CPU Mining is back!

A
complete how to guide and
profit analysis for Verium
mining on a farm of single
board computers - Part 1
9 months ago
birty 46 in verium
TLDR version
If you already have a PC with spare cores then you could do a
lot worse that pointing it at Verium mining, it is possible to
profitably build CPU mining rigs from single board computers,
and everyone should sign up for the free Azure trial and get it
mining!
Introduction
I've been with Vericoin[1] since the very beginning, through the
Mintpal theft, thought the rollback (the right decision IMHO),
through the usual trolling, through the Proof of Stake Time[2]
innovation to give a fully decentralised coin and now into the
beginning of the new era of Verium[3] with it's Proof of Work
Time protocol and the soon to be released integration between
the two coins. Vericoin as the currency and Verium as the
commodity.
I was lucky enough to get in on Vericoin with a batch of newly
purchased gridseed miners so was able to mine at a reasonable
pace even with the skyrocketing difficulties scrypt coins had
back then. I wanted to be prepared for Verium so I duly built a
water-cooled Core i7 6700k based machine overclocked to
4.6GHz with 16GB of RAM and it has been mining at a good
rate since launch (very early hours of the morning here in the
UK, but worth it to get in on those initial easier blocks!).
From my gridseed days I had a few Raspberry Pi's kicking
around that had been used as controllers. I was curious as to
what rate these cheap little boards might be able to mine
Verium at, so downloaded, compiled and set off mining. The
hash rate was not that impressive but the per H/m (Verium
mining is measured in hashes per minute because of its scrypt
n factor - 10242) was pretty intriguing compared to the PC that
I had custom built... So I searched the web for what appeared
from the spec sheets to give the best number of cores, clocked
the highest with the right amount of RAM and settled on a
Raspberry Pi 3 and an Odroid XU4 for testing.
This is the first in a series of articles covering my investigation
into the Pi 3 and XU4 single board computers to mine Verium.
This one is an analysis of their profitability (that's first as that's
the bit everyone wants to know about right!?!). The second is a
detailed set of instructions (including tweaking the mining
software to get the best out of these boards) that anyone
should be able to follow to recreate the set-up for themselves.
The third is how to get all this up and running on Docker
containers for easier maintenance at scale, and hopefully
Docker Swarm if I can get it running on these devices.
Vericoin (VRC) and Verium (VRM) Overview
This section gives a brief overview of Vericoin and Verium -
more info can be found on the Vericoin website
[http://www.vericoin.info/] including some cool new explanation
videos that have been contributed by community members.
Overview
The coin has non-anonymous and active developers. There is
also an active community over bitcointalk, the vericoin forums
 and rocket chat channel.
Vericoin and Verium pairing coming in near-term future update
Verium has 10x lower supply that Vericoin, and is 10x most
costly to
send
Verium will have auxiliary mining of VRC and bonus VRC
rewards
Speed up the Vericoin block time to ~20 seconds
Further decentralises Vericoin
In wallet swap from Verium to Vericoin

Active on multiple exchanges, including VRC/VRM pairing on

Livecoin
Vericoin
Total supply - 27,798,100 (at time of writing)
Proof of Work Phase:
No premine, no ICO
26,751,452.35 VRC mined
Scrypt algorithm

Proof of Stake Time (PoST) Phase:

PoST Invented by the developers of Vericoin[2]
Fully decentralised
Proof of Stake protocol, no checkpoints, no supernodes
Protocol security against
Competitive forks
Age attacks
Coin attacks
More active staking gives higher rewards
 Disinflation targeted variable interest
Minimum stake time of 8 hours for interest, no maximum

