How to mine MTP - A guide to updating the Zcoin XZC hard fork.

For a cryptocurrency to thrive, it first needs to be widely adopted. To do this, the currency must offer a fair mining solution, allowing even home miners to participate and profit from mining. However, today this is not what is included in most coins.

The centralization of mining, which is mainly controlled by a few participants, has become a major problem in the blockchain industry. ASIC miners influence the most widely used Proof-of-Work algorithms including SHA-256 (Bitcoin), Scrypt (Litecoin) and X11 (Dash). Ordinary miners who used general purpose technologies such as GPUs and CPUs could not mine because they were taking advantage. These ASIC firms have already experimented with so-called ASIC-resistant algorithms such as CryptoNight, Equihash, and Ethash (all of which are used in the Ethereum cryptocurrency). As a result, many currencies are now facing security issues, which has also pushed casual miners out of the game.

Today, many well-known decentralized coins are completely unable to resist ASIC. On the other hand, a number of currencies are actively fighting the dangers of centralization. One of them is Zcoin (XZC), which currently uses the MTP mining algorithm, a new ASIC-resistant mining method. The proposed hard fork is reported to take place on December 10 at 12:00 UTC. Therefore, in this essay, we will discuss all the important components of the expected Zcoin hard fork. Along with that, we will also learn more about MTP and how to mine it. But first, a little about Zcoin.

What is Zcoin?

Zcoin is a free and open source cryptocurrency that supports anonymous transactions. The Zerocoin protocol was successfully implemented by this coin as the first. The maximum number of coins is 21.4 million, the block duration is 10 minutes, there are also Znodes (masternodes). This coin originally used the Lyra2 algorithm. Zcoin, however, migrated to Lyra2z as Lyra2 was controlled by botnets and cloud processor miners. aaaaaa Later, however, FPGAs even had an impact on Lyra2z. In any case, Zcoin didn’t use this method for long because it’s not really ASIC resistant.

One of the key goals of Zcoin is to allow CPU and GPU miners to participate in securing the network. Therefore, shortly after the launch of Lyra2z, Zcoin engineers began work on a new algorithm that competes with ASICs and FPGAs and offers a solution for decentralization and fair mining. The formula is known as MTP (Merkle Tree Proof). The team stated that the launch of MTP is scheduled for mid-2017. But after a few experiments, they found that this algorithm had many drawbacks. As a result, they had to keep creating and improving their algorithm. Currently, this algorithm has been finalized and improved, and after several trials and studies, it is now ready for use.

MTP – Merkle Tree Proof.

The first cryptocurrency to use MTP (short for Merkle Tree Proof) is Zcoin. MTP is the original Proof of Work hashing algorithm designed to support egalitarian mining while still providing high security and speed. Alexey Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich developed this method in 2016 to solve the problem of mining centralization caused by ASICs. Identical to the Equihash Proof of Work command. Equihash has been improved and MTP is a memory-rich hashing algorithm that is better geared towards mining on CPUs and GPUs.

MTP is a memory intensive method that uses a lot of RAM unlike other memory intensive algorithms. The difficulty is that the development of specialized hardware for ASIC mining becomes expensive and inefficient due to the large memory requirements. In addition, such aggressive use of RAM will help reduce the likelihood of botnet attacks. MTP enables egalitarian mining even for those with little computing power, resulting in a highly decentralized network that protects against double spending and other types of network attacks.

Zcoin hard fork network update.

“Free coins” is the first thing that comes to mind when discussing a hard fork. First, this is not a fork where two coins are split and you get additional coins. The advantage of the new system over the old, to paraphrase or not to paraphrase

1) MTP, new Proof-of-Work algorithm (Merkle Tree Proof)

2) Change the blocking time. The first block time of Zcoin was 10 minutes (same as bitcoin). However, they now intended to reduce the blocking period to 5 minutes in order to reduce the block confirmation time and double the TPS.

You can learn more about Zcoin block time reduction by visiting https://zcoin.io/reduction-zcoins-block-time/.

As a Zcoin user, you now have one mission to complete before the hard fork happens, which is to update the software to the latest version. Even well-known mining pools are ready for a hard fork: the latest wallets are already built, mining software is already available.

Zcoin wallet update to version 0.13.7.4.

If you are new to Zcoin, please note that the main Zcoin wallet is similar to the main Bitcoin wallet. The interface and general installation process is the same and available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Download the latest Zcoin wallet at https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/releases.

If you are already using Zcoin, please backup your current wallet before updating it to version 0.13.7.4. Read this article on how to securely upgrade your bitcoin wallet to learn more.

If you keep your money in a wallet other than your primary wallet, such as an exchange or another third-party wallet, you don’t need to worry about this hard fork. The most recent version is likely to be updated across all exchanges and wallet providers.

Similarly, it’s important to update your Znodes if you’re hosting them. If you don’t upgrade, your node will stop receiving rewards and any version older than 0.13.7.4 will stop working.

How to mine MTP (Zcoin)?

You must use a miner that supports the new MTP algorithm in order to mine Zcoin. Both CPU miner and NVIDIA miner are now available. But the AMD miner is still in development, which can be expected in a week or two.

MTP miners.

NVIDIA: https://github.com/zcoinofficial/ccminer/releases
CPU: https://github.com/zcoinofficial/cpuminer/releases

According to Zcoin, the optimal hardware for MTP mining is GPUs with at least 4.5 GB of RAM. They also found that the GTX 1080 TI hashed at an MTP rate of 400 to 500 kHz/s compared to the Intel I7 4790k at 5 to 6 kHz/s per stream.

All that is left to do is configure the miner accordingly and run it to start mining MTP. We need two items to set up. Addresses of mining pools and Zcoin wallets. However, solo mining is not recommended for inexperienced miners.

We recommend joining a pool and below is a list of mining pools that are willing to support the hard fork.

Now the miner can be configured quite easily. Just create a batch file and enter the correct configuration, that’s all it takes. We recommend that beginners read this introduction to CCMiner. An example NVIDIA processor and miner configuration is shown below.

NVIDIA: ccminer.exe -a mtp -o stratum+tcp://zcoin.mintpond.com:3000 aGScanT3mGgetkXFcT8g5SV4ze26SAyDSE

CPU: cpuminer.exe -a mtp -o stratum+tcp://zcoin.mintpond.com:3000 -u aGScanT3mGgetkXFcT8g5SV4ze26SAyDSE -px -t

Since this miner needs approximately 6 GB RAM, it is recommended that you have a computer with at least 8 GB RAM to mine on the processor. Don’t forget to also include the number of processor threads; otherwise, the miner will use the maximum allowed amount.

Once you’ve set it up, save it as a .bat file and run it. That’s all. You are in a mining area (M): Everything will be fine if the shares are approved. Hello mining!