Mining on Windows

This is a beginner's guide to mining Scash on Windows.

There are two ways to mine Scash on your home computer.

Solo mining

• If you mine a block, the entire block reward is yours

• This guide will show how to mine using the GUI wallet app connected to the dedicated CPU mining software cpuminer-scash.

Pooled mining

• You mine with other miners at a pool, and share the block reward with other miners

• This guide will show how to create an address in the GUI wallet app, which you can then use with mining pools.

Step 1. Download Scash

Download the latest Scash release from Github: https://github.com/scash-project/scash/releases/

You can download either the setup.exe or zip file (which you manually unzip).

If Windows Defender complains that the downloaded file is not from a known publisher, click away the warning and continue. Note that it is highly recommended that you verify the downloaded file before running.

Step 2. Verify downloads (optional, highly recommended!)

For security and to ensure the integrity of the downloaded file, open a Windows Terminal (Powershell) and run the following command to verify the hash of the downloaded file matches the hash shown on the Github release page.

 Get-FileHash Downloads\scash-REST-OF-FILENAME

Step 3. Run the installer

Run the scash windows setup executable. This is a standard Windows installer. Follow the instructions.

After running the installer, you can see where the software has been installed using Windows Terminal (Powershell)

The default location for the application software is C:\Program Files\Scash

For reference,

• The file scash-qt.exe is the GUI application which you typically launch from the Start menu.

And in the folder daemon

• the Server applicationscashd.exe (this is the same scash application as the GUI appliction, but without the GUI).

• The tool scash-cli.exe which is used to communicate with both the GUI and the server application (whichever one is running).

Step 4. Launch Scash

Launch Scash from Start menu > Program Files > Scash

Make sure you select Scash for the main network, and not Scash (testnet) which is a testing network.

Note: By default, after launching the Scash application, a user folder called C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Scash will be created as the data directory. This folder is used to store your configuration, your wallet, blockchain data, etc.

Windows Explorer does not show the AppData folder. It is a hidden folder. You can change the Windows Explorer settings to show hidden folders.

Step 5. Sync to the network

After launching the Scash application, it will need to sync up with the main network. This might take a few minutes or longer depending on the network and your connectivity.

You can click 'Hide' and proceed to create a wallet.

When fully synced, you will see a check mark in the bottom right of the status bar. If you move you mouse over the check mark a tool tip will appear showing some details.

Step 6. Create a wallet

Select the menu option File > Create Wallet... to create a wallet. Enter a name and click create.

Step 7. Create an address in your wallet

Click the Receive tab and create an address where you want to receive your mined coins. Choose a label for the address which is used in your wallet's address book. Leave the amount and message fields empty.

After clicking 'Create new receiving address' you should see a new address has been created. Keep a copy of the address as you will use this with the mining software later.

If you select the menu option Window > Receiving addresses you should see your address there.

Mining Pools

As of April 2024 there are mining pools available to mine Scash. Mining pools let miners combine their CPU mining power together and share any coins the pool finds.

The first mining pool for Scash is from Rplant https://pool.rplant.xyz/#satoshicash#connect.

Note:

1. Scash developers do not endorse or support any mining pools.

2. cpuminer-scash can be used for both solo mining and mining pools.

Step 8. Edit configuration file

Now you need to configure the Scash application so that the mining software can communicate with it.

Selec the menu item Settings > Options and then:

• Select Enable RPC server

• Click Open Configuration File.

This will open the scash.conf configuration file in the data directory shown earlier. The file may be empty. Add the following to the file:

rpcuser=aladdin
rpcpassword=opensesame

adddnsseed=seed.scash.one

This is the username and password which tools like the mining software will use when communicating with Scash. Without this, the mining software will not be able to connect to Scash.

To help find other nodes on the network, a DNS seed has been specified. The DNS seed shown above is for testing purposes and may not always be online. Users are advised to ask the community for a list of reliable DNS seeds to use, as well as the IP addresses of stable nodes on the network which can be used with the -addnode and -seednode RPC calls.

There is also an advanced setting called randomxfastmode which is not required because you are using dedicated cpu mining software to mine, instead of the Scash application itself.

• Miners running the Scashd node with large amounts of memory can enable this option to improve block verification time. The cpuminer already runs in this mode. See spec here for more details: https://github.com/scash-project/sips/blob/main/scash-protocol-spec.md#4-algorithm-performance

After editing, save and close the document.

