My USB SHA256 lottery

[iwantmyhomepaidwithbtc]

Hey

I saw many posts around here were people would to know more about a solo mining SHA 256 lottery.

I did mine with 2 Gekkoscience Newpac2, a old thinkpad which is running a StorJ node with a 10TO HDD. The CPU solo mine Monero XMR. You will need a powered usb hub to overclock your gekkoscience newpac. I put two cheap fans which I had to increase the overclock possibility.

You can use that with a Raspberry Pi 2-3-4. It failed with my Zero W.  I use the thinkpad because the STORJ node host on it cover easily all the costs. I personally think that this lottery could really be a waste of time and electricity, probabilities are quite near to 0 to solve a block. But in my situation I have already this laptop h24 running because of the node, so I prefer have this "Lottery Ticket" here. If I'll solve a block I would be pretty happy lol


I run this lottery on solo ck pool. You will find a list of solo pools at the bottom of this post. You can use these USB sticks with any coin based on SHA256 algo : btc bch dgb etc...etc....


How to setup that

1. I personnaly use Ubuntu Server : very stable, not a shitty microsoft windows which will do update/reboot automatically.
    I advise to use any Debian based OS. A desktop environment is not necessary.


2. Do a update

Code:

 sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

3. Install dependances

Code:

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential git autoconf automake libtool pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev libudev-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libncurses5-dev

4. Get the Gekko version of cgminer

Code:

mkdir -p mining/newpac; cd mining/newpac
git clone https://github.com/vthoang/cgminer.git
cd cgminer

5. Build cgminer

Code:

Ubuntu :
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native" ./autogen.sh --enable-gekko
make -j 2

Debian / RaspberryOS :

Code:

CFLAGS="-O2" ./autogen.sh --enable-gekko
make -j 2

6. Run

Code:

cd ~/mining/newpac/cgminer
./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://pool.ckpool.org:3333 -u [i]yourwallet[/i] -p x --suggest-diff 32 --gekko-newpac-freq 150

You can change the difficulty and frequence as you want.


Informations about Gekkoscience Newpac Usb miner :




I personnaly switch off the screen of the laptop (less watt consumption)




List of solo pools :

CK Pool : https://solo.ckpool.org/
Kano : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789369.44440
DGB SOLO : https://dgb-sha.solopool.org/

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I don't know how your post will go over with others in the mining section, but I appreciate your post, OP.  You remind me of this guy on Youtube who's always posting videos about using a RPi for crypto-related stuff. 

What you're doing is probably a waste of time, but man....I really love those USB stick miners, even in 2021.  I just wish I'd gotten into bitcoin in the early days when you could still mine profitably with a few of those.  And it's weird that the prices of Gekkoscience miners and Moonlanders have shot up in the past year or so.  I'm not sure if they're becoming collectibles or if people are actually using them to do what you're doing (lottery mining).

Anyway, the chances are against it but I wish you good luck finding a block.

[DaveF]

...  And it's weird that the prices of Gekkoscience miners and Moonlanders have shot up in the past year or so.  I'm not sure if they're becoming collectibles or if people are actually using them to do what you're doing (lottery mining)....

There are a few coins out there (mostly scrypt but some SHA) with very low difficulty but some liquidity where one or two people stick mining can actually generate some money.
Nothing real, but still $1 or so a day. The issue is that if someone comes in and hammers it one of them with an L3  / S9 or something "real" and then dumps. You have to go hunt down the next one, and find an exchange the has it, and a reliable pool. etc. I have a few smaller miners lottery mining but every once in a while I find something else that looks profitable and mine that for a bit.

@iwantmyhomepaidwithbtc hope you get lucky and find a block.

-Dave

[iwantmyhomepaidwithbtc]

I don't know how your post will go over with others in the mining section, but I appreciate your post, OP.  You remind me of this guy on Youtube who's always posting videos about using a RPi for crypto-related stuff. 

What you're doing is probably a waste of time, but man....I really love those USB stick miners, even in 2021.  I just wish I'd gotten into bitcoin in the early days when you could still mine profitably with a few of those.  And it's weird that the prices of Gekkoscience miners and Moonlanders have shot up in the past year or so.  I'm not sure if they're becoming collectibles or if people are actually using them to do what you're doing (lottery mining).

Anyway, the chances are against it but I wish you good luck finding a block.

Thank you very much 

Exact man, I really appreciate Raspberry and minimalist hardware in general ! 

