How to Mine Ravencoin (2023 Guide)

“How to mine Ravencoin?” If you’ve stumbled upon this lucrative coin, this is the question that you likely need an answer to. Luckily, you don’t need much to get into the business of mining Ravencoin, and plenty of enthusiasts have managed to earn a significant amount of money that way, using just a gaming PC to mine it.

Ethereum’s shift to proof of stake has changed the mining landscape somewhat, and other proof-of-work coins like it have benefitted from increased hash power and security.

But what is mining, and why should you learn how to mine Ravencoin? Read on to learn all about this unique cryptocurrency and how to earn an income from mining Ravencoin today!

What is Crypto Mining?

The concept of blockchain-based digital assets and payment systems has its roots in the global financial crisis of 2008. Bad bets and worse management by major banks led to the meltdown of the world’s economies and disaster for families everywhere.

Out of the ashes of this disaster emerged Bitcoin, the framework for a revolutionary system that didn’t rely on banks or their ilk. Rather, the OG cryptocurrency was designed to be upheld and propagated by as many individual computers as possible anywhere in the world.

The cornerstone of this distributed, or decentralized, system is mining. Termed as such because it tasks computers with performing intensive jobs with a monetary reward at the end of the tunnel, cryptocurrency mining actually goes a lot deeper than just that.

Given the fact that blockchains are run on and by dozens, if not thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of computers, they can’t be controlled by just one entity. A single node doesn’t have the authority to do anything unless it reaches a consensus with the majority of the network’s other nodes.

In proof-of-work blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ravencoin, these mining nodes attempt to solve a complex cryptographic hash. What they’re actually doing here is wrapping all of the transactions that took place on the network into a block. This problem is difficult to solve and requires a significant amount of hash power.

When all, or the defined quota, of the blockchain’s miners agree that the solution to the puzzle is right, the network is said to have reached a consensus. Given that the puzzle they agree on is actually the details of the transactions that took place, what results is a distributed set of nodes coming to an agreement on what the truth is.

Thus, crypto mining is extremely important, at least for the blockchain in question. That’s why it’s also incentivized so well, with the miners on the network competing for the new coins that are generated.

What is Ravencoin?

As mentioned, Ravencoin is a proof-of-work blockchain. It was designed to be one thing and one thing only—a digital peer-to-peer network facilitating the transfer of assets from one party to another.

If you think that sounds quite a bit like Bitcoin, you’re not mistaken. It’s far newer but pays homage to the grand old grandfather of blockchains, having been launched on the 9th anniversary of Bitcoin’s own launch, the 3rd of January, 2018.

As a matter of fact, Ravencoin shares a lot more than a launch date with Bitcoin.It’s a fork of Bitcoin, meaning that the Ravencoin team took the Bitcoin code and made some changes before launching it as its own blockchain.

It also had a “fair launch,” eschewing any sort of private or public sale prior to going live. This is a marked difference from most projects since the accepted strategy is to raise funds prior to launch via an ICO or some sort of token generation event.

One of the reasons Ravencoin came into being was the fact that ASIC mining had taken over Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto’s original intention with BTC was for it to be mined by the CPUs of users’ personal computers. This is how things were at the start, but miners first discovered that GPUs were more efficient, then designed special mining computers called ASICs.

The problem with ASICs is that they deviate from the original vision of Bitcoin. Mining became a business, and the network’s hash rate gravitated towards businesses benefiting from low electricity costs and who were willing to provide a significant outlay towards setting up ASIC mining farms.

Ravencoin was launched to be ASIC-resistant. It began with the X16R algorithm, has forked since, and now uses KAWPOW. This algorithm is derived from ProgPOW as well as Ethereum’s Ethash and keeps Ravencoin mining strictly on GPUs.

What do You Need to Mine Ravencoin

Since Ravencoin and its KAWPOW mining algorithm areASIC-resistant, what you’ll need to mine the Ravencoin blockchain and its RVN coin is a consumer-grade GPU. Or, if you’re looking to set up a beefy mining rig, several consumer GPUs.

Luckily, consumer GPUs are far cheaper than ASIC mining machines, and they have a lot more value on the resale market in case you decide one day that you’d like to quit mining. Ethereum’s proof of stake switch also took a lot of pressure off the GPU market. Manufacturers are constantly adjusting their prices upward, but at least GPU scalpers, for the most part, are out of business.

A further benefit of GPUs is that it’s quite easy to build a rig with them. There are even specialized mining motherboards out there that can handle up to 18 GPUs. Just remember that you’ll need a corresponding array of power supply units (PSUs) to run that many cards, as well as cooling, risers, and other peripherals to tie it all together.

How to Mine Ravencoin

Now that you know all about Ravencoin mining and what’s needed, all that remains is to get started. Here’s how you become a Ravencoin miner:

#1. Get a Wallet

Don’t take another step until you get a Ravencoin wallet and become comfortable with it. After all, how are you going to get any mining payouts without a wallet? Remember to save your recovery seed somewhere safe as well, or else all your profits are at severe risk.

