Cryptocurrency

What is an NFT token? How to create, store, buy and sell crypto art?

At the beginning of 2021, the world was again covered by a wave of interest in cryptocurrencies, blockchain, smart contracts and NFT tokens. If with the first terms, everyone who has already dealt with cryptocurrencies before is already more or less familiar, then NFT or non-fungible token has become super popular only now, although the first projects using NFT appeared back in 2017. Today, you can hear about NFT from well-known international news , from well-known media personalities, from corporations, from bloggers on youtube, and even from an artist or musician you know. But what it is and what it is for, and even more so how to use it, today we will try to figure it out.

Setting up Ethereum (ETH) + Zilliqa (ZIL) dual mining for Rave OS

In one of the past materials, we have already talked about the possibility of Ethereum (ETH) + Zilliqa (ZIL) Dual Mining, when most of the time your rigs mine Ether, but once within 2-3 hours for one minute they switch to Zilliqa mining, thanks to this scheme now you can increase your income from ether mining by 5-15%. In the last article, we talked about how to set up dual mining for Windows, but now it's time to talk about how to do it for the popular Rave OS mining OS.

Earn More With Ethereum (ETH) + Zilliqa (ZIL) Dual Mining

If you are mining, then with a high degree of probability you are mining Ethereum (ETH) right now. This is true for all owners of video cards with more than 4 GB of video memory, however, even if you use 4GB cards, like the Radeon RX 470/480/570/580, you still have the opportunity to mine Ether thanks to the support of the so-called "Zombie mode" by some miners... And even in this mode, in which the hash rate of video cards with 4 GB of memory is lost, as a rule, Ethereum mining is the most profitable option. In this article, we want to tell you about a way to increase income when mining Ethereum, namely, dual mining Ethereum (ETH) + Zilliqua (ZIL). This mining method has been available for quite a long time, but not everyone still knows about it.

VertCoin mining (VertHash algorithm) for 4gb GPUs AMD Radeon

Since the recent change in the mining algorithm by hard fork from Lyra2Rev3 to the new VertHash, the profitability of mining VertCoin (VTC) has increased significantly, although it is still significantly below the profitability of mining Ethereum. VertHash is a memory-intensive algorithm, so in this case, GPU performance is not as important as having fast video memory with a wide bus. In this respect, VertHash strongly resembles the Ethash algorithm, however, the main advantage of VertHash is the fact that it requires much less memory to work, so Vertcoin can be mined on AMD Radeon RX 470, 480, 570, 580 video cards with 4GB of memory on board, which have already come to the end of their life cycle as graphics cards for ether mining. It is worth recalling that at the time of this writing, 4GB video cards can only extract air in the "Zombie mode" with up to 50% lower hash rates compared to the stock values. For example, if 8GB RX 580 produces about 30-32 Mh / s in ether mining, then 4GB cards in zombie mode are already about 10-15 Mh / s, the hash rate in this mode also drops with each new epoch. And now, thanks to the transition of Vertcoin to the VertHash mining algorithm, 4 GB cards will be able to bring some benefit (in addition, even old cards with 2-3 GB of memory on board can be mined on Vertcoin).

Airdrop of 3 1inch tokens (approximately $ 5) from CoinMarketCap and Binance + bonus 4 more airdrops.

We would like to share with you the opportunity to participate in the Airdrop of the 1inch token from the well-known analytical service CoinMarketCap and one of the largest exchanges Binance, and thus get about $ 5 for free. This procedure will not take you a lot of time, and the extra money, as they say, "does not pull your pocket." In addition, at the end of the material, as a bonus, we will tell you how to participate in 4 more Airdrop campaigns from this "couple" that are still relevant.

It has become 20 times more difficult to mine Bitcoin over the past 3 years

On December 17, 2020, Bitcoin broke the psychological mark of 20,000 USD for 1 BTC for the second time in its history, for the first time such a significant event happened exactly 3 years ago on December 17 in 2017. If the price for Bitcoin over the past 3 years was able to return to its maximum values, then other technical parameters of the Bitcoin network have undergone significant changes during the same time. Because of this, cryptocurrency miners are now getting 20 times less for the same work they did in 2017. Therefore, the joy of breaking through the price of 20,000USD for one bitcoin was not complete among miners.

