It has been a few months since I compiled a crypto currency for the last time. With the arrival of Zcash I saw a reason to give it another go. And it seems that Linux users are getting a headstart. An Open Source Crypto Currency on an Open Source Operating System, makes sense to me. For this I did not use the ready build binaries for Debian based Linux versions. It is much more fun to get the terminal open and to go commandline style. Get the source code from Github, also a key of almost 1GB is needed, then let it build and make.
No, don't worry, I'm not getting into that whole proces, this is just a quick look. The whole compilation proces worked like it should. A fancy QT User Interface is missing, so zcashd needs to be started. And before that a config file needs to be made. When the Zcash deamon is running commands are send to it via the CLI, or command line interface. It uses the same commands as Bitcoin, it's codebase is the same. But there are some extra codes that can be found in the terminal using the 'zcash-cli help' command.
Zcash has a lot of transactions to validate and uses it's own 'EquiHash' mining algorythm. In one and a half hour the amount of transactions is almost at 60.000, so it seems there is some action on the network. The claim that Zcash can do total anonymous transactions comes with a price. It needs a 64 bit Linux based machine with at least 4 GB free RAM. For the normal transactions it seems less is needed, at least for validating. Although the machine I'm working on has 4GB of RAM, it is not all available. So I guess the double would be adviseable.
Solo mining using your own Linux machines is easy if you have done things like compiling from source code before. If the command line / terminal is not your thing it is best to let solo mining go for now. And if you appreciate the command line in Linux, you will make this thing work.
Will my node find any Zcash? Well, to be honest, I doubt it. Times have changed and the moment a new 'coin' gets released the big miners come in. But I'm curious how this Zcash works. And I believe the developer and SteemIt CEO, Daniel Larimer, has shown an interest in 'EquiHash'. That is what got me to give Zcash a go.
If you want to know more about Zcash then you can and visit their website. But if you want to have a go at Zcash, then you will need to know how the command line in Linux works. If that already is abrahadabra to you, then you better leave it to be for a while. It is still in an experimental fase anyway.
Thank you for reading.
screenshot cc-by-sa @oaldamster
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