LYNX: A Complete Guide To Mining
An Eco-Friendly, Affordable, Unique Coin with Real World Use
Welcome to the exciting world of Lynx Blockchain (LYNX) where the goal is to turn everything you ever knew about crypto on it’s head and take an entirely unique approach to solving some of the biggest world-wide issues like global energy costs, security and stability of the networks, for-profit mining, democracy of hashing power, and the building of real world use cases on top of the chain.
Hold on! LYNX Does Not Mine Like Other Coins…
Before we even get into this, first you must understand that mining LYNX is very different from traditional crypto mining. It was specifically designed to be democratically hashed by everyday users from low-power devices (i.e. Raspberry Pi) or low cost cloud virtual servers and actually discourages high powered miners by reducing the block rewards to one LYNX plus all mining fees. This means you will not be making huge profits from mining LYNX, rather it is done only to help secure the network and your own investment in it.
Due to it’s low-power design, you are able to mine LYNX using only the core wallet software. No extra mining hardware or software is needed! LYNX has also developed a unique Hybrid Proof of Work (HPoW) mining protocol which employs a non-linear series of interdependent rules that must be satisfied before a miner will ever mint a single block. These HPoW rules also help to keep the LYNX network totally safe from 51% attacks by making it a virtual impossibility for an individual to control or manipulate the chain.
Hybrid Proof of Work (HPoW) Explained…
The name comes from the fact that LYNX is still a traditional Scrypt-based Proof-of-Work coin but has developed a set of rules on top of this protocol which vastly helps to strengthen the network as well as democratize the block rewards while at the same time discouraging the use of high-powered mining rigs which can overpower the network. There are also some small elements of Proof-of-Stake brought in (regarding Rule 2) to further drive home the idea of a hybrid proof of work.
In the traditional sense, the “miner” is thought of as the actual hardware node working on hashing the blocks, separate from the core wallet software. Well as I mentioned above, the only requirement you need to mine LYNX is to be running a core wallet. The core wallet IS the node which has a built-in miner to perform the block hashing calculations and each LYNX address that meets the HPoW rule requirements is considered a “miner” address.
The rules of HPoW can almost be thought of as a triple blind test. They are not applied in any given order but function in harmony as each of the current 3 rules operate independently of one another yet all must pass together in order for you to win a block. On their own, each rule does have it’s personal vulnerabilities and can be exploited by a smart attacker; however when combined these rules form a complete shield wall covering each other’s shortcomings, keeping the overall network perfectly safe and evenly distributed. Let’s look at each rule on it’s own…
Rule #1 — Address Usage Frequency
A single miner can’t win a block more than once every 30 minutes.
The built-in miner randomly selects an address that hasn’t won a block in the previous 60 blocks (block times average around 30 seconds). This chosen miner address will continue to be used by the built-in miner until it wins a block or until it is forced to rotate and use a different miner address. This helps enforce the democracy of the network shares.
The rule itself was designed to prevent a single miner with 1 or more ASICs from mining with the same address, forcing them to do the work of setting up multiples as even the most powerful mining rig can only win 1 out of 60 blocks. Also many out-of-box miner scripts do not rotate addresses so this restricts those types of tools being overused.
To exploit this rule, a hypothetical attacker could simply generate endless addresses. Easy peasy! Honestly just 60 addresses per wallet should be enough to always pass this rule as there will be more addresses than blocks required to wait until re-selection. This hole is covered by Rule 2’s per-address balance requirements.
Rule #2 —Fluctuating Minimum Balance Requirements
The miner’s reward address balance must be greater than or equal to a required fluctuating minimum amount of LYNX to win a block.
The built-in miner checks the amount of LYNX in the selected address which must be equal to or greater than a constantly fluctuating amount between 1,000–100,000,000 LYNX that will slowly raise over time. The chosen number fluctuates in relation to the network hash rate so in these early days while the difficulty is very low having smaller amounts around 1000 LYNX is enough to pass Rule 2. As hash rate increases, however, the required number of LYNX will go up so it will be better to have more in each address than you think you’ll need.
