What is NERVA [XNV]? (mining guide below)
NERVA is a very new cryptocurrency project that has been receiving attention due to its implementation of a unique version of the cryptonight algorithm(s); Cryptonight-adaptive.
This PoW algorithm is designed to be GPU resistant and ASIC resistant, and achieves this by switching through various versions of the cryptonight algorithm with each block. Attempting to mine with a GPU should be inefficient due to having to reload data each time the algorithm switches. It is ASIC resistant because ASICS would only be able to mine one of the 5 algorithms used, therefore would be only able to mine 20% of the time.
What this means is that at the moment, NERVA is mine-able at a respectable rate even with a home CPU, as there is no competition on hashing power from GPU farms, ASICs, or Nicehash/cloud miners.
Great! So how do I mine NERVA?
Just read below:
How to mine NERVA:
This guide is for Windows 10.
Mining NERVA is very simple; in this guide I will show you how to mine NERVA solo, which you can do on any computer that has a modern-ish CPU.
We will use the CLI (command line interface) wallet, and mine through the daemon using a .bat file to start it.
1 - Download the daemon and wallet.
You need to download the Windows CLI wallet and daemon here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s8ihd4tymgeu36i/nerva%20w64%20binaries.zip?dl=0
(or directly from the BitcoinTalk thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3464367.20)
Make sure to disable real-time protection in Windows Defender before starting the download, and to make an exclusion in Windows Defender for the folder that you will extract it to. Once you have downloaded and extracted the files to the excluded folder, then remember to turn real-time protection back on!!
(Also, some browsers will block downloads of programs that can mine coins, like Chrome. If you are using Chrome and it blocks the download, open "settings," scroll down to the bottom, and click "advanced". Uncheck "Protect you and your device from dangerous sites." Once the download is complete, remember to re-enable this setting!!)
2 - Sync the blockchain
Okay, so now you should have a number of files in your folder, but we are only interested in nervad.exe and nerva-wallet-cli.exe.
First, open up nervad.exe (the nerva daemon). You will likely get an alert and have to click O.K. allow the .exe to run, as well as a firewall message. Make sure to allow these.
Wait for the daemon to sync the entire block chain. Do not open the wallet until it is done syncing.
When it is done syncing it will say so, and will say it is O.K. to open the wallet.
3 - Create your wallet
Open nerva-wallet-cli.exe (do not close the daemon, if you do, just close the CLI wallet and open the daemon and make sure it syncs fully before creating a new wallet)
Simply follow the on-screen prompts, it will walk you through the creation of a new wallet.
Make sure to use a strong password and keep it safe.
Once you have your wallet created, it will give you your address. This will be a long string of characters starting with the letters "NV." Save this somewhere to use in the last step (a blank text file is fine, this is your public key).
You can now close the wallet and the daemon.
4 - Create .bat file to start mining.
Open up notepad.
Past in:
nervad.exe --start-mining NV2y5YqS9WFSmDjVG2P62XXYkAKfnZnJq4s5Bydajabu9dXJPEPfVtefEUfbCPAbZMKLP54VMR771DCgHXQqPDrD1vaWr7ko5 --mining-threads 7
Replace my address with yours that you saved earlier.
The number of mining threads should be tweaked to your CPU model. Mine is set to 7 because my i7-6700k has 8 threads, and I can still use my computer if I leave 1 available.
Make sure to save this file as a .bat file, it can be named anything you like, e.g. "start.bat".
When saving, click "Save As" and you have to change under "Save as type", from "Text Documents" to "All Files."
I would suggest making a shortcut to this .bat file so you can start it easily from your desktop or wherever is convenient for you.
5 - Done!
That's it! You are done! Simply double click the start.bat file (or whatever you named it) and the daemon should open, then sync whatever its missing since it closed, and then start mining.
Try experimenting with different --mining-threads values to see what gives the best hash rate. (You might have to lower this value slightly if you want to be able to use your computer when mining as well.)
To check your hash rate, simply type "status" into the daemon while its mining. It will show your hash rate as well as the network hash rate, so you can get an idea of how likely it is to find blocks.
When you find a block it will say something like "Found block for difficulty xxxx."
It will spew out stuff into the CLI interface periodically but you can mostly ignore this, I did run into a sync error once in the couple weeks I have been mining this however and had to restart the client to get the chain synced again.
To check your balance (and use!) your balance, simply open up the nerva-wallet-cli.exe.
Check out the trade on
https://altex.exchange/markets&pair=BTC_XNV
this coin is new so more exchanges are likely coming soon considering it is currently one of the top volume coins on this exhange despite being extremely new and only being listed a couple days ago.
So, I hope that this guide can help some people, I've just seen a lot of people asking how to mine this coin so I just decided to go ahead and write this. Happy mining!