How Long Takes To Mine 1 Zcash ZEC
I've been trying to mine Zcash for some time and I found a good article so I thought to share it with everyone so if anybody is interested to mine it would be really helpful. This is Part One and I'll put part Two pretty soon for you all let me know if you have any thoughts on this. Thanks and I hope this helps you make some money:D This Zcash Mining Guide is geared towards the absolute beginner that wants to begin mining Zcash but has no experience in Linux.
If you are a Linux Guru then you can simply head on over Github and follow the Zcash Sprout 1.0 guide The first thing you need to know is that Zcash is only programmed to run on Linux. If you are anything like I was you have only worked with Windows or Apple devices your entire life and that name Linux invokes images of dreadful hard-to-understand coding and old command line interfaces. This is only somewhat true, you will have to dive into a bit of code but for the most part Ubuntu is pretty easy to use. I’m going to share with you tips and tricks I learned using Linux to make your life easier and you will see that Linux only takes a little getting used to and if you have the time and are willing to do a little homework you too can be mining Zcash in a few hours. I have broken this guide into three parts: Part 1 Installing Linux Part 2 Basic Linux Guide Part 3 Installing/Mining Zcash So let’s get started!
I've been trying to mine Zcash for some time and I found a good article so I thought to share it with by cryptoinfo.
If you have a Windows or Apple machine the first step is for you to install a VM (Virtual Machine) on your computer. A VM will allow you to run Linux on your computer with minimal effort and will allow you to play around with Zcash mining with no risk to your computers operating system. The beauty of VM’s is that if you mess something up, no biggie, you can just delete the entire VM and start over. The downside of mining Zcash in a VM is that it will never be able to dedicate 100% of your computer’s hardware to mine since your Windows or OSX operating system will always need to save some resources for itself.
Later if you get serious about mining and want to get the most work out of your machine you should follow this video about how to set up a dual-boot Linux machine. First step for getting you a VM is to head over to and click on the big blue button that says “Download Virtualbox”. Now while that is downloading head over to and download the latest version of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that is easy to work with for new users since it feels similar to Windows or OSX, some Linux gurus may have a personal preference for an different version, but for the newbie Ubuntu works well.
ZCash is the first zero knowledge crypto protocol. Zcash offers total payment confidentiality, while still maintaining a decentralized network using a public blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin, Zcash transactions automatically hide the sender, recipient, and value of all transactions on the blockchain. Only those with the correct view key can see the contents. Users have complete control and can opt-in to provide others with their view key at their discretion. For general Cryptocurrency discussion, please see.
I think you are mixing up a few things here. There is a difference between number of confirmations and Block times. The target block interval for Bitcoin is every 10 mins, where with Zcash the Block interval is 2.5 mins. And Zcash has 2MB blocks (compared to 1MB for Bitcoin) so that means that Zcash currently has roughly 8x the transaction capacity of Bitcoin.
(4x as many blocks with double the capacity per Block) Now the second part of your question is about the actual transactions. With Zcash there are two different types of addresses T- Transparent and Z-Private. A Transparent transaction is much faster than Bitcoin for the reasons listed above. How Can I Mine Gulden NLG Cash on this page. A Private transaction is just as fast on the network but takes longer on your individual computer because it has to encrypt the transaction before it is sent to the network for confirmation. Right now the average PC takes about 40 seconds and 3.1 GB of RAM to perform a JoinSplit (Private) transaction. Transparent transactions don't have to encrypt anything and take the same amount of PC effort to create as Bitcoin does.
As far as network congestion goes: If a block contained only Transparent (unshielded) transactions the network limit would be about 26.67 tx/s for average tx size of 500 bytes. For an average transaction size of 2000 bytes in a Shielded Transaction (JoinSplits are at least 1.5 kB IIRC, larger for more than two inputs or outputs), that's 6.67 tx/s for the targeted block interval of 150s. Keep in mind the team is working on reducing the JoinSplit size so that will only increase the max number of Shielded tx/s.
Therefore since blocks currently contain a mix of Shielded and Transparent transactions the network limit is (currently) somewhere between 6.67 and 26.67 transactions per second. TLDR: if every single Bitcoin user immediately switched to Zcash today, Zcash would still be faster and have capacity to spare. I've never heard of congestion issues like those that exist for Bitcoin and Ethereum. I bet a ton more people would need to be using ZCash for that to happen. I think that what you're referring to about the performance isn't about the mining -- it's about sending private transactions to Z-addresses (shielded addresses). Your ZCash node has to perform an expensive calculation to generate the zero-knowledge proofs required to send the ZEC without revealing how much or to whom. Once that's generated, however, the shielded transaction is added to the blockchain like regular transparent transactions.
Since the block time is shorter, this ought to be faster than for Bitcoin, as you mentioned. Sending ZCash to/from transparent addresses should be very similar to Bitcoin transactions with the difference being the shorter block time.
Hope I'm describing this accurately, and hope this helps! Edit: for reference, I tested a transaction from t-address to z-address. DigiByte DGB Mining Hardware Australia here.
It took about 2 minutes of nearly 100% CPU usage and zcashd held about 2.6GB of memory during that time. I bet that's what your podcast was talking about. This is the cost of complete transaction privacy, however.