This rule itself ensures the user is committed to the network by essentially staking a small claim in each address. This is how the Proof-of-Stake elements come into the picture. It also covers Rule 1 by preventing a random bot script from generating and mining with endless empty addresses, forcing there to be some value to each one instead. On top of all of that, Rule 2 keeps the network difficulty in check by raising the minimum balance required based on the hashing levels. If it gets too high due to an overpowered miner, the minimum balance gets very expensive and the miner will quickly fail to profit and drop out causing the difficulty to lower and thus the minimum balance needed as well.
To exploit this rule, our would-be attacker must load up each one of their 60 addresses with as much LYNX as they can to make sure each one always passes. To be 100% sure to pass every time, they would need 100 Million LYNX each for a total of 6 Billion LYNX just to bypass Rules 1 and 2. It would be incredibly expensive, and sure it is possible, but then Rule 3 comes in to save the day!
Rule #3 — “Unnatural Selection”
By using random selection, the fastest miners are not always guaranteed to win the block reward.
Move over Darwin, in the case of LYNX the strongest do NOT always win! Instead all “candidates” who pass the other rules are invited to play a little lottery game of sorts. If the built in miner discovers a hash and submits a candidate block, the last digit of the candidate block hash must match the last digit of the hash of the current miners LYNX address. This is a 1 in 16 chance of a match. If the values match, the candidate block is propagated to peer nodes. In the future, this number will change to a 1 in 256 chance then finally to 1 in 4096.
Satoshi was WRONG about mining being like “CPU time and electricity that is expended” by failing to take into account that miners (humans) would create pools and businesses to gamify the mining process — leading to buildups of highly inefficient energy consumption and environmentally disruptive e-waste. This rule removes all likelihood that a miner can guarantee rewards for themselves.
The benefit of this rule should be apparently clear. The randomized nature of the rewards keeps any would-be attackers at bay by simply not letting the biggest, baddest, fastest mining rigs always take the cake and control the party. Rule 3 is chaos! Rule 3 is order! Rule 3 levels the playing field and allows everyone in the world to participate!
Frankly there is no currently known way to exploit this rule other than being astronomically lucky and if you’re that fortunate perhaps you should be playing the real lottery instead ;)
Rules #4 and #5 — For Another Time…
You may have noticed in the LYNX whitepaper that there are 2 more rules defined. These will not be covered in this article as they have not yet gone into effect and will not for quite some time. Upon the day they are announced and enacted I will give them a proper look. Until then let’s just remain focused on the solid trifecta laid out above.
So What Makes LYNX the Right Choice?
Real issues plague the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency and it often feels as though no progress is being made to solve them. Luckily for us all, Lynx Blockchain has come along with a brilliant eco-friendly design utilizing a brand new, unique and highly secure hashing algorithm and mining rewards structure designed to truly align with the original vision of a truly democratic, worldwide, easily accessible currency with real world applications.
🌐 — Far Lower Global Energy Waste Than “Big Coin”
If there’s one thing synonymous with “Bitcoin” it’s “high energy costs.” LYNX has totally solved this issue by allowing all operations to be performed from incredibly low powered devices that use hundreds of times less energy per hour than even the simplest of Bitcoin mining rigs. Below is a side by side comparison of both types of setups. On the left is a Bitcoin GPU mining rig using roughly 1.3 kilowatts per hour. On the right is a Raspberry Pi which can do everything necessary for LYNX and runs at roughly 4 watts per hour. That is literally 325x less energy consumed. Imagine that across the entire globe! What an impact it would have on our society to end the practices of overpowered, energy-wasting mining.
⏩ — Forked From Litecoin For Speed and Agility
Transfers are fast and inexpensive because LYNX was forked from Litecoin (LTC) and continues to downstream most of the advantages and updates that the Litecoin Foundation implements to this day. This includes the smaller block sizes and incredible transaction speeds when compared to big brother Bitcoin. Don’t be fooled, though, this is no mere clone! LYNX is jam packed with unique innovative improvements to their design.