#2. Draw up a Business Plan

Before you jump right in, it might be wise to take a deep breath and figure out all of your angles. You’ll need somewhere to house your Ravencoin mining rig, as well as sufficient power and cooling. That’s on top of the expense of buying the GPUs themselves.

Once you’ve figured out all of the initial costs as well as what you’ll have to pay over time (electricity and rent if you want a dedicated space for your rig or farm), you’ll also need to figure out whether to join a mining pool or do it alone.

#3. Set up your Ravencoin Mining Rig

Now that you’re sure of your plan, you can go ahead and put down the investment needed to buy your GPUs, motherboard, power supply, cooling, and everything else you’ll need. Of course, if you just want to mine a little Ravencoin on the side with your work or gaming PC, skip right ahead to the next step!

#4. Download Mining Software

With your rig all set up and configured just right, all that remains is to download the correct mining software. You’ll need the official Ravencoin mining software if you want to mine solo, but if you’re going with a pool, you may need to download the mining pool’s third-party software.

#5. Add Your Wallet Address to Mining Software

Before you run the mining software in earnest, remember to edit the settings to input your wallet address! The software will come with a readme.txt on how to do this, and it’s generally quite simple—edit the file with a text editor and paste your Ravencoin wallet address into the correct field.

#6. Start Mining Ravencoin

Now you’re good to go. Fire up your mining software, and your Ravencoin mining journey is underway. Just remember to keep an eye on your GPU rig and make sure it’s running optimally, meaning not requiring too much power and definitely not overheating!

Is Ravencoin Mining Profitable?

The profit margin you can expect to earn when you mine Ravencoin depends on several factors. One of the most important, naturally, is the price of RVN at the time.

Thanks to the fluctuation inherent in the cryptocurrency market, there may be times when the RVN coin is trading very low alongside the majority of other cryptos. In this sort of bear market, you may find that mining RVN, or indeed any other cryptocurrency, is difficult to make a profit from.

That said, when the price of RVN goes up, so too does the interest of other miners since the potential profit increases. This then brings a slew of new miners in, which pushes the mining difficulty up and brings your profit potential back down again.

On top of that are the costs that you have to deal with, such as electricity. This is one of the biggest factors when mining since power isn’t cheap, and your mining rig will need plenty of it. If you’re in an area with cheap energy, then there’s more profit to be had from mining Ravencoin.

How to Maximize Profit Mining Ravencoin

The easiest way to maximize profit is to keep an eye on your costs, such as the aforementioned electricity. Finding yourself the best deal for power, moving to an area with cheap or free power, or throwing up a few solar arrays can do wonders for your Ravencoin mining profits.

Given the fact that cryptocurrencies fluctuate so much against fiat, you could also consider stockpiling the RVN that you mine until the right time to sell. This is standard operating procedure for many miners, and it makes the most sense to do so as long as you can afford the wait. That said,the markets could go down just as easily as they go up, so use your best judgment.

Then there’s the fact that mining is very similar to a lottery. Granted, your mining rig is a ticket that keeps on entering you for new draws once it’s up and running, but you still incur costs.

If you’re trying to mine Ravencoin using just your home PC or a small rig, you might struggle to make anything at all by mining solo. To gain regular payouts, most small miners join a mining pool.

What is a Mining Pool?

The problem with a lottery, as many people have found out, is that you can throw as much money at it as frequently as you want but never, ever win. Luckily, there’s an easy way to beat the system!

A mining pool brings together the hash power of all participating miners into a far greater mass that makes up a significant, or significant enough, portion of the network’s total hash rate. Put simply, this means that even though you stand almost no chance of winning if you go it alone, the odds of the pool itself winning blocks are far higher.

A mining pool with 10% of the network’s total hash rate could, for instance, be expected to win one in ten blocks on average. This may not sound like much until you remember that a blockchain is no weekly jackpot—blocks are being mined every minute on Ravencoin and every ten minutes on Bitcoin.

So, your pool with a 10% hash rate can win a Ravencoin block every ten minutes or so. The pool can then split the block reward among all participating miners. So, while you’re giving up a chance to win the jackpot of a block yourself, you are actually making a little bit of RVN every day proportional to your hash rate.

For miners with small rigs or a single GPU,joining a mining pool is almost a necessity if they’re going to make any gains at all from Ravencoin mining.

Benefits of Mining Ravencoin

Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you may want to seriously consider mining Ravencoin:

• Passive income. Although it could be argued that crypto mining is a business that requires active work, a lot of the time, you can just set up your Ravencoin rig and just let it run while you do something else. For that reason, it qualifies as a potentially lucrative passive income stream!
• Fair launched coin. Ravencoin was subject to a fair launch, unlike the vast majority of cryptocurrencies. It’s a lot like Bitcoin in that you don’t have to worry about venture capitalists or team members unloading their bags and depressing the coin’s price.
• Decentralized blockchain. Ravencoin is a decentralized blockchain, with much of the mining power and coins in the hands of the public rather than the team, early investors, or anything like that.

