How to mine Alephium on Windows? (ALPH Tutorial)

System Requirements for Alephium Mining

1. A 64-bit Windows operating system (Windows 10 or later recommended).

2. At least 16 GB of RAM to handle concurrent mining threads and node synchronization.

3. A modern CPU with AVX2 instruction set support — Intel Core i5-8th Gen or newer, AMD Ryzen 5 2600 or better.

4. Minimum 100 GB of free SSD space for the Alephium blockchain database and cache files.

5. Stable internet connection with upload speed exceeding 10 Mbps to broadcast blocks and maintain network participation.

Installing the Alephium Node Software

1. Visit https://github.com/alephium/alephium/releases and download the latest Windows binary package labeled alephium-x.x.x-windows-x64.zip.

2. Extract the archive to a dedicated folder such as C:\alephium-node, avoiding paths with spaces or special characters.

3. Open PowerShell as Administrator and navigate to the extracted directory using cd C:\alephium-node.

4. Run .\alephium-node.exe --miner.enabled true --miner.address YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS, replacing YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS with a valid Alephium wallet address generated via Alephium Wallet or CLI.

5. Observe console output for confirmation messages like 'Mining started on group X' and 'Connected to network: mainnet'.

Configuring Mining Parameters

1. Create a file named alephium.conf in the same directory as the executable.

2. Add the line miner.num-threads = 8 to allocate eight logical CPU cores — adjust based on your processor’s thread count minus two for system stability.

3. Include miner.group = 0 if targeting Group 0 specifically; omitting this allows automatic group assignment based on wallet address hashing.

4. Set node.rpc-bind-address = '127.0.0.1:12939' to enable local RPC access for monitoring tools.

5. Append log.level = 'info' to capture essential mining events without overwhelming verbosity.

Monitoring Mining Activity

1. Access the built-in web dashboard by opening http://127.0.0.1:12939/explorer in a browser after node initialization completes.

2. Navigate to the Mining tab to view real-time metrics including hash rate, accepted shares, and last block found timestamp.

3. Use PowerShell to execute curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:12939/mining/status for JSON-formatted mining statistics.

4. Check log files located at C:\alephium-node\logs\alephium-node.log for warnings related to stale shares or difficulty adjustments.

5. Confirm block rewards appear in your wallet by querying https://explorer.alephium.org/addresses/YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS after approximately 10 confirmations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I mine Alephium using GPU hardware?A: No. Alephium uses a Proof-of-Work algorithm called Autolykos v2, which is intentionally CPU-bound and memory-hard. GPU mining yields negligible efficiency gains and is not supported.

Q: Why does my miner show “No active mining group”?A: This occurs when the wallet address provided lacks sufficient balance to qualify for group assignment or when the node hasn’t fully synced. Ensure your wallet holds at least 1 ALPH and wait until sync status reaches 100%.

Q: Is it safe to run the miner alongside other resource-intensive applications?A: Running memory-heavy apps concurrently may cause page faults and reduce effective hash rate. It is advisable to close background applications consuming over 2 GB RAM before launching the miner.

Q: What happens if I stop the node during an active mining session?A: All pending shares are discarded. The miner resumes from scratch upon restart, with no carryover of partial work or accumulated difficulty.