How to Mine Alephium (ALPH) with High Efficiency? (Next-Gen Mining)

Understanding Alephium's Unique Consensus Mechanism

1. Alephium employs a sharded Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus called BlockDAG with Recursive Sharding, which divides the network into four independent subchains.

2. Each subchain operates its own mining difficulty and block reward schedule, allowing parallel block production without central coordination.

3. Miners must target specific subchains based on their public key’s hash prefix — this deterministic assignment eliminates orphaned blocks and reduces wasted hashpower.

4. The algorithm uses a modified version of SHA-3 (Keccak-256), optimized for GPU computation but resistant to ASIC dominance in early stages.

5. Difficulty adjustment occurs every 100 blocks per subchain, enabling rapid adaptation to hash rate fluctuations across shards.

Hardware Selection and Optimization Strategies

1. High-memory-bandwidth GPUs such as the NVIDIA RTX 4090 and AMD RX 7900 XTX deliver optimal throughput due to Alephium’s memory-bound hashing pattern.

2. Dual-GPU rigs require separate wallet-derived subchain assignments per device to avoid cross-shard nonce collisions.

3. Overclocking memory while slightly underclocking core frequency improves hashrate stability by up to 18% on tested configurations.

4. Linux-based mining OSes like HiveOS show lower driver overhead and better thermal management than Windows deployments.

5. NVLink or AMD Infinity Fabric interconnects do not enhance performance since each GPU mines independently on assigned subchains.

Software Stack Configuration Best Practices

1. The official alephium-miner v2.4.1 supports automatic subchain routing when linked to a synced full node running alephium-node v1.9.0 or later.

2. Configuring --mining-strategy=adaptive enables real-time switching between subchains based on local difficulty metrics and pending transaction density.

3. Enabling --enable-cpu-verification offloads partial DAG validation to CPU threads, reducing GPU memory pressure during epoch transitions.

4. Using --log-level=debug reveals subchain-specific nonce rejection reasons, aiding in fine-tuning memory timings and power limits.

5. Remote monitoring via Prometheus endpoints allows aggregation of per-subchain hashrates and rejection rates across geographically distributed rigs.

Network-Level Efficiency Considerations

1. Running a full node with at least 16GB RAM and SSD storage ensures low-latency submission of valid shares to the correct subchain’s leader node.

2. Geo-distributed mining pools like AlphaPool and ShardMine route work units through regional gateways to minimize propagation delay across subchains.

3. Static IP assignment combined with UPnP port forwarding on port 12942 improves inbound connection reliability for solo miners.

4. Subchain-specific DNS seeds (e.g., shard1.alephium.org) help clients bootstrap faster into targeted shards instead of random discovery.

5. Bandwidth throttling below 5 Mbps causes share timeouts during high-TPS periods; sustained 25+ Mbps upstream is recommended for multi-rig operations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I mine Alephium using CPUs only?A: CPU mining yields negligible returns due to Alephium’s memory-hard design and GPU-optimized Keccak variant. Hashrates remain below 0.5 MH/s even on high-end Threadripper systems.

Q: Does Alephium support merged mining with other PoW chains?A: No merged mining capability exists. Alephium’s recursive sharding architecture requires exclusive commitment of hashpower to one or more of its four subchains.

Q: Is there a minimum stake required to participate in Alephium mining?A: Mining does not require staking. Participation is permissionless and open to any hardware capable of submitting valid proofs to designated subchains.

Q: How often does the DAG size increase?A: The DAG grows linearly every 10,000 blocks per subchain, approximately every 3.5 days. Current size stands at 4.2 GB per subchain, requiring at least 6 GB VRAM for stable operation.