On January 3, 2009, the first genesis block of Bitcoin was created, marking the beginning of a new era of currency and the advent of the crypto mining industry. The continuous development of the crypto market has added diversity to the crypto mining industry. In addition to Bitcoin, there emerged popular projects utilizing the Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism, such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum (which transitioned to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism in 2022).

Although these projects have introduced unique features and technological innovations compared to Bitcoin, they still exhibit a high degree of similarity and have not brought about disruptive changes in performance. However, in 2021, Kaspa, a dark horse project aiming to break the trilemma of blockchain, has come under the spotlight as this Layer 1 PoW public chain promises to disrupt the current landscape.

A Brief Introduction to the Origin of PoW

Proof of Work, or PoW, was initially proposed by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in 1993, long before the emergence of Bitcoin. At that time, PoW was only applied to address the issue of “spam emails”. People would perform certain computational tasks on their computers to prove that they were legitimate senders of emails rather than spammers. This process was referred to as “proof of work”.

Yet PoW didn’t gain widespread recognition until the rise of cryptos led by Bitcoin. Today, Bitcoin boasts a market capitalization of $585.1 billion, overshadowing well-known global enterprises such as Visa, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson. Although it is becoming a household name as time goes by, other PoW projects still remain obscure. Emerging PoW project Kaspa, for example, has limited consensus within the crypto community, and many users in the crypto space are still unfamiliar with it.

Source: CoinCodex

In this article, we will start with the technical principles behind Kaspa to introduce its features, and also provide insights on how to mine it and the time required to mine one KAS using different mining equipment.

Technology Behind Kaspa

Kaspa has been described as a rare innovative project in the field of PoW, and indeed it is. As the first project to adopt Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology, Kaspa allows for parallel blocks and instant transaction confirmation, which is a significant departure from traditional blockchain. Relying on blockDAG technology, Kaspa can process massive transactions in an instant, while creating multiple blocks, averaging one block per second. According to the official statement from Kaspa, each block in the current network can record approximately 200 transactions, about 30 times more than Bitcoin.

Furthermore, Kaspa also employs a consensus mechanism called GHOSTDAG, which resolves the challenging issue of orphan blocks in PoW projects. Unlike traditional blockchains, GHOSTDAG does not orphan blocks created in parallel, but rather allows them to coexist and orders them in consensus. Under this mechanism, blocks are organized in a “tree” structure within the Kaspa network.

According to CoinGecko data as of July 6, the current price of KAS is $0.0207. At present, KAS has a market capitalization of $401 million, ranking 97^th among all cryptos.

How to Mine KAS

On the Kaspa network, miners need to compete for the right to validate transactions by completing certain computational tasks and earn a certain amount of KAS as a reward. KAS, which uses the kHeavyHash algorithm, supports GPU (NVIDIA and AMD) and ASIC mining machines. However, with the current network hashrate of 1.41 PH/s, even with the latest ANTMINER KS3 mining machine, the theoretical chance of mining a block is only 0.58%. As a result, joining a mining pool has become the preferred choice for most KAS miners.

*Chance of mining a block = Mining machine’s hashrate / Network hashrate, calculated based on the ANTMINER KS3 hashrate of 8.3 TH/s and the network hashrate of 1.41 PH/s.

Below are the brief steps to connect your GPU to a mining pool (in the example of ViaBTC Pool):

1. Obtain Kaspa mining software.

Mining software options include: GMiner, lolMiner, BzMiner, etc.

Operating system: Windows, Linux.

Gminer: Releases · develsoftware/GMinerRelease · GitHub

lolMiner: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4724735.0

BzMiner: Releases · bzminer/bzminer · GitHub

2. Configure the mining software 

a. After downloading the software, unzip it. 

b. Open the start.bat file with TextPad or another text editor. 

c. Use the batch file that is included with the software or make your own batch file, then right-click it and select “Edit” to delete or change the default parameters.

*Note: Please replace your username with the one used for your main/sub account on www.viabtc.com, and worker name can be anything at your preference. After making the modifications, click "Save".

3. Run the mining software

After completing the software configuration, double-click on start.bat to start running the software.

If you use an ASIC mining machine to connect to a mining pool, you need to modify the parameters as follows:

1. Firstly, you need a mining machine that supports KAS mining, such as ANTMINER KS3 and IceRiver KAS KS2.

2. Choose the profit settlement method for mining KAS on ViaBTC Pool, such as PPLNS and SOLO.

3. Set the mining address. ViaBTC provides two URLs for miners to choose from (if the connection to one URL fails, it will automatically switch to the other):

   - stratum+tcp://mining.viabtc.io:3015

   - stratum+tcp://mining.viabtc.io:315

4. Set the miner name and password. For example, the account name can be set as “viabtc” and the miner name can be set as “viabtc.001”. The password can be left blank or anything at your preference.

5. Once the mining machine has been running for 10-15 minutes and is stably connected to ViaBTC Pool, you can log in to the official website of ViaBTC Pool to check the operation status and profits.

*For more details, please refer to: https://support.viabtc.com/hc/articles/19013252615065

How Long Does It Take to Mine One KAS

The time needed to mine one KAS depends on several factors such as the current network hashrate, mining difficulty, and block reward distribution rules. In the Kaspa network, the block reward for KAS halves once a year, steadily decreasing by a factor of (1/2)^(1/12) each month. Currently, each block rewards 207.65 KAS, and it is expected to decrease to 196 KAS per block on July 8.

In addition, the mining machine used can also make much difference to the time required to mine one KAS. Based on the current network hashrate of 1.41 PH/s, the data of popular miner models on the market is listed as below:

*“Time for 1 KAS (min.)” refers to the time required to mine one KAS, measured in minutes.

About ViaBTC

ViaBTC, founded in May 2016, has provided professional, efficient, safe and stable crypto mining services for over one million users in 130+ countries/regions around the world, with a cumulative mining output value of tens of billions of dollars. This world-leading, all-inclusive mining pool offers mining services spanning more than ten mainstream cryptos that include BTC, LTC, and KAS. Backed by one-stop services covering ViaBTC Pool, CoinEx Exchange, and ViaWallet, ViaBTC strives to offer global users more supporting tools, stabler and more efficient mining services, as well as better product experience.