Introduction

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ravencoin and Dogecoin have been around for a while now, with bitcoin being one of the oldest one while dogecoin being first launched in Dec, 2013. But once again we face the sudden surge in the mining of these so-called digital currencies. And, thus causing major repercussions like unavailability of Graphics Cards in market. Both, Nvidia and AMD are suffering from high demand (as weird as it may sound 😊), in the sense that they are not able to keep the production on par with rise in demand, caused by the miners. As of 16 May, 2021, when I am writing this article, getting your hands on one of the RTX 3080 is almost impossible, due to shortage. Don’t worry if you don’t understand any or all of the technical terms used here, I have explained them further in the article.
Today, we are going to look at one such cryptocurrency called Dogecoin so-called memecoin 😊 (Elon Musk on Dogecoin). As of now Dogecoin is worth over US$90 Billion, which makes it quite a big deal and some experts predict that it is only the start and that it will only rise from here on out, while others have ambivalent views on it. In any case it does not hurts to mine it, since currently it’s difficulty (Difficulty rises and falls depending on how many miners are competing to discover new blocks at any given time.) is not all that much. So, if you have an idle PC lying around, why not use it. Plus, if nothing, it will be good for gaining knowledge on mining (i.e., if you are just starting up with mining).

What is Cryptocurrency?
A cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange wherein individual coin ownership records are stored in a ledger existing in a form of a computerized database using strong cryptography to secure transaction records, to control the creation of additional coins, and to verify the transfer of coin ownership.

What is mining and mining pool?
Cryptocurrency mining is the process by which new coins are entered into circulation, but it is also a critical component of the maintenance and development of the blockchain ledger. It is performed using computers that solve extremely complex computational math problems. Profits on mining are sporadic (i.e., chances of finding a block individually are slim), therefore, many miners prefer mining with a pool.
A mining pool is basically a collection of many individual miners, trying to mine together thereby increasing the chances of finding a block. One of the main advantages of mining with pool is that, every miner is going to be paid in accordance with their contribution, regardless of whether a block is found or not. This eliminates the risk of mining for months, and never finding a block.

What is Hashrate in mining?
Hashrate refers to the total combined computational power that is being used to mine and process transactions on a Proof-of-Work blockchain, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum (prior to the 2.0 upgrade). More info on hash rate at here

Getting Started

There are many mining pools available, but today we are going to use “unmineable”, as it has a user-friendly UX and it is easy to get up and running. As for wallet you can use any wallet you prefer, although I would suggest a multi-currency wallet like coinbase, gemini or jaxx liberty, as they are easy to synchronize with the blockchain and support multiple cryptocurrencies.

Installation and Configuration

Now, there are following steps to follow:

1. Download and install unmineable (Tip: Do not click on the download button directly, as it will not download the phoenix miner, which is essential for unmineable to mine. Instead, right click on the download button and click save as).

2. Download and install a cryptocurrency wallet of your choice. Links of recommended once are in resources section.

3. Open up the wallet and select dogecoin from available cryptocurrencies.

4. Click on the Receive/get address button, and copy the address.

5. Open up unmineable miner and select the device you want to mine with, preferably GPU.

6. Next, simply select the coin as dogecoin from the dropdown menu.

7. Enter the address we previously copied from the wallet in the address field, and press start.

8. In unmineable settings you can select the intensity you want to mine with. If you are mining in the background while using your computer, then set it to low otherwise high. Keeping the mining intensity high should give you more hashrate and thus more rewards.

9. If you are mining on a GPU with less than 4GB VRAM, then use etchash as mining algorithm, otherwise use ethash, you can simply change it in unmineable settings.

10. You will receive the cryptocurrency in your wallet after you have reached the minimum payout of the pool, in our case unmineable currently starts payout from 30 dogecoins.

11. You can similarly mine any cryptocurrency you want, just by getting the address of required curreny from wallet and using it in unmineable after selecting then cryptocurrency from dropdown menu.