WIC Miner FAQ

 

 

Initial Version 11/14/21

This page we will be expanded over time to answer the most common WIC Miner questions.

I will start with the three questions that friends and beta testers have asked

Q.   I thought Ethereum mining is supposed to stop soon.

A.   This MAY be true but it looks like at the earliest any changes would be early next year.     The demise of traditional, proof of work, Ethereum mining has been threatened for years.    

We feel that this threat is to discourage the purchase and wasteful industrialized usage of ASIC mining rigs that eroded GPU mining profitability quickly starting in 2018.    It is now back due to high ETH price.    

However there are many proponents of proof of stake mining that is not really mining it is more just the rich get richer like paying interest on your bank deposits.  

We do think that at some point soon the traditional mining award will drop slowly over time as they adopt both forms of mining.   This long transition will be necessary as currently the traditional Ethereum miners hold much of the Ethereum and are not selling in mass to keep the exchange (ETH → USD) rate high.     If the ETH community suddenly discontinued traditional mining many of these stake holders would sell/exchange most of there ETH for whatever new Crypto they mine, dramatically and quickly lowering the value of ETH and raising the value of multiple competing Crypto-Currencies.    

Each Crypto-Currency only has value based on its ecosystem and a big part of this is the mining community!  

Lastly it seems that most of the pressure to stop traditional, proof of work, mining is coming from environmental interests that point to the energy usage despite the fact that traditional banks use much more energy.    

We are sensitive to this as this whole WIC Miner project points out.     We think the solution is easy just make the Ethereum mining block award much less in the Northern Hemisphere Spring and Summer indirectly encouraging most miners to do Crypto-Heating.  

Q.  I am interested in trying this but have no Linux Experience

A.  I suggest start by following the easy step by step instructions to use the WIC Miner from a Live Linux on a USB stick.    Instructions to do this are here.      This is a quick and easy way to get mining.

Then if you would like to go a step further I would recommend creating a Linux install USB stick from either Ubuntu or OpenSuse distros and using the generous information resources on the internet to install it.     Like anything the more you work with Linux the more you will learn!

Q.  I would like to try this can I use my laptop

A.   Simple answer is yes you can.    You can easily boot your laptop to use the WIC Miner from a Live Linux on a USB stick.    Instructions to do this are here.   You also likely have to follow the Wireless connectivity instructions on Arch Linux site.    However your average mining hash rate will be low as most laptops only have two memory controllers and the CPU’s are what is known as thermally throttled so although all cores (4 in most modern laptops) can run at full speed for a short while as the CPU temperature rises they will run slower so they are poor Crypto-Miners and even worse Crypto-Heaters