Mining Software

Mining software is what actually runs on your machine: it connects to the pool over stratum, receives work, drives the hardware and submits shares. SRBMiner and BzMiner are common examples.

It is separate from the pool and from your wallet. The pool sends work and keeps the records. The wallet holds your keys. The miner only does the hashing and reports results, so you can change miners without changing your wallet or your pool.

Each miner supports its own set of algorithms and hardware. Some run on CPUs, some on GPUs, some on both. XMRig, for example, is a well-known open-source miner for CPU algorithms such as RandomX. Each miner also has its own tuning flags, which is why the setup guides are written per miner.

Setup follows the same pattern everywhere. You tell the miner the algorithm, the pool host and port, and your login, which is usually your wallet address with an optional worker name. Most miners take these on the command line or in a small config file, often saved as a batch or shell script you start with a double click.

Most miners keep a small developer fee. They mine for the developer a small slice of the time and state the amount in their README. When you compare two miners, compare hashrate after that fee, not before.

Downloading is where people get hurt. Get the miner only from its official release page. Antivirus programs often flag miners, because malware uses the same software to mine on other people's computers. That warning is common with genuine miners, but it is also why a download from an unknown site is dangerous.

To check that your miner works, watch its output for accepted shares, and open your miner page on the pool after a few minutes. If the miner says connected but no shares are accepted, recheck the algorithm and the port.