Verium
Proof of Work Time Phase:
Protocol invented by the developers
Variable block time depending on network hash rate
Rewards in VRM per minute mining between blocks
Reward halving per minute decrease in block time
Scrypt2 algorithm, Scrypt N with N of 1024 - 128MB memory
required per thread
Memory hard mining - ASIC and GPU resistant
Block 1: 564,705 VRM minted for ICO participants who
purchased VRM using VRC
50% of IOC used for stake endowment fund
Address: VFEndownxxnHea9mv59kZx8c7TysGbndYx
Coins will never be moved, just interest from staking used in-
perpetuity for infrastructure costs
How to use remaining the 50% of the VRC from ICO was voted
for my community[4]
-20% Development
-20% Marketing and Design
-10% Third party partnerships

Profit Analysis
First off a bit of a disclaimer - I'm basing this all on the prices of
the hardware that I have bought and the hash rates I've got out
of that hardware with the specific mining software I will link to
 in a latter article modified as per the instructions. The XU4's
that I've had each have a bit of variation in hash rate that they
can manage and I've taken the middle ground that I've
observed in this analysis - I haven't recorded and taken any
kind of scientific approach to finding the mean hash rate over
all the miners over x days. Having said that I'm pretty confident
that you can achieve equivalent results by following the same /
similar steps just don't go buying huge amounts of hardware
without satisfying yourself these results are correct!
I'm also going to be using as my unit of currency (being from
the UK!) throughout but it's the ratios between the different
options that count regardless of which currency is being worked
in. However you might get a better price for buying hardware
where you live in the world so I've also linked the spreadsheets
used to do the calculations so you can enter your own figures
for comparison.
System Specifications
For each section below I will be basing the comparisons the
following systems:
A top-end desktop PC running Windows 10 (Core i7 6700k at
4.6GHz with 16GB RAM) - referred to as "PC" from now on
An Odroid XU4[5] running Ubuntu (Samsung Exynos5422 - four
big cores (ARM Cortex-A15 at 2GHz) and four small cores (ARM
Cortex-A7 at 1.4 GHz) with 2GB RAM) run headless - referred to
as "XU4" from now on
A Raspberry Pi 3 Model B[6] running Raspbian (ARMv8 quad
core at 1.2GHz with 1GB RAM) run headless - referred to as
"Pi3" from now on
 Windows Azure "Standard DS3 v2" hosted in Northern Europe
running Ubuntu (2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2673 v3 (Haswell) 4
cores, 14 GB memory) - referred to as "Azure" from now on

The mining software used for hash rate comparisons is

VeriumMiner[7] which is a fork of CPUMultiMiner adjusted to
show hashrates in the right formats. This miner appears to give
similar hash rates between windows and linux systems. SSE
extensions are checked for and used at runtime on the PC and
Azure systems, and the ARM based boards had the NEON
extensions enabled at compile time. For the ARM boards the
miner source was adjusted to allow maximum threads with the
limited memory - full details of how to do this in the second
article. Running less threads with more memory allocation per
thread produced significantly worse results so isn't covered
here.
Table 1 below has the comparative hash rates achieved with
these set-ups, as above these are middle ground observed
hash rates. For comparison there is a list of computers and
hash rates people have achieved for VRM mining on the
Vericoin forums[8], my PC is comparable in terms of hash rate
to equivalent machines in the list.
Table 1 - Hash Rate Comparison
System Hashes per minute
PC ~2200
XU4 ~380
Pi3 ~110
Azure ~1390

