Mining - intended usage

Introduction

In order to get a reward and transaction fees, the æternity node needs to mine a key block. With increased difficulty, the probability of mining a key block is lower. Therefore, the miners can form mining pools where they share the processing power over the network so they can mine key blocks more often. They split the reward according to the amount of work they contribute to mine a block. The mining pool is formed of a mining pool manager that manages the pool (and gets a fee for that) and the miners.

The æternity node provides very basic API that allows to retrieve a pending key block and submit a mined key block.

The way to interact with the æternity node is to use HTTP API.

The following assumes that the node exposes at address 127.0.0.1 the following ports:

• User API external HTTP endpoint: 3013

• User API internal HTTP endpoint: 3113

æternity node modes

Pool manager

The æternity node can be configured (using autostart: false) not to mine key blocks. Even though the node does not mine the key blocks, it still produces the key block candidates that do not have nonce and pow set. These key block candidates can be retrieved using the/key-blocks/pending endpoint:

curl http://127.0.0.1:3013/v2/key-blocks/pending

{"beneficiary":"ak_25MZX3BXYP32YDPGWsJqYZ6CgWnqD93VdpCYaTk6KsThEbeFJX","hash":"kh_...","height":6402,"miner":"ak_BpwWtzwJpfGe6AmusjQ9a5aqKF784nXkB2apoHPmNmrJTnPdn","prev_hash":"kh_kb3PaxWQmnE2Nz3CU9GKmX1ZKq2yxEc4YcKL1AT9TSTmrB6YM","prev_key_hash":"kh_kb3PaxWQmnE2Nz3CU9GKmX1ZKq2yxEc4YcKL1AT9TSTmrB6YM","state_hash":"bs_h1XLV6ALUWDP2q7B3B8vxzwgVPncsytAyKH5S8SC8EuFeZYBw","target":537156549,"time":1538656736062,"version":23,"info":"cb_..."}

The pool manager node can accept the key blocks mined elsewhere using the/key-blocks endpoint:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://localhost:3113/v2/key-blocks -d'{"beneficiary":"ak_25MZX3BXYP32YDPGWsJqYZ6CgWnqD93VdpCYaTk6KsThEbeFJX","hash":"kh_...","height":6402,"miner":"ak_BpwWtzwJpfGe6AmusjQ9a5aqKF784nXkB2apoHPmNmrJTnPdn","nonce":2461944701583915239,"pow":[515,592,722,2277,5240,5312,6595,6839,7029,7395,7526,7887,8923,9132,12424,13618,14312,14628,15103,15328,16004,16739,16820,17997,18693,19146,19817,20099,21378,22029,22254,23161,24974,25504,25946,26563,28831,29300,29425,30198,31005,31202],"prev_hash":"kh_kb3PaxWQmnE2Nz3CU9GKmX1ZKq2yxEc4YcKL1AT9TSTmrB6YM","prev_key_hash":"kh_kb3PaxWQmnE2Nz3CU9GKmX1ZKq2yxEc4YcKL1AT9TSTmrB6YM","state_hash":"bs_h1XLV6ALUWDP2q7B3B8vxzwgVPncsytAyKH5S8SC8EuFeZYBw","target":537156549,"time":1538656736062,"version":23,"info":"cb_..."}'

NOTE: The pool manager does not track the key block candidates created in the past. It is not implemented.

NOTE: The pool manager's job is to also distribute rewards to the miners according to how much processing power they provide to the pool. It is not implemented.

NOTE: The "info" field is added as a mandatory field from the 2.0 release of the æternity node.

Miner

Miners are supposed to get a pending key block over the HTTP API. When they find a solution (nonce and pow) they send it back to the pool manager using the HTTP API.

NOTE: The miners join mining pools as they get rewards for finding incomplete solutions as well. This way the pool manager can also track how much processing power they provide to the pool and what their share is. It is not implemented.

TODO

Implement Stratum protocol for mining pools.