I am exactly as you, I would love to go back of some years to say to myself buy tons of these usb keys lol

I think that when you see them on ebay for more than 100$ it's just of form of gambling from the seller, he hopes that someone who doesn't know what he does buy it from him thinking "it will be more easy than asic" and not aware that if you buy them in Germany from bitshopper, it's only 79euros (in April they had stock for example at this price, during the same time on ebay between 180 and 800 euros)

Thank you for your good vibes, have a nice day !

...  And it's weird that the prices of Gekkoscience miners and Moonlanders have shot up in the past year or so.  I'm not sure if they're becoming collectibles or if people are actually using them to do what you're doing (lottery mining)....

There are a few coins out there (mostly scrypt but some SHA) with very low difficulty but some liquidity where one or two people stick mining can actually generate some money.
Nothing real, but still $1 or so a day. The issue is that if someone comes in and hammers it one of them with an L3  / S9 or something "real" and then dumps. You have to go hunt down the next one, and find an exchange the has it, and a reliable pool. etc. I have a few smaller miners lottery mining but every once in a while I find something else that looks profitable and mine that for a bit.

@iwantmyhomepaidwithbtc hope you get lucky and find a block.

-Dave

Thank you very much ! I'll keep you all informed if I am the lucky one one day !

[exfortuna]

Great post and good luck!

Here's my lottery rig running on top of my lightning node. Brought it back to life recently. Had a transaction stuck in the mempool way too long during that drop last month and realized I don't feel comfortable unless I'm fully engaged in the network, however statistically insignificant that contribution may be.

[iwantmyhomepaidwithbtc]

Great post and good luck!

Here's my lottery rig running on top of my lightning node. Brought it back to life recently. Had a transaction stuck in the mempool way too long during that drop last month and realized I don't feel comfortable unless I'm fully engaged in the network, however statistically insignificant that contribution may be.

Thank you, I wish you good luck too my friend !

I'm the same as you. I have many TH/s here but I'm still letting go my 90 GH/s sticks haha   

Have a nice day !

[jeyzeus]

i'm actually running 14 of these sticks for now...have a couple more on preorder too haha.

Always wanted to get into mining but never did cause i always thought buying spot was better/cheaper/more lucrative. never had any interest in the S9 and stuff like that cause they are loud and ugly.

if you use a $1-10M BTC price, then each stick is currently mining like 40¢ - $4 a day in terms of straight up ROi (using USD not BTC), you'd prob be better off using the money spent on the hardware to buy BTC at spot or lotto mode but I'm using these to mine & hodl forever. its dope to not have non-KYC, protocol issued btc. in about 10-20 years people will be mining what we mine now w/ a couple GH for 50-200 TH which is why i am doing it (plus to learn).

plus these look cool, is super silent & friends always ask about it now.

[Rath_]

Here's my lottery rig running on top of my lightning node.

If you don't mind, you can share your node URI either in this thread or here. I am willing to open a channel to other forum members. Someone else might be interested in it too.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

if you use a $1-10M BTC price, then each stick is currently mining like 40¢ - $4 a day in terms of straight up ROi (using USD not BTC), you'd prob be better off using the money spent on the hardware to buy BTC at spot or lotto mode but I'm using these to mine & hodl forever.

The bolded part above is one big 'if'.  Right now bitcoin is very far away from the lower end of that range ($1million), and those sticks are very cool IMO but are also currently very unprofitable--but I'm certainly not discouraging you from using them.  People have long said that claiming bitcoin from faucets is a waste of time, but I remember back in 2015-16 that you could easily find faucets that paid 500 sats every 5-10 minutes.  Nowadays I'm not even sure what the state of faucets is and if they still exist.

So yeah, if you're betting on bitcoin going to the moon, mining with USB sticks isn't a bad idea at all--providing you don't overpay for them.  I looked on eBay for the Gekkoscience sticks, and they're not cheap anymore. 

[paid2]

Small update

So far 796G of work done with a Bestshare of 2.2T

I've added some R4s and will add 2 R606 in the next weeks on the solo pool
Will update this post in the coming weeks

[dansus021]

Great post and good luck!

Here's my lottery rig running on top of my lightning node. Brought it back to life recently. Had a transaction stuck in the mempool way too long during that drop last month and realized I don't feel comfortable unless I'm fully engaged in the network, however statistically insignificant that contribution may be.

Godddd i have never seen butterfly labs in ages are you buying these back from a couple of years ago or just buying second hand on eBay. You are the real of OG  .

