I’ve been heavily involved in the crypto space for around a year now and admittedly, mining is the part of the industry that has continually confused and perplexed me. Through research and reading I have been able to learn the theory/logistics behind mining, but putting my knowledge into practice and mining for myself has always seemed just out of reach. Enter Honeyminer. Honeyminer is a mining program recently released as a joint effort between well known crypto personalities Coin Yeezy and Crypto Randy Marsh. The program uses a switching admin to mine whatever coin is most suited to the specs of the computer it is installed on. When I heard about this idea, I was excited to see a program that would make mining more accessible to a pants on head smooth brain like myself. So how does it hold up? Let’s take a look:
(Note: I am running this on my totally lower end/middle of the road laptop that is about a year and a half old at this point, experiences may differ depending on computer specs)
Interface and Useability
The first version of Honey Miner was small and gave relatively little information. You could see your earnings, your “level” (more on this in a moment), and a simple settings screen. Since a recent update however the UI has changed and is much more informative. In the latest version of Honey Miner, you can see exactly which of your GPU’s and/or CPU’s are mining, what they are mining, and what their hashrate is. This additional data is definitely a big improvement, as it allows newer miners to get a greater understanding of exactly what it is that's going on, while allowing more experienced miners to more easily monitor and keep track of their operations. In terms of useability, both the original version and the recent update are fairy intuitive. I’d go so far as to say ANYBODY can likely use this program on some level after simply looking at it for a few minutes. My only issue has been getting the GPU miner to work, although this likely is to do with the fact that the laptop I used has an integrated GPU, which don’t seem to quite mesh with the program yet, but the team has told me these bugs hindering integrated graphics cards should be worked out in future updates.
Model, Earnings, and Fees
As well as being paid out the rewards for your computer’s mining efforts, Honey Miner also has a “bonus” system based around the aforementioned levels. These levels are perhaps easiest explained as being similar to experience levels in a video game. The longer you mine the more XP you will gain and after a certain amount of XP you will level up and be paid out a bonus. This bonus differs from level to level but it certainly serves as a nice reward for your time and for many, it will likely give Honey Miner an edge over other mining switch algo programs like Nicehash. My earnings have been modest as again, for the purposes of this review I’ve been running Honey Miner on my cheap low end laptop, nonetheless I have been earning around 700 sats today, which while unlikely to add up to anything worthwhile any time soon, is certainly more than I was expecting to get out of my rinky dink laptop. The withdrawal fee is around 0.0005 BTC, this is my one major complaint, it seems somewhat high for a “network fee”, it would be nice to see the Honey Miner team try and implement some sort of dynamic fee system that will reflect the current fee market. That being said, it is still early days for honey miner and a slightly questionable fee is far from a deal breaker for me.
Conclusion
All in all honey miner served the exact purpose i hoped it would, it opened the world of mining up to me and made it easy. While it may not prove profitable to continue running it on my cheap laptop long term, it is certainly worthy of a look from anyone with a decent/high end laptop, especially if one owns a gaming laptop. I tip my hat and say job well done to the Honey Miner team. Mining is an aspect of this space that, despite being so essential, is misunderstood or inaccessible to many, and the advent of Honeyminer has brought us one step closer to changing that.