Cons of Mining Ravencoin

Not every crypto miner decides on Ravencoin, though. The main reason why is tied to the fact that Ravencoin as a network has limited use cases.

While being fairly launched is an excellent selling point, Ravencoin as a blockchain doesn’t have that much utility. It serves as a very efficient, decentralized payment network but doesn’t offer much beyond that.

Alternatives to Mining Ravencoin

There’s always the chance that, having read this far, your enthusiasm is on the wane for Ravencoin, but you’re still keen on doing a little crypto mining. Here are some of the best alternatives!

#1. Bitcoin Gold

Bitcoin Gold is ASIC-resistant thanks to the fact that its mining algorithm uses more memory than an ASIC can manage. It’s number one on this list because of its market capitalization as well as the fact that you can pivot from mining Ravencoin to BTG with just a quick change of software.

#2. Ergo

Second on this list only because of its lower market capitalization, Ergo may actually be one of the most compelling projects on this list. It’s a smart contract capable proof of work blockchain that’s part of the Cardano ecosystem, and its ERGO coin is almost completely in public hands.

#3. Grin

Grin is a privacy coin that doesn’t reveal addresses or amounts on the blockchain and doesn’t store spent output data either. It’s lightweight and based on MimbleWimble, but note that you’ll need a GPU or GPUs with more than 6 GB of VRAM to mine GRIN.

#4. Ethereum Classic

“Code is law.” If you like the sound of that, you’ll like Ethereum Classic. It’s a hard fork of Ethereum resulting from the DAO hack and represents the community that decided to live with the consequences of the hack rather than roll back. It also didn’t make the shift to proof of stake as Ethereum did, so you can still mine it with a GPU mining rig.

#5. Monero

Monero is a great coin to mine, but it’s a little further down the list because you can’t use GPUs to mine it. It’s one of the rare cryptocurrencies mined on the CPU, so if you’re mining Ravencoin with your home PC, you could actually consider mining Monero at the same time.

#6. Bitcoin

Likewise, Bitcoin can’t be mined, or at least not very efficiently, with a GPU. Bitcoin mining is dominated by ASIC machines, which are a whole lot more efficient than GPUs. Still, if you’d like to mine some crypto but aren’t convinced by too many of them, why not stick with the OG?

Future of Ravencoin Mining

Ravencoin is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies as far as miners are concerned, and its popularity was high even while Ethereum remained a proof-of-work cryptocurrency. Now that Ethereum is proof of stake, many miners have flocked to Ravencoin.

That said, a glut of miners doesn’t necessarily make a coin profitable. The fiat price of Ravencoin’s RVN cryptocurrency will ultimately dictate how profitable or even worthwhile it is to mine in the long run.

The blockchain is very attractive for what it is if you’re looking for a decentralized, fair-launched payment network. Beyond that, though, Ravencoin remains limited. Therefore, the brunt of the responsibility for Ravencoin’s future, both as a mineable coin and a network, rests in the hands of its community and developers.

Key Takeaways

Ravencoin is a proof-of-work blockchain that was forked from Bitcoin, retaining some elements of its code but making key alterations. One of the main changes that the RVN developers made was the adoption of a consensus algorithm that is ASIC-resistant, meaning that you can only mine Ravencoin using GPUs.

RVN is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies among miners thanks to its fair-launched nature, and you can also mine Ravencoin in just a few easy steps. You’ll need however many GPUs you can muster, although it’s possible to accumulate RVN just by mining with your gaming or work PC.

Crypto mining is a lot like a lottery, however, so you’ll have to consider joining a Ravencoin mining pool unless you plan on setting up a mining farm with a significant hash rate.

Ravencoin Mining FAQ

• Is there a Ravencoin mining calculator?

  There are lots of unofficial Ravencoin mining calculators out there, such as the one run by Minerstat. Simply enter your electricity cost, hash rate, power consumption, and pool fee, and the calculator will do the rest.

• Should you join a Ravencoin mining pool?

  That depends on what sort of payouts you’re after. If the investment doesn’t matter to you and you’d like to fish for the entire block reward, go solo. If you think you have no chance to do that and are happy with small, regular blocks of RVN, a pool is your best bet.

• What’s the Ravencoin mining difficulty?

  The Ravencoin mining difficulty fluctuates depending on how much hash rate there is on the network. This is so that the average block time stays at 1 minute, irrespective of how efficiently miners are solving for them.

• Is Ravencoin mining profitable?

  It can be. Profitability depends on the hash rate and payout versus cost, so if you can minimize the latter, you should be able to make a profit as long as the RVN coin maintains a reasonable price.