[Ethereum] Does the mining situation sound normal

miningsolo-mining

I've tried overnight mining and have had no luck. I first created an account using geth account new. Then I use geth --rpc to stay in sync with the blockchain and ethereum -G to start the minining process. I can see the program create the DAG and then proceed to mine at about 5MH/s.

The problem is that when I use geth attach and check the amount I have mined it always returns zero (eth.getBalance (eth.coinbase) ). I mine for about 7 hours at a time and have no luck. Is this normal?

Also is it normal to not see your wallet/address when searching at etherchain.org?

Best Answer

You should calculate your average block mining time on something like etherscan mining calculator before trying to mine.

 It will take you an average of 117.39 days to find 1 Block

But mining difficulty will raise so much during this time that you probably won't mine anything. Pure lost plus you burn your hardware.

So unless you have at least 50MH/s, you'd better buy ether from an exchange and even with 50MH/s you should consider pool mining instead of solo mining.

Edit: this answer was written a long time ago and hashrate should be higher today to expect mining something. Also note that pools won't give you more chances to mine a block, it will only smoothen the rewards. Finally, today, maybe you should wait for PoS if you want to participate in securing Ethereum.

Related Topic