And again on December 17 = Bitcoin at 20K

Today, December 17, 2020, the rate of the first Bitcoin cryptocurrency confidently crossed the 20,000 USD mark and rushed to new heights. At the moment, the maximum value of BTC has risen to 22,100 USD, which is a record. This day, December 17, can be considered a landmark, especially since exactly 3 years ago, on this very day, December 17, 2017, we observed the previous record price for 1 Bitcoin (another frontier of 20,000 USD for 1 BTC), when it also traded at a price above 20,000 USD. Such a coincidence can be treated in different ways: you can look for a conspiracy, an accident or a predestination of fate in this, but in any case, December 17, now 2020, will become another new landmark day in the history of Bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency industry. The past 3 years have been, frankly, not the easiest with many ups and downs, and many have already lost faith in cryptocurrencies. But for those who remained faithful to the ideas of Satoshi Nakamoto to the last, today it is doubly pleasant to see that the idea of ​​decentralized finance (money) and Bitcoin, in particular, is not only alive, but continues to develop, gaining more and more new supporters around the world.

82% of the Bitcoin network is ready for the largest code update called Taproot

The Bitcoin network may soon see the adoption of a major code update called Taproot. The last time such global changes were made back in 2017, when the Lightning Network protocol was adopted. All major mining pools (Poolin, F2Pool, Antpool, BTC.com) signal the consent to enable Taproot changes, with the exception of Binance Pool, which owns 10% of the power and, accordingly, 10% of the votes. Smaller pools (ViaBTC, 58COIN, 1THash, SlushPool, NovaBlock) also confirm their agreement to implement the changes proposed in Taproot. Thus, 82% of the Bitcoin network is already ready to launch the proposed changes. In this vote, miners themselves can also accept, transferring their power to those pools whose decision they support.

Ethereum classic hard fork - 3Gb and 4Gb video cards are back in mining

As planned on block 11.700.000 on the Ethereum Classic network on November 29, 2020, a hard fork took place, which replaced the mining algorithm from ETHash to ETCHash and at the same time reduced the DAG file from 4Gb to 2.5Gb, and also doubled the epoch time from 30.000 blocks up to 60,000 blocks. Those. now ETC can mine video cards with 3Gb video memory, which were previously popular in mining: Geforce GTX1060 3Gb, Radeon R9 280X, Radeon HD 7870. Reducing the DAG file gives another not the most obvious advantage - an increase in the hash rate (compared to Ethereum) for old AMD Radeon 7000 series, 200 series and 300 series video cards, as well as for Nvidia 900 series and 1000 series video cards. For example, the GTX 1080Ti video card currently outputs 55MH / s at 170W for ETC and 51Mh / s at 240W for Ethereum mining.

Ethereum 2 - scored the required number of validators to start phase 0

After the launch of deposit contracts in early November 2020, for phase 0 Ethereum 2, only 3 weeks have passed since the required number of validators (16.384 or 524.288ETH) has already been collected. Although at the start, many had big doubts about such an outcome of events, since it will not be possible to withdraw ETH from the Ethereum 2 network before the introduction of phase 2, which will not come earlier than in 2 years. In addition, to generate income from POS Ethereum2, it is necessary to support two branches of the ETH1 and ETH2 network at once. Otherwise (if the validators are not online all the time), instead of receiving interest income, on the contrary, you will lose your deposit. It was also unclear what would happen if the required number of validators was not reached before the launch date of phase 0 (December 1, 2020).

To get off the ground was a statement from the developers, who said that phase 0 will start under any circumstances, but closer to mid-December. After that, deposits poured out like a cornucopia of 40.000 ETH or even 177.000 ETH per day.

