Mining Monero on P2Pool with Gupax – [richfowler.net] (2024)

Mining Monero Cryptocurrency on P2Pool with Gupax

The easiest way to get Monero is to buy it. The best way is to mine it yourself.

Mining Monero (XMR) from your home computer is a fun hobby that can earn a few cents a day or more, depending on your hardware. You could hold/save that XMR and hope the price of the coin goes up (remember Bitcoin was $0.05 for a few years before it took off skyward), or you could sell it on an exchange for USD, or exchange it for other crypto coins. Or you can use it to purchase at retailers and companies that accept Monero, like Mullvad VPN does.

Mining is not difficult, but it requires a little know-how. https://getmonero.org is a great resource for learning about the network and how to interact with it.

What you will need to get started, mining XMR using a remote node to connect your miner to the network:

A Monero wallet.
If you want a program that lives on your computer, download the Monero GUI app from getmonero.org. The app will generate a 25 word seed phrase. WRITE THIS DOWN ON PAPER AND KEEP SOMEWHERE SAFE!
Choose a Remote Node if you do not want to download the entire Monero blockchain to your computer (its around 150GB!). When you select a remote node, you can pick one of the provided nodes or enter your own. If you want to use my node, the address is node.richfowler.net and the port is 18089.
The wallet will take a long time to sync at first, because it has to scan the entire blockchain looking for transactions that match your wallet.

If you want a mobile wallet app, I recommend Cake Wallet. (cakewallet.com). Again, upon creating the wallet, write down the seed phrase. Do not lose it, or share it with anyone, or any website. Your XMR WILL be stolen. Cake Wallet comes preloaded with several remote nodes that are known to be safe, and you can use mine if you wish. It is always safest to run your own node.

Now that wallets are out of the way, we need to mine some XMR. For ease of use, we will mine XMR on a Monero side-chain called P2Pool.
https://p2pool.io for information.

We’ll use an app called Gupax. This app is a combination of the P2Pool software and a Monero miner XMRig.

Visit https://gupax.io
Click the Guide link and there is a three minute video that shows a basic setup.
Download the appropriate software Bundle for your operating system.
Extract/Install the Bundle.

In the P2Pool tab, you will copy/paste your wallet public address (not the seed, but a long string of numbers and letters starting with 4) where required, and you will select a remote node. My personal node is currently listed as one of the choices:

moneronode.ddns.net:18089
Or
node.richfowler.net:18089

Both go to the same server and are safe to use.

Select the P2Pool Mini option.
Start the p2pool by clicking the start arrow, and wait for it to sync completely. Then switch to the XMRig tab. Select how many CPU threads you want to use. It is advisable to run no more than the actual number of CPU cores (this info is in your system info). If you know how to find how much L3 Cache your system has, divide that number by 3 to find the appropriate thread count (if you have 16 MB of L3, you can run 5 threads effectively).

Once you are ready, click the Start XMRig arrow and it will show a few startup messages and it will start mining. Running Gupax as an Administrator will allow a faster hashrate.

On Windows, you will have to add the Gupax folder to the list of Exceptions in Windows Defender /firewall.

On P2Pool, you are awarded XMR for valid shares submitted above a threshold within a certain window of time, if the pool finds a block solution in that same window. You may go a day or two with no eligible shares, even though the miner says they are “accepted”. You may have days where you get multiple payouts from an eligible share.

Let it run for a few days, watch your CPU temperatures, and enjoy mining some private cryptocurrency!

When you get some experience with mining, you can then learn how to run your own local Monero node, and then you don’t have to trust an outside party/remote node. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.