How to Earn VRSC Solo Mining with Your CPU and Staking Mined Coins!

Easy step by step guide to CPU solo mining Verus Coin (VRSC) on your computer using the Verus Agama wallet + How to Stake and earn more VRSC

Quick Access Tip: Already understand the different ways to mine? Skip down to Part 2!

Part 1 — Jump in the Pool or Solo It..or Both?

Pool mining is a great way to participate in the distributed securing of a blockchain while earning rewards often sooner and more regularly than “solo mining”. Whether solo or pool mining however, ultimately the results should be about the same as far as coins earned.

Solo Mining doesn’t have to be “solo” either! You can split your computer power, mining solo AND pool simultaneously. Whether using just CPU power, or a combination of CPU and GPU, running the pool miner and Agama side by side is no problem.

What Exactly is Pool Mining?

In pool mining, many workers are pooling computer resources and as a result, any rewards from blocks found by the pool are distributed fairly to all pool participants. If, for example, you had a pool with 24 miners and each contributed the exact same hash power to the pool, then when a block reward of 24 was won for a block found by the pool, each person would receive 1 coin.

Pool mining is the quickest way to get started mining Verus and earning VRSC. To learn how, check out my simple 5 minute quick start guide to CPU mining here:

And What’s Solo Mining Again?

In solo mining, you run a fully synchronized node and mine the blockchain directly from your Verus wallet. This is also a really great way to help secure the network, becoming a fully synced node of the blockchain while mining…and for any block found you get the full block reward. You may not find a block for a while, so rewards may be more sporadic, but a full 24 coins when you do win a block.

“Dual Mining” with Your CPU

If you use your CPU to “dual mine” pool and solo, simply “split” your CPU thread power between the two. If your CPU has, say, 8 threads (common for a 4 Core CPU) you can assign 4 threads to Pool mining and 4 threads to Solo mining. While you should have the same earning potential either way (minus very small pool mining fees), this gives you the opportunity to earn a steady stream of VRSC and every once in a while get that “bump” of 24 coins in a single block mined from your solo miner.

To set up dual mining in this way, simply follow this guide for setting up the Solo side and then follow my 5 min quick start guide for setting up the Pool side…making sure to assign the threads you want for each (if you split between just assign half to solo and half to pool).

Mining with Your CPU and GPU

If you have a modern and capable CPU AND GPU (for now that means Nvidia for GPU), you can mine using both of these hardware types simultaneously. You can split up your CPU power however you like, Pool mining only, Solo mining only, or both.

You can then loop your GPU into the party using the CCMiner available from Verus Discord community member Chris of LOUD Mining. The latest build is available at https://github.com/monkins1010/ccminer/releases/tag/Verus2

Part 2 — Setting Up Solo Mining with Verus Agama

Solo mining with Verus enhanced Agama is extremely simple to get setup and started. It takes a little bit more time than setting up Pool mining because you’re setting up a full node (Native mode) of Verus and syncing up the Verus blockchain.

Solo mining is one of the best ways to participate in the decentralization and securing of the Verus blockchain and you earn VRSC for it! Also, by enabling Staking in the Verus Agama wallet, mined coins can begin earning you even more Verus Coin (after shielding and unshielding them, details in Part 4).

Okay let’s begin!

Step 1

Download and unzip the portable Verus enhanced Agama for your OS at https://veruscoin.io/#download

Open Verus enhanced Agama and on the first screen, choose VRSC from the “Native mode” drop down and at the next screen, you’ll see that the chain is loading…and notice in the upper left it will say “Native”: