How To Mine Iron Fish on Windows 10 or 11
Let’s go through the steps for how to Mine Iron Fish with a Windows 10 or Windows 11 64-bit Computer! I am using the desktop grinder AMD 5950X based build for this guide, and it is blocking every few hours. This is a great testnet because of the incentive aspect that they are offering in my opinion. How is it that more cryptocurrencies are not also offering incentivization in the testnet phase? This means you earn “points” by participating during this period that can be mapped to you on mainnet launch as coins.
Youtube Video Guide
Create Iron Fish Account
The Block Grafitti you create must be set in your Iron Fish Node before you start your miner, or you won’t get Testnet Points for blocks you mine. Register for your “testnet account” so you can have points mapped to your account. The Block Graffiti you create will be needed for later so remember it. https://testnet.ironfish.network/signup
Ensure WSL installed.
Using Ubuntu WSL will drastically improve your hashrate. In an administrative terminal type: wsl --install
Ensure you have installed Ubuntu by checking in the MS store. If not, you can install it from the MS Store. https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NBLGGH4MSV6
Enter into Ubuntu terminal
From the Administrative Windows terminal, type ubuntu
and hit enter.
In a few seconds you will see the cmd prompts change. You are now inside Ubuntu. It will ask you to setup a username and password.
or if it is already installed it will look like this
Type sudo -i
and enter your password
Type apt update && apt upgrade -y
Type apt install -y build-essential
next and hit enter
Next type apt install -y curl
and hit enter
Now install the source for NodeJS 16.X.
Type curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_16.x | sudo -E bash -
and then hit enter
It will prompt you at the bottom to install yarn.
Copy paste apt update && apt install yarn -y
and then hit enter
Now Install NodeJS. Type apt install -y nodejs
and hit enter
Next install Rust.
Type curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
and hit 1 when prompted
Then copy and paste Rust the env variable
Type source $HOME/.cargo/env
and hit enter
Next we install YARN
Type npm install -global yarn --force
and hit enter
Next let’s update NPM to 8.4
Type npm install -g npm@8.4.0
(optional)
Fix vulns by running npm i --package-lock-only
(optional)
and then npm audit fix
(optional)
Now Clone the Github Repo
type git clone https://github.com/iron-fish/ironfish
and hit enter
then type cd ironfish
and then type yarn install
it will take a while
cd into ironfish-cli and set block graffiti (use YOUR account name, not mine!) If you skip this step, you won’t get points in the Testnet for the blocks you mine!
type cd ironfish-cli
then type yarn start:once config:set blockGraffiti "Digital Spaceport"
screen -R ironfish
(if you do not know how to run screen, watch this part of the video quickly)
Startup Iron Fish full node and let it sync up now.
Type yarn start start -d default -p 9033
Ctrl-A then D to exit that screen but leave it running
Now create screen called ironmine
screen -R ironmine
then we will start the miner (it will NOT start mining until the full node is synced fully. Change -t XX to your thread count for your cpu)
yarn start miners:start
Ctrl-A then D to exit that screen but leave it running
Finally, you can run a STATUS screen
type screen -R status
Then type yarn start status -f
Ctrl-A then D to exit that screen but leave it running
You can close this terminal window and do whatever on your computer now. It will slow things down if you set a high number for your threads. I leave 2-4 free if I need to do other work on the 5950x which is now getting me 100Mhash without major overclocking. Nice!
That’s it! These steps are easy to accomplish and will get you started with How to Mine Iron Fish on the incentivized testnet mining. May the blocks be with you!