🍁 — Eco-Friendly Design Saves Both Money And The Earth
A major benefit to LYNX is how cost effective it is to mine. I mean we’re talking mere dollars a day GLOBALLY here! Compare that to the many hundreds of thousands spent on electricity costs annually around the world to keep Bitcoin operating and you can begin to understand how much of an impact this coin could really have. Not just on your personal electricity bills or the combined bills of everyone around the globe but putting a halt to the needless waste and carbon emissions created as byproducts of the Bitcoin mining craze.
🔒 — A Truly Secure and Democratic Network
The Hybrid Proof of Work (HPoW) mining protocol was created to solve one of the biggest thorns in the side of blockchain technology to date: The 51% Attack! Because of the way the various rules interconnect with one another and cover each other’s gaps, a complete picture of tight knit security is created and thus the overall trust-less integrity of the network can remain intact for the entire life of the chain.
This new HPoW mining protocol also ensures a truly democratic block minting structure. Not only does the design allow for anyone in the world to participate and start mining on a device that costs less than $50, but it is essentially impossible for any one entity to ever gain a majority control of the network to attack it. Your investment will always be safe!
💻 — A Unique Approach to the Mining Process
Another wonderful design of the Lynx Blockchain is the humble reward structure created to both discourage mining for profit using large power-hungry machines as well as encourage real democracy and integrity in the support system because the only people running the network are those who are genuinely invested in it. So how much is the mining reward you ask?
You will earn 1 LYNX + all mining fees per block.
👶 — A Perfect Way to Introduce Kids to Crypto
It’s never to early to teach valuable lessons in the self management of one’s funds! Because of how inexpensive and easy the process of mining LYNX is, and that it can be run on a Raspberry Pi, it makes the perfect hobby project to help introduce your children into the world of crypto by letting them build, setup, and mine with their very own Pi node using the LynxCI wallet OS. All you need are a few simple pieces and you’re ready to go! Assembling a model plane is 100x more difficult than setting up a LYNX mining node!
💡 Video: How to Install LynxCI onto a Raspberry Pi
💾 — Real Use Case #1: The Logware API Data Storage Layer
The latest advancement in the Lynx Blockchain has most certainly been the addition of a user-friendly encrypted data storage layer known as Logware. This API was developed by the Lynx Blockchain team and is the first real world in-use business application built using LYNX as it’s medium of secure on-chain data storage. In fact, there is a Logware Discord Bot in the main LYNX Discord server which allows anyone in the world to come securely store some data on Logware for free just to try it out!
💸 — Real Use Case #2: The Tipsy Community Wallet Layer
There is also another very fun third-party application built on top of the Lynx Blockchain known as Tipsy. Not only is it an interactive chat bot wallet that can be accessed from either Discord or Twitter allowing you to send LYNX to anyone in the world, but it boasts a wide array of community building features that have proven over the span of a few years to be entertaining, profitable, and above all effective in motivating members into action! Join us in the LYNX Discord server today and interact with this spunky little bot for yourself! You can even earn free LYNX while you chat!
Now lets’s get to what you really came for… mining LYNX for yourself!
How To Mine LYNX
Follow along with these simple steps and you will be mining LYNX in no time!
Step 1 — Install a LYNX Core Wallet
There are a few options (Mac, PC, Linux, Raspberry Pi) but all official LYNX core wallets have built-in mining capabilities. There is no need for any extra hardware or software! Bonus points for you if you go with the Raspberry Pi option. It’s almost entirely automatic!
LynxCI is a self-installing operating system for Linux optimized with LYNX in mind which makes setting up your node an absolute snap! Below are some links for installing LynxCI on both a Pi and a cloud server plus a video explaining how to set up external miner addresses using Coinomi as the example.
💡 Video: How to Install LynxCI onto a Raspberry Pi
💡 Video: How to Install LynxCI onto a Cloud Server
💡 Video: How to Setup LynxCI to Mine Directly to Coinomi
Step 2 — Obtain At Least 1000+ LYNX
Like I mentioned above, Rule #2 of the HPoW protocol requires a mining address to be stocked with an amount ranging from 1000 to 100 Million LYNX so you will need to get your hands on some coins before you can start mining more. The fastest way at the moment is to purchase LYNX from an exchange like Altilly.com using Litecoin (LTC) as the trading market. The price is currently extremely low so it should not be difficult to stock up on a decent amount. Remember, more LYNX means better odds for Rule #2!
