Sia Docs
GithubDiscordYouTubeBlogsRedditForum
Legacy
Legacy
  • Welcome to Sia!
  • Get Started with Sia
    • Introduction to these docs
    • Sia 101
    • What are Siacoins?
    • How to buy Siacoins
    • What is the Siacoin total supply?
  • Your Sia Wallet
    • Wallet overview
    • The importance of your seed
    • How to make a Sia address
    • How to send Siacoins
    • How do I change my Sia wallet password?
    • Back up your Sia wallet
    • Wallet troubleshooting
      • Delete your seed and make a new one
      • Find or fix your seed
      • I lost my seed. What do I do?
      • My deposit or withdrawal didn't go through
      • Why does Sia take so long to sync?
      • What are these deductions in my wallet?
      • Why does Sia-UI give me a new address each time I click Receive Siacoin?
    • Sia-UI FAQs
      • How to download and install Sia-UI
      • How to make a new wallet in Sia-UI
      • How to restore a wallet from a seed in Sia-UI
      • How to perform a clean install in Sia-UI
      • How do I uninstall Sia-UI?
    • For Advanced Users
      • Verify the Sia release signature
      • Using Sia on a remote node
      • Using Sia on multiple computers
      • How to bootstrap the Sia blockchain
      • How to automatically restart and unlock Sia
      • How to set an environment variable
    • 🚧walletd
      • Wallet overview
  • Renting
    • About renting on Sia
    • Managing your files
    • How to rent storage on Sia
    • How to back up and restore your files
    • Renter troubleshooting
    • Is my data secure?
    • 🚧renterd
      • About renting on Sia
      • renterd Workshop
  • Hosting
    • About hosting on Sia
    • Hosting with the Sia-UI GUI
    • Hosting with the siad CLI on Linux
    • Hosting FAQ
    • 🚧hostd
      • About hosting on Sia
      • Setup Guides
        • Linux
        • macOS
        • Windows
      • Dynamic DNS
        • DuckDNS
        • Cloudflare (Advanced)
  • Mining
    • About mining on Sia
    • Sia mining pools
  • Contributing
    • How can I contribute to Sia?
    • Where can I learn more about Sia?
  • Siafunds
    • What are Siafunds?
    • How do I buy Siafunds?
    • How to cash out Siafunds
    • SEC Settlement FAQ
  • Sia Integrations
    • Listing Siacoin on your exchange
    • Using the Sia Ledger app with Sia Central
    • Using the Sia Ledger Nano app with CLI
    • Brand guidelines for Sia in your project or site
  • Testnet
    • What is Zen?
  • Forks
    • Using the wrong chain after a fork
    • Navigating the 2021 Sia hardfork
    • So, you didn't update in time for the fork
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Why Mine?
  • The Block Reward
  • Infinite Reward
  • Proof-of-Work
  • The Current State of Sia Mining
  • A Short History

Was this helpful?

Edit on GitHub
  1. Mining

About mining on Sia

This is a high level overview of mining. It's intended for those who are brand new to Sia or need a refresher.

PreviousCloudflare (Advanced)NextSia mining pools

Last updated 1 year ago

Was this helpful?

Why Mine?

When you mine on a cryptocurrency network, you are contributing computing power to help process and verify transactions on that network. On the Sia network, the blockchain contains not just Siacoin transactions, but also the smart file contracts between and . Miners are the backbone of the network, verifying the integrity of the blockchain. On Sia, miners are rewarded with Siacoins for their service.

The Block Reward

The block reward is the miner's incentive to contribute their computing power and electricity cost to the network. When a block is successfully verified, or solved, an amount of Siacoins is paid out to those who mined the block.

When the Sia network launched, the block reward was 300,000 Siacoins. This decreases by one every block, with a floor at 30,000 – which was reached at block 270,000 (300,000 - block height).

Infinite Reward

Unlike Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrency blockchains, the Sia block reward never stops. This means that miners will always have an incentive to be part of Sia. Once the block reward reaches 30,000 coins, it stays there forever.

Proof-of-Work

The Sia blockchain runs on something called Proof of Work. Blockchains are an amazing thing, and they are versatile enough to power different platforms. They might power money, like Bitcoin. They might power utility and smart storage contracts, like Sia. No matter what the blockchain is in charge of, you need to be sure that the money you send or the contracts you enter into never change.

A blockchain needs to be correct. There's no bank to record a transaction, and no third party to verify the validity of a contract. The whole reason anyone trusts a blockchain is because you don't need to trust anyone – you can be sure that the Bitcoin you receive is really yours; that the storage space you've rented on Sia is really there for your data.

A lot of cost and resources go into verifying the transactions of a blockchain. Proof of Work provides a powerful stamp that says ‘this history cannot be changed without doing a lot of work and spending a lot of money’. In practice, that is a powerful deterrent.

The Current State of Sia Mining

A Short History

Until January of 2018, the Sia blockchain was mined almost exclusively with GPUs, or the graphics cards inside a computer. Building a mining rig was easy, and could be done using parts from Amazon or a local computer shop.

The graphics card is the component in a computer that processes the visual output of your machine. High-end graphics cards are typically used by gamers or design professionals so they can render complex video, but they are also pretty adept at mining cryptocurrency.

Shortly after, the first ASICs were introduced into the Sia ecosystem. An ASIC, short for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit, is a computer whose sole purpose is to mine cryptocurrency. Because it doesn't have to worry about the many other things a computer might do, it can focus on one thing and do it incredibly well.

Imagine you bought a computer whose only function was to search for and download pictures of red cars. A team of engineers could program it to very specifically search for red cars, download them, and put them in folders based on how many doors they had, or if they were light red or dark red. And it could ignore pictures of blue cars and yellow cars very easily. This is what an ASIC does for cryptocurrency mining.

Because of ASICs, GPU mining is now no longer profitable.

renters
hosts