Mine eCash

eCash uses SHA-256d — identical to Bitcoin. Any Bitcoin miner works unmodified. Difficulty resets to 1 at fork block 963,648.

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~— remaining · at ~10 min/block

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Choose Your Mining Path

⛏️

Solo Mining

Run your own ASIC (Bitaxe, NerdAxe) or cpuminer. Point a getblocktemplate miner at the enforcer. You keep 100% of block rewards and BMM fees.

  • ✓ Your own hardware
  • ✓ Direct to enforcer (GBT)
  • ✓ Full drivechain participation
  • ✗ Requires your own node + enforcer
Solo Mining Guide →
☁️

Cloud Mining

Rent SHA-256d hashpower from NiceHash and point it at the public pool (or your own stratum pool). No hardware required — pay per TH/s.

  • ✓ No hardware needed
  • ✓ NiceHash rental (stratum)
  • ✓ Burst-mine the low-difficulty window
  • ✗ Rental cost (market rate per TH/s)
Cloud Mining Guide →

Prerequisites — The eCash Mining Stack

eCash uses SHA-256d (identical to Bitcoin), so any Bitcoin miner works: ASICs (Bitaxe, NerdAxe), cpuminer, or rented hashpower (NiceHash). The stack below is the official setup from the eCash mining guide.

1. Run an eCash node

A synced eCash node with RPC + ZMQ enabled. Alphanet forks Bitcoin mainnet at block 963,648 with its own network magic (eca5a104) and ports (P2P 8533, RPC 8532).

Source: ecash-com/bitcoin (branch alphanet)

Docker: ghcr.io/ecash-com/bitcoin:alphanet

Binaries: releases.drivechain.info (published 2026-08-18)

ecash.conf (click to expand)
server=1
txindex=1
rpcuser=user
rpcpassword=pass
zmqpubsequence=tcp://127.0.0.1:29000
addnode=seed.alpha.ecash.ninja:8533

The node must be connected and fully synced before getblocktemplate serves templates (stock Bitcoin Core behavior, per the node setup guide). Full sync is ~850 GB; use an assumeutxo snapshot (840K/880K/910K/935K, pinned in the alphanet branch) to bootstrap faster, then sync the remaining blocks.

2. Run the BIP300/301 enforcer

The bip300301_enforcer serves drivechain-aware getblocktemplate on 127.0.0.1:8122. Blocks built from these templates earn BMM (blind-merged-mining) fees and participate in sidechain governance (proposal/withdrawal ACKs). This is the stack the official software (BitWindow, simplepool) is built around.

Enforcer launch command (click to expand)
bip300301_enforcer \
  --node-rpc-addr=localhost:8532 \
  --node-rpc-user=user --node-rpc-pass=pass \
  --node-zmq-addr-sequence=tcp://127.0.0.1:29000 \
  --enable-wallet \
  --enable-mempool

Why use the enforcer instead of the node directly? Node templates (port 8532) contain ordinary transactions only — valid blocks, but no drivechain coinbase data, so no BMM fees and no ACK participation. The enforcer adds the BIP300/301 coinbase data. It's free income if you're mining anyway.

3. Create a payout address

For solo mining (GBT), create a wallet and get a payout address:

bitcoin-cli -datadir=./alphanet createwallet mine
bitcoin-cli -datadir=./alphanet getnewaddress

For the public pool (drynet4), the username must be a Thunder sidechain address (not an L1 address). Get one with thunder-cli get-new-address or from the Thunder wallet in BitWindow. An L1 address is rejected.

Important Mining Disclaimers

  • Reorg risk: while difficulty re-equilibrates after the fork, blocks arrive fast and erratically and reorgs are more likely than on Bitcoin. Do not treat freshly mined rewards as final.
  • Coinbase maturity: block rewards are spendable after 100 confirmations (standard Bitcoin coinbase maturity).
  • Replay protection: coinbase outputs are new post-fork coins and cannot be replayed. Later spends are eCash-only too; setting nLockTime = 499999999 costs nothing. See the replay protection guide.
  • Difficulty will reset to 1 at the fork block (consensus rule in the eCash code), then retarget normally every 2,016 blocks. The low-difficulty window is when small miners matter most.
  • No financial advice: mining calculations are estimates only and do not guarantee actual returns. ECX has no guaranteed market value. Consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions.
  • Official documentation: full step-by-step guides at 01-node-setup, 08-mining, and the official network configs.