Purchase Price vs H/m

The system descriptions below provide a comparison of the
purchase price of the base hardware needed for each system to
get it up and running as single units. Table 2 lists the additional
hardware needed by the XU4s and Pi3s to get a working
system that scales based on 10 miners. Scaling is important to
take into account as, for example, netgear home routers (which
is what mine is) have a limit of 32 clients per wifi channel[9]
therefore going wifi with a larger number of these boards is
probably impractical / needs more wifi routers so i have priced
in fixed networking hardware. Other options are probably
possible, but I leave those to the reader to figure out (and
share if they are better!). I've also ignored mounting hardware,
e.g. threaded bar / standoffs / nuts / baseplate / velcro / etc. in
this comparison. I will include a full bill of materials, including
links / stock codes in the second article. Table 3 brings all this
together to give overall per H per min figure for each option.
All prices are including UK VAT. Also for those in the UK don't
forget Quidco (shameless referral link!), can get cash back on
quite a few of the bits below!
PC System - 1478
Scan 3XS Overclocked Bundle Z170 OC20 (~700)
Processor - Intel Core i7 6700K overclocked to 4.6GHz.
Motherboard - Asus ROG Maximus VIII Ranger
CPU Cooler - Corsair Hydro H100i v2 GTX
Memory - 16GB Corsair Vengeance 2666MHz DDR4
Hard disk - 2TB SEAGATE (~60)
Solid State Disk - Samsung 840 EVO 250GB (~80)
Operating System - Windows 10 Home (~85)
Wifi Adaptor - Edimax EW-7822PIC PCIe AC1200 (~31)
Case - Corsair Carbide 600Q Case (~100)
Power Supply - Corsair AX1200i (~300)
Graphics Card - MSI HD7950 (~150)
(www.scan.co.uk - they take bitcoin :))
XU4 System - 81.63
 Single board computer and power supply,
(http://www.odroid.co.uk/, small discounts may be
available buying in bulk but this is worst case number -
I've been dealing with a very helpful and response guy
called Clive. You can also buy direct from
OEM http://www.hardkernel.com/but exchange rate,
taxes, import duties etc. don't make it worth it in the
UK) - 78.04
8GB Micro SD card, 7 day shop - 2.79
Ethernet patch cable, Farnell - 0.80
Pi3 System - 38.78
Single board computer, no power supply,
(https://www.amazon.co.uk/, cheapest price even when
taking into account bulk discounts from Farnell/CPC and
RS) - 28.99
Power Supply, Amazon - 7
8GB Micro SD card, 7 day shop - 2.79

Table 2 - additional hardware to run 10 XU4 or Pi3

Item Supplier Qty Total Price
Mouser
5v 40A power supply - LRS-200-5 1 32.04
Electronics
16 port switch TP Link (amazon) 1 26.12
Power leads (DC Power connector / micro usb, cable) Farnell 10 9
Remove power supply for Pi3 - not needed as common power
N/A -10 -70
supply

Table 3 - per H per minute

System Price Hashrate /H/m (rounded)
Single XU4 81.63 380 0.22
10 x XU4 883.46 3800 0.23
10 x Pi3 384.96 1100 0.35
Single Pi3 38.78 110 0.35
PC 1478 2200 0.67
Azure N/A - no initial purchase price
 Running Costs per day vs H/m
Table 4 contains the daily (24 hour) running costs for each
system. This assumes an electricity price of 0.1/kWh. Power at
the wall was measured with an Energenie Power Meter which
claims +/- 2% accuracy. Consumption varies, and so these are
again unscientific average figures taken by observation. The
better/lower power figures for the 10x systems is probably a
combination of higher efficiency power supplies and the meter
accuracy. Having scaled the XU4 system up to 40 unit then can
say that the power usage at 10 units roughly correlates and is
probably a bit higher. The Azure price is based on hosting costs
for 24hrs.
Table 4 - per day per H per minute
System Power Usage (at the wall) Price/day Hashrate /day/H/m (rounded)
Single XU4 ~18W 0.0432 380 0.000114
10 x XU4 ~160W 0.384 3800 0.000101
10 x Pi3 ~70W 0.168 1100 0.000168
Single Pi3 ~7.5W 0.018 110 0.000164
PC ~124W 0.298 2200 0.000135
Azure N/A 3.30 1390 0.00237

