How to mine Ethereum: Nanopool + Claymore’s Dual Miner

If you’re looking to mine Ethereum and are running a Windows or Linux based mining rig Claymore’s Dual Ethereum AMD+NVIDIA GPU Miner. Even if you’re new to cryptocurrency mining you should be able to get up and mining Ethereum in no time. We will download and install the mining software, configure it for a pool and start mining.

In this guide we will be mining Ethereum alone and mining it from the mining pool Nanopool.

Mining Ethereum with Claymore – What you’ll need

In order to start mining with Claymore’s Dual Miner you’ll need to have a few things squared away. In order to use this guide, you’ll need:

• A GPU Mining Rig (with either AMD or Nvdia GPUs)
• An Ethereum wallet to deposit your mined ether in

This is the first of many specific guides we’ll be creating as follow-ups for those who are new to GPU mining, and especially those who came from one of our mining rig build guides such as our 6 GPU mining rig write-up.

Step 1: Download and install the miner

The best place to get Claymore’s Dual Miner is from the link the developer provides:

1. Navigate to the download folder for Claymore’s Dual Miner on Mega
2. Download the most recent archive for your operating system
   • for Windows it is the most recent ZIP archive
   • for Linux it is the most recent .tar.gz archive
3. Uncompress the archive you downloaded somewhere convenient (like the desktop)

Step 2: Review a batch file for starting Claymore

There are a couple of ways you can start Claymore. We are going to do so with a batch, or .bat file. This batch files tells the computer (mining rig) to start a program (Claymore’s Dual Miner) and allows you to send some variables to it that the program will use. Let’s take a look at an example file. The file below is one that we use today. It is configured to mine Ethereum from Nanopool and deposit the ether in one of our Ethereum wallets.

Our batch file for mining Ethereum at Nanopool

This is the batch file that we use to start single-mining Ethereum at Nanopool. If you’re new to mining, Claymore’s Dual Miner allows you to mine Ethereum. But, there’s also the dual aspect that’s in the name. What that means is that you can also mine Ethereum as your primary coin and also mine a second coin. For the example below, we’re single mining, or mining Ethereum only. This needs to be a single line. To see all of ours you can scroll.

setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100

EthDcrMiner64.exe -epool eth-us-west1.nanopool.org:9999 -ewal 1LULtiq4XntkAQ3p9UgmMLpUAiqyAaKkpM.MININGRIG1/miner@gpu0.com -epsw x -mode 1

First, we’re going to ignore each line that starts with “set x”. You shouldn’t need to worry about those. After that you probably have one long line. Do note that it needs to be one long line. EthDcrMiner64.exe is just the file name Claymore gave to the mining program. When we double click no this file, it assumes that the program EthDcrMiner64.exe is in the same directory as it. So, don’t move the file anywhere.

The minus signs indicate variables or settings that will be supplied to EthDcrMiner64.exe when it starts. Whatever directly follows a minus sign and setting is value we’re asking the mining software to use. Let’s go through each in this file.

These settings are the bare minimum, but they may also be all the settings you need

Step 3: Configure the miner with your settings

Single mining Ethereum at Nanopool

There are many Ethereum mining pools to choose from. Nanopool is an easy pool to start with if you want to get up and running quick. It’s anonymous, and you do not need to sign-up ahead of time.

1. Make a note of the server that is closest to your mining rig’s physical location
   • Europe (server 1): eth-eu1.nanopool.org
   • Europe (server 2): eth-eu2.nanopool.org
   • United States (East): eth-us-east1.nanopool.org
   • United States (West): eth-us-west1.nanopool.org
   • Asia: eth-asia1.nanopool.org
   • Japan: eth-jp1.nanopool.org
   • Australia: eth-au1.nanopool.org
2. In the folder containing Claymore’s Dual Miner, duplicate the file named Start.bat and rename it start_ETH-only_nanopool.bat (or whatever your prefer).
3. Open the new file you just created in a text editor. It’s contents will look like what we reviewed above except the line starting with EthDcrMiner64.exe is likely one long line as opposed to multiple lines.
4. Skip down to the long line starting with EthDcrMiner64.exe. We’ll be editing some of those values:
   • -epool: enter the URL of the server closest to you
   • -ewal: enter YOUR Ethereum wallet address (this is how Claymore knows where to deposit your ether)
   • -epsw: this value is ignored, so you can just leave it as-is
   • -mode: in this example we are mining Ethereum only (not dual-mining) so no change is necessary as the correct setting is 1
5. Save the file

Step 4: Start mining

With everything taken care of in step 3 you’re ready to mine. Below we’ll start the miner and then navigate to to Nanopool where you can monitor your progress.

Claymore’s Dual AMD+Nvidia Ethereum miner just after starting on an 8 GPU rig.

1. Double-click the batch file we just edited in Step 3 (we named it Start_ETH-only_nanopool.bat)
2. A window will appear showing the miner’s progress as it connects to the mining pool, configures a few more settings, and starts mining. In Windows it will look something like the window above.
3. That’s it, you’re mining Ethereum from Nanopool with Claymore’s Dual Miner!
4. Now let’s check our progress on Nanopool. Visit nanopool.org in a web browser.
5. Click on Ethereum on the homepage
6. At the top right-hand corner of the page, paste your wallet address and click Search
7. You will either get a page with statistics for your mining rig or an account not found page which (assuming your wallet was set correctly) means that you have to wait until your rig finds a few shares.

Having issues? There’s only a few things that can really go wrong. They include:

• One or more values were incorrectly set in the .bat file
• Something is wrong with your mining rig
• Nanopool is down (you can check by visiting nanopool.org or checking their recent updates on Twitter

Next steps

• Additional configuration settings – There are many more settings available for Claymore’s Dual Miner. To learn more, open the README file that came with the miner.
• If you’re not already doing so, look into overclocking your video cards to increase your hashrate.