ethereum-mining/ethminer

Ethminer is a program that uses a computer's graphics card to mine cryptocurrency. Specifically, it is built around the Ethash algorithm, which was the proof-of-work system used by Ethereum and several similar coins including Ethereum Classic, Musicoin, and Ellaism. The project originated from the official Ethereum C++ client but was picked up and extended by independent developers after GPU mining support was removed from the original project. The software works by connecting your GPU to a mining pool, which is a group of computers that combine their computing power to find new blocks and share the rewards. You point ethminer at a pool address, provide your wallet address, and it runs continuously in the background generating hashes. It supports both AMD graphics cards (via OpenCL) and Nvidia graphics cards (via CUDA), and it can fail over to a backup pool if the primary connection drops. Installation is straightforward: download the correct pre-built executable for your operating system from the releases page, unzip it, and run it from the command line. There is no graphical interface. Building from source is also documented for users who need a customized version. The FAQ section addresses common performance questions. Nvidia GTX 1080 cards can be slower than GTX 1070 cards because of the specific type of memory they use. Graphics cards with 4GB of video memory struggle because the mining dataset (called the DAG) has grown larger than 4GB, causing a significant drop in performance. Windows 10 users with Nvidia cards sometimes see lower speeds than Linux users due to differences in how the Windows driver model handles GPU memory. Ethminer is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3. Note that Ethereum itself switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in September 2022, so this tool no longer has a use for mining Ethereum on the main network. It may still apply to coins that kept the Ethash algorithm.