Step-by-step guide – Nanopool | Help Center

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide for newbies on how to mine Ironfish coin on Nanopool

To mine Ironfish coin all you need is a PC/Mining RIG with a GPU (Nvidia/AMD) of 4GB memory. You'll also need a miner and a Ironfish coin address to receive your mining reward. Check the list below and make sure your hardware/software meets the requirements:

PC/Mining Rig with at least 4GB of GPU memory each	The GPU should have at least 4GB of RAM or it wouldn't worth the effort and you'd need to pay for your electricity bill more than you make
Installed Windows/Linux OS	Make sure your Windows version is at least 7 and the OS, whether it's Windows or Linux is 64 bit
8GB of system RAM	You don't need much of system RAM, however you should have 8GB minimum
Stable internet connection	Your internet speed doesn't need to be super fast, but it's crucial that the internet connection is constant (get off Wi-Fi if possible)
Valid email address	It's not necessary to use your email, however, if you want to receive alerts form the pool when your miner goes offline, you'll need one
Mining software (Miner)	We will be using Rigel for Nvidia GPUs
Ironfish wallet address	To receive your rewards from the pool you'll need to obtain a Ironfish address.

Unfortunately, we don't give any recommendations on what hardware to buy or which one is more profitable (search the mining forums to choose a hardware), therefore we’re going to assume you’re already running Windows/Linux on your RIG and the hardware you have meets the requirements.

Step 1: Get Your GPU Drivers Installed

Double check the drivers are installed in advance or if you installed them previously you can skip this step.

For Nvidia drivers, click here and enter your GPU info then click “Start Search”. Download the current driver version from the results.
For AMD GPUs, go here and choose "Support & Drivers". Enter your GPU info and click "Display results" then click the download button for your current driver.

Once downloaded, install the drivers like you normally would (next, next, OK, etc.) and reboot your RIG. You see your GPU’s are recognized correctly if you go into Device Manager (search in Windows search bar) and if you don’t see any warning marks on your GPU’s you're good to go to the next step.

Step 2: Obtain Ironfish Wallet Address

You can get a Ironfish address through Ironfish Wallet If you already have Ironfish address, just jump down to the next step. Remember, some exchanges don't allow deposits from pools or don't allow very small deposits, so double check with the site before mining directly to an exchange address. For security reasons, we suggest mining directly to your own wallet instead of using an exchange. If you choose mining on an exchange, you do so at your own risk.

Bear in mind, storing your funds at an exchange/web-wallet is always associated with a risk

Step 3: Apply some Tweaks to Windows before mining

First of you don't want your miner to be interrupt while mining if your RIG goes to sleep. You don't want to your RIG to be automatically rebutted either, which may occur if Windows updates.

Go to your Windows Power Settings and set it to Never sleep
Head to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/ Services. Scroll down to Windows Update and turn it off
If you're running Windows Defender/Antivirus make sure to add an exception to it so that it doesn't flag your miner as a virus

Step 4: Download and Set up a Miner

For example, we will use Rigel

Depending on your OS, download Rigel for Windows or Linux
Extract the miner to any folder you like and navigate to it
Locate and edit "iron.bat" file with any notepad app
Fill the following into the file:

Full configuration example:

rigel.exe -a ironfish -o stratum+tcp://iron-eu1.nanopool.org:10800 -u YOUR_WALLET.YOUR_WORKER_NAME/YOUR_EMAIL --log-file logs/miner.log

Where:

YOUR_WALLET - your valid Ironfish address.
YOUR_WORKER_NAME - simple short worker name (like worker01). Optional.
YOUR_EMAIL - your email address for notifications. Optional

Double check you set your own wallet and it's correct. Set a simple worker name to track your RIG on the pool and an email address to receive alerts when your RIG goes offline. Alternatively, you can set a passphrase instead to access the account settings.

WARNING!

If you chose an exchange as your wallet provider, you have a memo, which is actually your personal ID.

To mine to an exchange address and get paid, you need to add a + separator after your wallet address and add the memo parameter. This method applicable for all exchanges that requires the memo parameter for transactions.

rigel.exe -a ironfish -o stratum+tcp://iron-eu1.nanopool.org:10800 -u YOUR_WALLET+MEMO.YOUR_WORKER_NAME/YOUR_EMAIL --log-file logs/miner.log

Please notice: mining to an exchange can be dangerous: sometimes exchanges changes the wallet address or memo. If you will continue mining with old parameters funds can be irrecoverable. We also will not be able to restore your coins if you forgot to ad your personal memo. Use this method at your own risk. We recommend mining to your wallet: not your keys — not your crypto!

Once everything is filled, save and close the file.

Step 5: Start the Miner

Double click the iron.bat file to launch the miner.

Step 6: Find your Account on Nanopool

Remember there's no registration on the pool. You just need to start mining and your account will automatically show up. However, allow some time as our system needs about 30 minutes to add your account to the pool's database since your miner submitted it's first share. So please, be patient and come back to Nanopool in a while, there's Address filed on the right top in which you need to fill your Ironfish address in. Once filled, hit enter, you'll be redirected to your Nanopool account page.

Congrats! You have joined Nanopool. Spend some time to familiarize yourself with the pool and its features; you'll like the interface.

Step 7: Make sure Your Mining goes Smoothly

Let your RIG to mine for at least 6 hours (or even 12) then come back to check your account statistic on the pool. You just need to compare your 6-hour Average hashrate (Nanopool estimates avg hashrate by shares sent from you rigs) with the Last Reported hashrate (it's what your miner tells to the pool your hashrate is) and the values need to be close (the closer the better), however, allow 10% discrepancy. And if your 6-hour Average hashrate is lower by more than 10% than the Reported one, then there must be an issue and you should contact our team to figure it out.

Step 8: Predict your Profitability

There's a number of major factors your income depends on and the most obvious, easily identifiable and broad numbers that affect your mining profit are:

1. Difficulty increase	The more users join the network to mine Ironfish, the harder it's to find a block.
2. Pool luck factor	Cryptocurrency mining is extremely luck based in its nature and when the pool finds fewer blocks than it should with its hashrate on average, it's unlucky, but when it finds more blocks, the pool is lucky. And since our pool's payout scheme is PPLNS (you get paid after the pool finds a block), your estimated reward may decrease in both cases, if the difficulty increases and the pool gets unlucky.
3. Hashrate constancy	Your reward is also affected by your hashrate constancy. The more your hashrate fluctuates (network/hardware issues) the less your reward may be.

Keep in mind, none of mining calculators are able to properly forecast the future, as they don't simply take into account all possible variables, as a result this is almost near impossible to accurately predict uncertain inputs.