Suddenly Bitcoin 2.0 - Shadowchain and Lightning pool

On November 2, 2020, the White Paper was introduced under the title: Lightning Pool: A Non-Custodial Channel Lease Marketplace. This document was developed by Lightning Labs, which developed the Lightning Network protocol for instant Bitcoin transfer with minimal fees. Lightning Network (LN) is a second level protocol built on the main blockchain network of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, which requires liquidity to work, i.e. real bitcoins circulate in the LN network, which are blocked in the main BTC chain. And with this, the main problems are observed, tk. there is either not enough liquidity or it will be sold in excess for the existing LN channel. To solve this problem, a new protocol (framework) Shadowchain was created on which the company wrote its own Lightning Pool application. It is worth noting that the Shadowchain framework can be used to write other applications in the same way as it is now done for smart contracts of the Ethereum cryptocurrency.

Ethereum 2.0 - Phase 0 launch, new network validators are being recruited.

Talk about the transition of Ethereum cryptocurrency to POS has been going on since 2016, but it seems that POS will still take place in the near future, because Ethereum 2.0 phase 0 has started. In the zero phase, a set of validators for a new network is being conducted to protect the network from 51% attacks. Before the start of phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0, it is planned to recruit 16384 validators, and each validator must have 32ETH, i.e. before the start of Ethereum 2.0, 524.288ETH will be locked on the network. At the time of this writing (less than a day from the start) 14.533ETH has already been locked. If the set of validators continues at the same pace, then the projected launch of Ethereum 2.0 on December 1, 2020 has every chance of taking place. If you have 32 ethers on your account (12.960 USD), then you can participate in the zero phase of the creation of Ethereum 2.0. After the launch, your validator will receive an income of 21.6%, but with an increase in the number of validators after the launch of phase 1, the income will decrease. For those who are interested in how all this will work, there is an interesting infographic here. As participants in the ICO Ethereum 1.0 in 2014, we also plan to take part in the formation of the second version of Ethereum. What we are planning to make a small report for our readers.

Ethereum Classic hard fork on block 11700000 - changing the mining algorithm from ETHash to ETCHash and reducing the DAG file to 2.74GB

At the end of November - at the beginning of December 2020, a very important hard fork on block 11.700.000 called "The Thanos" will take place in the Ethereum Classic cryptocurrency network, which will accept ECIP 1099 changes. With the implementation of these changes, the Ethereum Classic cryptocurrency will change the mining algorithm from ETHash to ETCHash, i.e. after the hard fork in the era of 390 ASIC, miners for Ethereum will not be able to mine Ethereum Classiс, and the video cards will need to update the miners that will support the new algorithm.

One of the first miners with ETCHash support was Nanominer 1.12.0.

In addition to changing the mining algorithm, another important change is a decrease in the DAG file size from 4Gb to 2.74Gb, in other words, video cards with 3 and 4 Gb memory can return to ETC mining. After 4GB video cards will not be able to mine Ethereum in December 2020, according to the plans of the ETC team, all this volume of video cards should go from the ETH network to ETC, which should radically solve the problem with 51% attacks on the network. Now, we recall that the Ethereum Classic cryptocurrency network is subject to frequent attacks due to the fact that the network hashrate is quite low and the estimated cost of a 51% attack on the ETC network within 1 hour can be around 5000 USD.

Ethereum has seen a surge in transaction costs and block sizes

In the Ethereum blockchain, over the past two days, there has been a sharp increase in the number of transactions of the ETH cryptocurrency itself and ERC-20 tokens, which accordingly increases the cost of each transaction. On July 10, the average cost of each transaction on the Ethereum network was 2.84USD, which in turn exceeded the cost of transactions on the Bitcoin network, where the average cost of transactions for the same day was 2.74USD. In this situation, the Ethereum cryptocurrency miners won first of all. instead of the pledged 2ETH per block, miners received blocks of 4ETH, 9ETH and even 26ETH per block (# 10633704), which, accordingly, significantly increases the income of miners regardless of the Ethereum price and mining complexity. Those. just by increasing the commission to miners, the profitability of Ethereum mining per day increased by about 20%.

Hard fork cryptocurrency GRIN July 16, 2020

On July 16, 2020, the third GRIN cryptocurrency hard fork is planned for block 786240. In addition to some changes in the network operation mechanism, the mining algorithm from the current Cuckaroom29 to Cuckarooz29 will be changed in the new version 4. For other GRIN cryptocurrency POW algorithms - Cuckatoo31 and Cuckatoo32, there will be no changes in the current hard fork. To switch to the new version of the GRIN cryptocurrency software, you can now download the wallet version 4.0 on the official Grin.mw website. But the miners will have to wait a little longer, because miners Bminer, Gminer, Lolminer, popular for mining, have not yet announced support for the new Cuckarooz29 algorithm.

