Profit switch is one of those functions every miner wants, especially when there are more and more coins available at the marker or when the rewards are lower and every cent matters.
If you are looking for profit switch for ASIC, continue with this tutorial.
It is also one of those functions that are very hard to apply. There are several providers offering profit switch functions, such as NiceHash which is a marketplace and where you can switch between different algorithms on their own platform or Mining Pool Hub which supports a large number of pools for various algorithms and you can decide in which cryptocurrency you want to be paid out.
When we decided to implement a profit switch we were wondering which approach could we take. Since we are monitoring and management software, we don’t own any pools and don’t have a simple, straightforward way to compare a few values and decide regarding them what is best. What made our solution easier to implement was the fact that we have implemented the address editor.
Address editor
As mentioned in one of the previous tutorials, the address editor is like an address book of all of your pools and wallets addresses. Because you defined them and use them in the config settings, our profit switch algorithm can choose between them to know where to connect and to which wallet to mine. So if you haven’t already, open your address editor and define pools at which you want to mine and the wallets to which you will mine. After that, you will be able to add other profit switch settings.
For today’s example, we will prepare the profit switch between ETH, ETC, ZEC, ZCL, NiceHash Ethash, and NiceHash Equihash. So we will switch between 6 different options.
So, the first thing to do is to define pools and wallets.
We will need to add 6 pool addresses for:
- ETH mining;
- ETC mining;
- ZEC mining;
- ZCL mining;
- NiceHash DaggerHashimoto stratum address;
- NiceHash Equihash stratum address.
And we will need to add 5 wallet addresses:
- ETH address;
- ETC address;
- ZEC address;
- ZCL address;
- BTC address used for mining on NiceHash (either your own or from NiceHash wallet).
After that, the address editor is ready and you can navigate to profit switch.
Profit switch
Target
Profit switch can be applied to one worker or multiple workers at once. When selecting a target to which profit switch will apply, you can select all workers from certain groups or just mark individual workers to which you want to apply the profit switch.
If you target only one worker, your profit switch page will refresh and load the settings for this worker. If you target multiple workers, the settings will be blank and you will need to fill them. So in case you want to copy settings from one worker to multiple workers, first select one worker to load the settings, then add other multiple workers as the target (leaving that first worker still selected as the target).
Coins
In the coins section, we need to define coins between which the algorithm will switch. Select coin, the pool that was defined in the address editor, the wallet that was defined in address editor, and the pool’s fee if you want to take this aspect into consideration as well. If you don’t want to include the pool fees in the final calculation, you can leave this at 0%.
You can also select the mining client you want to use for mining this coin and set it a custom configuration. If you want to use the default settings, keep the option Autoselect.
Hashrate and consumption settings + dual mining
You need to enter the hash rates for individual algorithms and their power consumption manually. Because different algorithms can be overclocked with different settings, you can also determine which overclocking profile you want to use for a certain algorithm.
In our example, we will enter the hashrates for two algorithms: Ethash and Equihash. On Ethash our GTX 1080 reached 31 MH/s with consumption 110 W, and for Equihash 480 MH/s with consumption 110 W. For overclocking we won’t change anything, so the overclocking settings that will be applied will be those that the worker has defined in its config. We won’t be dual mining.
If you don’t know the hashrates, you can load them from the benchmark or from our hardware database.
Electricity costs
If you want to take electricity costs into consideration for profit switch, then enter your electricity costs. In our case, this is 0.11 EUR for kW/h.
When to switch?
The minimum difference defines when you want to switch. The default setting is 1%, but you can enter any number larger than 0%. So if you want to switch to the new coin when the new coin is 0.5% better than the current coin, enter 0.5%. If you want to switch to the new coin when the new coin is 5% better than the current coin, enter 5%. And so on.
The minimum mining time defines the minimum amount of time you want to mine the coin to which you switched. The default value is set at 10 minutes, but you can increase it in case you are mining on pools that sanction frequent pools switching.
Reward method
Select the reward method you want to use.
- The “Normal” method will select the reward as it is.
- The “Ignore outliers” method will replace outliers with the mean value.
- The “Apply penalties” method will penalize all rewards in regards to how dispersed are the rewards in the last 4 hours.
You can read more about each reward method in this article.
Save changes and your profit switch profile is ready. After that, don’t forget to activate profit switch for your workers through worker’s config or on the workers’ list under switch miner icon.
How does the profit switch work?
Every 10 minutes we check the coins you included in the profit switch. We calculate the currently estimated reward regarding the currency difficulty, current block reward, current exchange rate of the coin, and the hashing speed you have defined in your profit switch settings. If you have included pool fees, the reward is reduced regarding the percentage you have entered. If you have included electricity costs, they are deducted from the final reward.
Finally, if the reward for the coin that is selected as the most profitable coin is higher by the percentage you have entered in profit switch function (for example, 0.5%), then we configure your worker so that it starts mining on the pool and wallet you have selected for this coin.
When you are deciding which coins to include to the profit switch, we suggest to think about the payout system of the pool, what is the minimum amount of coins you need for the payout, which coins are interesting to you, etc.
Mining calculator
If you are wondering what are the exact numbers behind the profit switch, you can check our mining calculator. Type the hashing speeds for selected algorithms, name your dataset, include the electricity costs and you are ready to see how are all possible coins for mining are ranked regarding the estimated profit they make in USD (or any other fiat currency you prefer).
The mining calculator doesn’t include the pool fees so it is only a replica of our profit switch algorithm. We also offer a list of coins for you to browse around and find more details about which miners, which hardware, and which minerstat software can be used for mining a certain coin and how profitable the coin was in the past.
Have more questions regarding the profit switch? Join us on Discord.
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