is good enough for batteries consumption thought ...    

ed; typo
IIRC the mining code in Bitcoin Core has been disabled for everything but regtest, so you can't use that to CPU mine testnet. You can use other, more optimized software for CPU mining like cpuminer.


Title: Re: is it possible to mine bitcoins testnet on CPU ?
Post by: efeaydin on August 20, 2017, 03:21:15 PM
You can do it but the testnet bitcoins you'll earn will depend on the difficulty. The difficulty of testnet resets to 1 sometimes so you'll earn more if you mine when it resets.

You can find the current difficulty here:

https://testnet.manu.backend.hamburg/difficultyhistory


Title: Re: is it possible to mine bitcoins testnet on CPU ?
Post by: Andre_Goldman on August 21, 2017, 08:33:00 AM
You can do it but the testnet bitcoins you'll earn will depend on the difficulty. The difficulty of testnet resets to 1 sometimes so you'll earn more if you mine when it resets.

You can find the current difficulty here:

https://testnet.manu.backend.hamburg/difficultyhistory

thanks for the link very useful ..

Regards to the difficult ..yes I get that .. but I only will mine after I know how much energy I need to pump into the system.