BEAM cryptocurrency hard fork - new BeamHash3 mining algorithm

In the BEAM cryptocurrency network, on June 28, 2020, there was a planned hard fork with a change in the mining algorithm of BeamHash2 to BeamHash3. The new algorithm is also intended for mining on video cards, but the hash rate in this case fell about two times compared to the previous BeamHash2 algorithm. All popular miners (Gminer, Lolminer, NBminer, Bminer, Miniz) already support the new BeamHash3 algorithm, and with an automatic transition to the new algorithm. Actually, this is why almost all miners automatically switched to a new algo and there was no strong drawdown in hashrate, on which miners usually receive additional income. You can calculate the profitability of BEAM cryptocurrency mining after a hard fork on Profit-mine.com

May 22, 2020 jubilee 10th Bitcoin Pizza Day

Today, May 22, 2020 marks the next day of bitcoin pizza, as It was on this day 10 years ago - in 2010, the first transaction for bitcoins was completed. Using the Bitcointalk.org forum, a user with the nickname Laszlo (Laszlo Hanyecz) sent another user Jeremy Sturdivant 10.000 BTC, in response, he ordered two Papa John's pizzas and paid for the order and delivery, which cost 40-50 USD at 2010. Now in 2020, this transaction is valued at 90,000,000 USD at a price of 9,000 USD for 1 BTC. Interviews with participants in this transaction can be found on the Cointelegraph. With the popularity of Bitcoin, the popularity of Bitcoin Pizza Day is also growing. It was on this day that the tradition of meetings of crypto enthusiasts developed, when you could hear interesting stories about how a person found out about Bitcoin and what things he spent his cryptocurrency on. The author of this article, for example, in 2015 spent 4 BTC on the purchase of kitchen appliances (refrigerator, gas panel, range hood, washing machine) when Bitcoin cost 350-400 USD. The next major purchases were made in the fall of 2017 in Tokyo (BTC = 6,000 USD), where even then you could buy audio-video equipment in large stores (Yodobashi Camera) by paying bitcoins.

MicroBitcoin (MBC) - CPU coin based on Power2b algorithm

MicroBitcoin (MBC) appeared some time ago as a fork from Bitcoin on block 525000, but since its inception, it managed to undergo some changes and is now interesting mainly for those who are interested in mining on the central processor (CPU mining). MicroBitcoin currently uses the power2b algorithm for its mining, which uses a CPU for mining. power2b is a modification of the yespower algorithm and replaces sha256 with blake2b in it. Power2b or otherwise yespower2b is a "cpu-only" algorithm for which there are no available GPU miners, FPGA and ASIC miners. And although one processor may not earn you a lot of MicroBitcoin per day, you can still use MicroBitcoin CPU mining to load your CPU with something useful.

RavenCoin (RVN) successfully switched to KAWPOW. List of miners for Nvidia and AMD.

RavenCoin (RVN) has officially migrated from the X16Rv2 mining algorithm to the new KAWPOW algorithm. If you use a local wallet for RavenCoin, you need to make sure that you have the latest version of Ravencoin v.4.1.0 installed. Most mining pools and services that support RVN mining have already been updated and transferred the coin to a new algorithm.

Bitcoin cryptocurrency network hosted the third halving

On the 630,000 block, as it was laid, the next third halving in the Bitcoin network was held. From today, miners will receive half the rewards for a block found - 6.25 BTC instead of 12.5 BTC. First of all, halving will affect miners, as this directly affects the profitability of this activity and if you look at the hash of the network, then it has already begun to gradually decrease from the peak values ​​reached before the halving itself. A day after the halving, the network has already lost weight from 147 EH to 117 EH or 20%. First of all, outdated Asic miners made using 16-14nm technology similar to Antminer S9 will be turned off from the network, which were still quite actively used before halving.