Imagine you are playing BINGO! Each of your LYNX mining addresses is like a different card and the amount of LYNX you have in each address is like the amount of numbers on that card. If the ball chosen by HPoW Rule #2 shows a number higher than what you have on your card, naturally you will not be able to mine that block. This is why having more LYNX gives you a better chance. You basically have a larger range of winning numbers to match from!
Another method of obtaining LYNX is by hanging out and chatting in the official Discord server while collecting free “rains” through Tipsy, the official tip bot of the Lynx Blockchain. It’s basically a community-building interactive faucet system that is both funded by and rewards the active participants. Just popping in and saying hello can net you 1000 LYNX right away from any one of the veterans (myself included) who are excited to help newbies get into mining LYNX. Come hang out and have some fun with us!
Step 3 — Stock Your Address(es) With Your Initial Funds
Now that you have installed a wallet and obtained some LYNX it’s time to begin the real setup process. Although it’s your core wallet app doing all of the computational hashing work, it is actually each of your LYNX addresses that are considered the “miners” in this case. By stocking multiple addresses you are creating more chances to win a block because you will have more “miners” to make the attempts for you.
So while HPoW Rule #1 works by rotating through your addresses, HPoW Rule #2 has us stock some initial LYNX into those addresses to validate their stake essentially. Once an individual address tries to mine, it must wait 59 more blocks to do so again. The solution is to deposit separate stacks of LYNX into different addresses for your wallet to cycle through when mining. Technically if you had 60 well-stocked addresses per mining node, you’d fully satisfy Rule 1 and 2 every time.
The Core Wallet Has Two (2) Options For Setting Up Mining Addresses:
☝ Option 1) Simply use the wallet as normal, sending your LYNX directly to it, making sure to keep track of the actual addresses you are depositing to so you know when they are each properly stocked and you can move onto the next.
PROS — This is the easiest method for keeping up with all of your assets and requires no additional configuration of the core wallet.
CONS — If your computer or Pi is ever compromised or wiped you risk losing all of your funds! Remember your private keys are actual files you must backup! That wallet is contained in the wallet.dat file and should be securely backed up on a regular basis.✌ Option 2) Stash your LYNX externally in another wallet/app, then reference your stocked mining addresses in the mining wallet’s lynx.conf file. Doing this disables the built in wallet so any funds in it are ignored by the miner.
PROS — Your funds are not tied to the health of your mining node so if things go awry you can rest assured your LYNX are all safe elsewhere.
CONS — This requires some additional back end customizing so your wallet knows to look for your funds elsewhere. Just below is a link to a video tutorial on how to mine LYNX externally using the Coinomi Wallet. This logic also applies to every other third party wallet, including Tipsy!
Step 4 — Back Away and Let The Built-In Miner Work
That’s it! You’re done. The network will work out the addresses automatically and begin to run them against the rules. Just to recap: HPoW Rule #1 will make sure the address has not been used lately. HPoW Rule #2 compares a fluctuating number against your balance to verify you have at least that amount. HPoW Rule #3 then makes a random lottery selection of all available block candidates to award the win.
👏👏👏 THANK YOU FOR HELPING TO SECURE LYNX! 👏👏👏
If you are comfortable with the command line in Linux you can type the command
sudo tail -F /root/.lynx/debug.logto open and view the live log of activity from your miner. To close this log just pressCTRL+C.
More Information & Resources
Now that you have the basics under your belt it’s time to dive deeper and to really get involved with the community! Check out the links below for more information on Lynx Blockchain and where you can get LYNX right now!
Official LYNX Properties:
🌐 — Official Website
📓 — Whitepaper
📺 — YouTube Channel
🐦 — Twitter Feed
💬 — Reddit Group
💬—Discord Server
👋 — Coin Announcement
💾 — Logware API Layer
How You Can Acquire LYNX Today:
📈 — Purchase LYNX with Litecoin (LTC) on the Altilly.com Exchange
