So much SNOW
Snowblossom (SNOW) is a peculiar coin which had a fair launch (no premine) in June 2018. Coin metrics closely follow Bitcoin model. Key features include quantum resistance and unique PoW algorithm designed to be ASIC resistant from the ground up. It is I/O dependant and doesn’t benefit from fast CPU’s or GPU’s, storage speed is the most important. Mining documentation is scattered around so we will try to aggregate all of the required info in this How To Mine Snowblossom tutorial.
Try not to judge SNOW by its archaic website, explore and participate in the community for a bit before deciding if this coin is worth your time. Discord server currently has 955 members. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Shoveling SNOW
This tutorial focuses on Ubuntu but can be applied to other linux distributions with slight modifications. Snowblossom algorithm tortures your storage units and requires at least a solid SATA SSD for any meaningful hashing speed. Don’t worry about wearing out your SSD’s, there won’t be many write operations happening, only read. RAM is ideal for mining SNOW but current Snowfield required for mining is 256 GB in size, hence many people fall back to NVMe or SATA SSD’s. If you want more performance and have more than one SSD, use RAID to squeeze out more hashing power. But what are Snowfields anyway? Check SNOW wiki for more info.
Preparing SNOW
First thing you need to do is start downloading current Snowfield, it is a very large file and could take a while to download depending on your connection speed. So let’s start with that. Visit block explorer and check what does the activated_field line say. Current Snowfield is called bugbear, it is fairly large bear, 256 GB in size. All Snowfields are linked here.
Time to start downloading bugbear Snowfield, you will need a torrent client. Use one of your choosing or install simple command line based client called Aria:
sudo apt install aria2
Create new directory and start downloading, you can stop the download and continue later if you need to:
mkdir snow && cd snow aria2c https://snowblossom.org/snowfields/snowblossom.8.torrent
While we are waiting for the download to finish, let’s pick a mining pool. Most pools are listed here. Pick the one you like. Many pools seem to be following SNOW homepage and have barebone or even no website. Hence we picked this pool, it has proper website when compared to others. Don’t forget to spread the hash, avoid using the biggest pool to keep the network healthy.
Digging SNOW
Next we need to install the miner, but first let’s install Java as miner requires it for running:
sudo apt update sudo apt install default-jre-headless
Download latest release from SNOW github:
wget https://github.com/snowblossomcoin/snowblossom/releases/download/1.5.0/snowblossom-1.5.0.zip
Install unzip tool if you don’t have it already:
sudo apt install unzip
Unzip the release:
unzip snowblossom-1.5.0.zip && rm snowblossom-1.5.0.zip cd snowblossom-1.5.0/
Before we get any further, you will need a SNOW wallet. You can create it manually (backup is a must) or you can use exchange (qtrade) wallet, which is easier and quicker option. Albeit less secure. Manual creation involves running node.sh, letting it sync and then creating your wallet with client.sh. Pick the option you prefer and note your SNOW address. You can use it with or without snow: prefix, both ways work.
By now, Snowfield download should be completed. Copy it’s full path along with your wallet address and let’s configure your miner:
cd configs/ nano pool-miner.conf
Example config is posted below, edit with your details and save it:
#Snowblossom PoolMiner Configuration File network=snowblossom #Logging configuration log_config_file=configs/logging.properties #Mining pool address #https://github.com/snowblossomcoin/snowblossom/wiki/Mining-Pools pool_host=snowblossom.satoshis.guru #Snowfield location/path snow_path=/datadrive/snow/ auto_snow=false #Your wallet goes here mine_to_address=snow:xyzxyz #Number of threads, cpu cores times 2 is a good starting number, but keep increasing it until you no longer see hashrate improvements, I set mine to 128 threads=128 #Add a public comment to the blocks you mine (optional) remark=MyAltcoins
And finally, you can start mining:
cd .. screen ./pool-miner.sh
Detach from screen session with Ctrl+A, D. It will continue to mine in the background.
To calculate your maximum theoretical hashrate, find random read IOPS specification for your SSD and divide that number by 6. With a decent SATA SSD you should be able to get around 10 kh/s. NVMe SSD provides at least 80 kh/s. If you get less, play around with threads number and increase it in 32/64/128/256 increments. How many coins per day for the hashrate you get? Calculator is here. And this concludes our How To Mine Snowblossom tutorial.
Sit back and let it SNOW.
MyAltcoins team,
Petar & Ana
