This is number 10 of the mining articles for beginners' and hobby miners, if you're interested at having a go at mining some other coins then check out the rest of my blog here.

Before I begin there are a couple of things to remember; Firstly unless you have an extensive mining setup you're unlikely to get rich (or break even) and Secondly I take no responsibility for any issues you run into if you try this at home (be smart download mining software at your own risk).

This is for informational and fun purposes only; I don't claim to be an expert. If you're reading this and you are more experienced and spot any issues, by all means point it out in the comments and I'll try make the necessary updates.

Introduction

For this article we're going to look at throwing some CPU/GPU mining power at earning BANANO (BAN). Now strictly speaking BAN isn't mined, it is earned through various faucets/airdrops. What we'll actually be doing is setting our CPU/GPU up to receive proof of work (PoW) tasks (for example from wallet transactions) and in return, if you complete the task you get some BAN for your trouble. Additionally, you can run this at the same time as the protein folding work (as in my previous BAN mining article) allowing you to double down on the potential of earning some BAN. If you want to learn a bit more about BAN then head over to https://banano.cc/ and scroll down to read the whitepaper (yellowpaper) and their road map. So far I've found BANANO to have a really fun and active community and wouldn't be surprised if they quietly take over the crypto-sphere, one meme at a time. Anyway, enough of the intro stuff, let's get mining!!

Step 1: The Wallet

First of all we will need to get a wallet, if you've not got one already that is. The options recommended on the BAN site are BananoVault (browser based wallet) and Kalium (an app wallet). For the purposes of this article we'll set up the BananoVault, if you already have have a wallet, or prefer the app then by all means jump ahead the Kalium app setup is not too dissimilar anyway and is easy enough to follow.

1 - Click on create a new wallet (if you don't have one already of course)

2 - If you get a pop-up for windows security and you're not using ledger just hit cancel

3 - Now click on create wallet

4 - On the next page you'll see a few bits of security information, make sure you back this up to a secure location. a) Your Seed key b) Your Mnemonic Phrase c) Once backed up click on "I've saved my seed/mnemonic" to move on to the last step



5 - Finally enter and re-enter a strong password that will be used for interacting with the wallet in future (don't forget it!).

6 - With that complete just click on "view accounts" to move to your main wallet page where you will be able to find your address.

Step 2: The Mining Software

Right just before we dive into the mining software there is a prerequisite for this one. The mining software has been written in Python so what we need to do first is make sure that we have Python version 3.6.7 or higher. So we'll set that up first and then get into the mining software.

1 - Download the latest Python release from here (I've got 3.8.2), it is likely easier if you download the executable version): https://www.python.org/downloads/release

2 - Once downloaded double click it to install, we need to make sure here that we select the add to PATH option as well (otherwise the installation steps for the miner wont work later)

3 - Follow the remaining step for the Python installation (it shouldn't take too long)

4 - With Python set up let's head over to get the mining software for BoomPoW, the latest version can be found here https://github.com/BananoCoin/boompow/releases (I got v2.0.3), go ahead and grab the zipfile and unzip it in a secure location.

5 - You should see the following items once you've unzipped the folder

6 - Finally, we need to open a powershell in that location, you can do this by holding SHIFT and right-clicking in the folder and selecting "Open PowerShell here". Then enter the following command and hit enter

pip3 install --user -r requirements.txt

Give it a couple of mins to finish installing and, if all went well, that should be it the BoomPoW software is ready to go.

Step 3: The Pools

So unlike normal mining there aren't any pools. In fact BoomPoW could be thought of as the pool here as they will be be sending jobs to your PC which your CPU/GPU will attempt to solve and send them back. This is all controlled within the mining software so we don't need to do anything else here.

Step 4: Mining

Right, we have a wallet, we have mining software so let's get earning some tasty tasty BAN.

1 - First head back to your BananoVault (or Kalium if you used that one) wallet and grab you address you'll need this in a min a) If you want to use the default address in your wallet, just mouse over it and click on the "Copy Account Address" button to add the address to your clipboard b) Otherwise, if you want to add a new address specifically for this then click on "Add New Account" in the top right and then mouse over it as before and copy.



2 - Next go to the folder where the software is stored you'll see a file called "run_windows.BAT", right click this file and select edit: a) The main thing we need to do here is set our payout address b) There are also some additional options that allow you to set up multiple GPUs if you have them. Otherwise, the default settings will likely work (if it doesn't, swap out the "--gpu 0:0" option to "1:0" or "0:1" and try again )



Save and close the .BAT file and we're ready to go. Now all you need to do is double click the .BAT file and two command windows should open up that look like this. Congratulations you're mining BAN!! (....Kinda)

Thanks for reading, I also highly recommend following Banano on Publish0x or other fun ways to earn BAN on the fly. They are always setting up games and airdrops that you can get involved in. Plus if you've not specifically invested in BAN then you can always trade them for BTC on a number of exchanges there is a list here with "How-To" guides for trading https://howtobanano.info/all-current-banano-exchanges-an-updated-overview/.

Hope you enjoyed the guide, good luck y'all!

Donations Welcome (BAN):

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