Good luck with both of you, the chance is very small  but "If we never try how will we know baby how far this thing could Go  "

[paid2]

From my side, I don't really buy gear anymore for a while. I've had these Newpacs for a very long time, same with my other ASICS. My S9, S9k, R4, S17 etc... have been profitable for a long time, but I won't try to buy more servers for now, even if we can find some great deals with Antminer S19 pro for example, I find it much easier to just buy and hold BTC. I'm in Europe, and even if my country has the cheapest electricitypossible  in Europe, it's not profitable anymore since the war in Ukraine started and the increase of the price per kw/h.

I just bought 2 Terminus R606 here on the forum, 2 more toys to put in solo mining at kano pool!
(even if the passage to the customs seems compromised for a reason which I still don’t understand…)


I don't know but the price per USB miner is crazy high on Ebay, I am not sure these people will ever find someone to sell a Block Eruptor at 245 usd lol

[TalkativeCoin]

Did you have any technical problems in the meantime or was it smooth sailing for the last two years since the setup, 24/7 operation?

[paid2]

Did you have any technical problems in the meantime or was it smooth sailing for the last two years since the setup, 24/7 operation?

No I never had any issue with the lottery for now.

The Thinkpad died but it was normal, it was a very old one, the mobo just randomly died. I changed the 2 USB fans for 1 USB fan with higher RPM.

Now the lottery is on a POS server with 24V USB ports. It has increased the hashrate a lot for the USB miners.

The only technical issues I had, was with some S9k et S17 (some hashboard died), but nothibg abnormal, these ASICs own a bad reputation regarding stability   

[TalkativeCoin]

Did you have any technical problems in the meantime or was it smooth sailing for the last two years since the setup, 24/7 operation?

No I never had any issue with the lottery for now.

The Thinkpad died but it was normal, it was a very old one, the mobo just randomly died. I changed the 2 USB fans for 1 USB fan with higher RPM.

Now the lottery is on a POS server with 24V USB ports. It has increased the hashrate a lot for the USB miners.

Awesome, thanks for sharing! I had a similar project in mind, but didn't want to spend too much time in case there's lot of baby sitting around them. 

The only technical issues I had, was with some S9k et S17 (some hashboard died), but nothibg abnormal, these ASICs own a bad reputation regarding stability   

Yeah, nothing unusual, or better yet - the usual. 

[paid2]

Awesome, thanks for sharing! I had a similar project in mind, but didn't want to spend too much time in case there's lot of baby sitting around them. 

Yeap I confirm there is 0 babysitting as long as your fan doesn't die 

Good luck to you !

[kekeck33]

How much TH do you mine SOLO.
Why you choose KANO and not SOLOMINING.
I mine solo with one S9 on solomining (Im from EU).

[paid2]

How much TH do you mine SOLO.

I have non-stop 0,3 Th/s with the USB miners pointed to kano's pool 7/24.. I power on some Antminers R4 sometimes and they are on Kano, but less than 70h per week.

I have 14 Th/s pointed to BTC Solomining.io 7/24 too, because I really appreciate the pool owner and his work. I had great luck mining on his other pools.

I will add between 2 and 3 TH/s to kano's pool with the 2 R606 coming.
BTC solo is for me only like a lottery ticket, I cannot afford to use too much hashrate on it.

I solo mine a other SHA-256 coin (less difficult of course) with 200 TH/s on solomining.io

Why you choose KANO and not SOLOMINING.
I mine solo with one S9 on solomining (Im from EU).

I am big fan of ckpool, but in EU, from my side, the ping time is not good. I have 28 ms to kano DE and 40 ms with solomining.io (more than 100 with ckpool)
I want to support Kano, Solomining.io and CKpool. So I have my small "gadget" miners pointed on Kano, and my personnal ASICs on Solomining.io
When I rent hashrate with Nicehash, I use North America server and I use ckpool.

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

Can I ask the reason you are using a fork of CGMiner and not the Kano release is there a reason for this?

Code:

mkdir -p mining/newpac; cd mining/newpac
git clone https://github.com/vthoang/cgminer.git
cd cgminer

[paid2]

Can I ask the reason you are using a fork of CGMiner and not the Kano release is there a reason for this?

Code:

mkdir -p mining/newpac; cd mining/newpac
git clone https://github.com/vthoang/cgminer.git
cd cgminer

I used this fork because it was the one provided by the Gekko reseller at the time (bitshopper.de).


I am now using kanoi cgminer since 5 or 6 months