Step 9. Relaunch Scash

Close Scash and relaunch the application so that it uses the new configuration options. You can relaunch Scash from the Windows start menu as before.

Optional: Launch Scash without the GUI

You can also launch Scash as a server application, without the GUI, from the Windows Terminal (Powershell).

C:\Program Files\Scash\daemon\scashd.exe -server

You should see output in the terminal window when the server launches.

Step 10 Test Scash is accepting RPC commands

Enter the following command in a Windows Terminal (Powershell) to test that Scash is running in server mode and is accepting commands from tools, such as the standard scash-cli tool (and later, mining software).

You should see output in the terminal similar to above.

If you don't, there is a problem communicating with the server application. Please check the previous steps above before continuing.

Step 11 Install the CPU mining software

Scash will now be ready for the mining software to connect to it.

It is highly recommended you build the mining software from source: https://github.com/scash-project/cpuminer-scash?tab=readme-ov-file#windows

If you don't want to build from source, download the latest binary release from https://github.com/scash-project/cpuminer-scash/releases

Step 12 Run the CPU mining software (Solo mining with node)

Run the mining software from Windows Terminal (or MSYS2 if you are using that).

This example will connect to the Scash application on your computer and launch 2 mining threads.

./minerd.exe --url=127.0.0.1:8342 --userpass=aladdin:opensesame --threads=2 --coinbase-addr=YOUR_SCASH_ADDRESS

The mining software will use just over 2GB of memory.

The username and password must match what you entered in the Scash configuration file from the earlier step.

When mining is running without error, you should see similar output to below:

The mining software will run continuously. To stop it, press CTRL-C.

Performance Tips

Check your Windows settings:

• Turn off sleep and suspend so Windows doesn't goto sleep when you leave the computer to mine unattended e.g. overnight

• Check your Windows performance profile. The default settings may throttle CPU usage and reduce your mining performance. Example: https://www.howtogeek.com/368781/how-to-enable-ultimate-performance-power-plan-in-windows-10/

• Check any performance settings from computer manufacturer installed management software e.g. from Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus etc.

• Check performance related settings in your BIOS

• In Windows Task Manager. Select Performance, CPU and right-click over the CPU graph and select Logical Processors to get a detailed view of CPU usage. When mining you should see many of the processors max out.

Help and debugging:

Run minerd.exe -h to see the help file detailing options.

If you run into problems, add the following options when running minerd

The option --debug will output a lot of detailed diagnostic data.

The option --protocol-dump you can verify that the mining software is communicating successfully with Scash, shown below:

Common Problem: 401 Unauthorized

Check that the username and password matches what is in the scash.conf configuration file. If they were changed recently, restart Scash to make sure it detects the change.

Common Problem: No connection

Check that the username and password matches what is in the scash.conf configuration file.

Check that the Scash GUI application has the 'Enable RPC server' setting in options is enabled.

Check that the Scash server application scashd.exe was launched with the -server option.

Common Problem: Many longpoll messages every second

The option --no-longpoll can be used if you see a lot of messages appearing on screen LONGPOLL pushed new work. This can heppen when Scash has just connected to the network and is not in sync, or has not received a new block in a while. Once new blocks have been found, you can stop the miner and relaunch without this option (for best mining performance, you don't want to run with this option).

Step 13: Run the CPU mining software (Mining pool)

Run the mining software from Windows Terminal (or MSYS2 if you are using that).

This example will connect to a mining pool.

./minerd.exe --url=stratum+tcps://pool.domain.com:1234 --user=checkyourpool --pass=checkyourpool

Step 14: Improve mining performance

Run ./minerd.exe --help to review the options available.

Review examples listed in the miner documentation: https://github.com/scash-project/cpuminer-scash

Step 15: Check your Scash mining balance

You can see any mined coins in the Scash GUI app. They appear with the mining icon in recent transactions.

In the terminal window where you launched the mining software, you may see the message accepted (4/5). This means you mined 5 blocks, 1 block was rejected by the network, 4 blocks were accepted. The current block reward is 50 coins, so you would expect to see 50 * 4 = 200 coins appear in your wallet.

Note that after mining, the coins cannot be spent, they are immature. It takes another 100 blocks from the time (block) of mining, before they can be spent.

In the example below, a block was mined containing 50 coins, but it is not available for spending yet and is still immature. If the block was mined at block 1000, it can be spent once the network reaches block 1100.