Profit Summary
Table 5 contains a summary of the profit that can be generated
from each system in hours, days, months and years post
electricity costs. These are all calculated with the following
parameters (correct at the time of writing):
VRM/BTC - 0.0004 BTC
BTC/GBP - 492
Network Hashrate - 970 kH/min
Block Time - 4.51666667 min
Reward - 5.72994331 VRM
The spreadsheet at [10] can be used to input different prices,
hardware and network information to look at potential returns.
The unique algorithm that Verium uses linking hashrate, block-
time and reward means that mining should be profitable for
longer than with other PoW coins.
From the table it can be seen that the Odroid XU4s are by far
the most profitable option for CPU mining, and so the next
article will focus on how to build a scalable miner based around
Odroid XU4s controlled by a Raspberry Pi3. A picture of the
completed miner can be seen below - making around 15kH/m
and consuming around 600W.
Table 5 - Gross Profit Summary (after electricity costs)
System Per Hour Per Day Per Month Per Year
Single XU4 0.0041 0.0976 2.9293 35.6393
10 x XU4 0.0427 1.0244 30.7326 373.9128
10 x Pi3 0.0100 0.2397 7.1910 87.4905
Single Pi3 0.0009 0.0228 0.6831 8.3111
PC 0.0124 0.0216 0.5178 15.5340
Azure -0.2535 -6.0848 -182.5445 -2220.9576

Return on Investment
With the current prices and VRM reward (as above) return on
investment is in the order of 28 months. Clearly this is a long
time, however price can go up and down a lot over this time
period and comparing Verium to other coins with similar total
supplies it does seem vastly undervalued currently.
It is likely that a technology re-fresh of the miner would be
desirable at some point in this timescales to take advantage of
the latest processors to maintain its compatibility. This is where
hardware resale would come into play.
This one might be a bit of moot point for those that want to
keep their computer after it's no longer profitable to mine with
it / it's time to move on to the next project but for those people
that have bought the hardware for the specific purpose of
mining then re-sale will enter into the equation. All the
hardware is easily resalable however it's hard to predict price
and likely isn't anywhere close to being a deciding factor for
which hardware is best (and so hasn't been included in the
profit analysis) but can be viewed as a nice bonus!
Solo vs Pool Mining
As the hash rate on the network rises the rate at which those
with smaller miners manage to hit blocks will drop as they have
a smaller percentage of the overall network rate, however
statistically the small miners will still hit their expected share of
blocks over time.
The psychological advantage of pool mining is that small
amounts of VRM will be earned more frequently, however with
the VRM transmission fee structure it is relatively expensive to
send from the pool back to the wallet. Pool fees also have to be
taken into account over and above the transmission fees.
Taking both these into account in the long term it will be more
profitable to solo mine, but then probability of hitting a block
comes into account and this has to be balanced by the miner to
match their risk / reward appetite. Realistically most people will
rather take the hit on fees and pool mine as they like to see the
rewards trickle in instead of waiting to hit that block. This is
good news for the pool operators!
Summary
Takeaway from this is that if you already have a PC with spare
cores then you could do a lot worse that pointing it at Verium
mining, it is possible to profitably build CPU mining rigs from
single board computers and everyone should sign up for the
free Azure trial[11] and get it mining, but it's not worth paying
for. There might be other options in terms of configurations on
Azure but don't think it would be possible to find a profitable
combination from the look that I have done.
References
1
- https://www.vericoinforums.com/, https://bitcointalk.org/index.
php?topic=602041
2 - https://www.vericoinforums.com/threads/vericoins-post-
white-paper.1002/
3 - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1540023
4 - https://www.vericoinforums.com/threads/ico-poll-for-
remaining-50.1327/
5 - http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?
g_code=G143452239825
6 - https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-
b/
7 - https://github.com/effectsToCause/veriumMiner
8 - https://www.vericoinforums.com/threads/verium-hashrate-
comparision.1392/
9 - http://kb.netgear.com//how-many-clients-can-you-
connect-wirelessly-to-a-netgear-router
10 - https://goo.gl/VUavUn
11 - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/free/