How to mine NIM in the easiest way? (updated)

Reading Time: 4 minutes ;  Published: 2 years ago on January 31, 2022

If you want to start mining the Nimiq (NIM) cryptocurrency in the quickest and easiest way, without running command lines, cloning repositories, …etc, …etc, then this quick guide has everything you need to know.

First create a Nimiq account

Go to nimiq.com and click on the Create Account button.

When you click it you will be directed to the official Nimiq wallet. Then you will need to select the option that says Create Account, which is the first one that appears from left to right.

You will then be asked to select an Avatar, which are the graphical representations of the Nimiq addresses and are useful for easy recognition.

When you select your avatar you will be presented with the Nimiq address that corresponds to your avatar. Copy this address to the clipboard because we are going to use it later to configure the mining program.

You will then be asked to create a password and verify it. The password is used to encrypt the private keys of the account you have just created. Each time you require access to your account to send coins, or to create a backup, you will be prompted to enter your password. Without your password you will lose access to your account, as the information is stored locally in your browser and cannot be retrieved by Nimiq.

Next you will need to download the Login File, which is the image with the QR code containing the private keys to your new account. The image has been encrypted with your password and when you want to regain access to your account you will be prompted for this file along with your password. It is extremely important that you do not lose the authentication file, or you will lose access to your account.

That's it, you have created your Nimiq account. The address of this account is the one you will have to put in the mining program when you are configuring it to start mining.

Additionally you can create a backup with 24 recovery words, which you can use in case you lose the login file. We recommend that you write them down on a piece of paper and put them in a safe place. To see the 24 words you should click on the orange button that says Recovery Words.

After the information explaining the importance of backing up the recovery words is presented, you will be asked for your password and shown the 24 words to be written down on paper.

To make sure that you have indeed written down the 24 words, you will be asked to confirm some of them randomly, according to their corresponding number.

Now to start mining

Now let's go to download the mining program. Albermonte, who is a member of the Nimiq community, has developed an open source program that we can use to start mining quickly. We can download it from the following link, and it is available for Windows, Linux or Mac.

Once you have installed and started the program you will need to enter the Nimiq address of your account and select a mining Pool. Also select the number of threads, and click the Start Minig button. The higher the number of threads, the higher your Hashrate, which is the mining power you will have.

By mining in a pool together with all the other miners participating in the pool, you will receive rewards every time someone in the pool finds a block on the blockchain. The reward you receive will be proportional to your hashrate compared to the hashrate of the other participants in the pool. This way of mining is the most recommended for those who do not have much mining power, and is the one we recommend in this tutorial. If you do not select a pool you will be mining alone, and you will receive rewards only when you find a block, but depending on your hashrate it may take too long before that happens.

Once you start mining you will see the graph above, which corresponds to your hashrate, and the NIM balance you have accumulated so far from mining.

You're done! You are now mining NIM… we hope you found this tutorial useful.


Previous

Where to spend your NIM

If you already have some NIM and are wondering where you can spend it then this blog post is for...