Ways to mine

You can mine ARG on a phone, on a computer, or on a rented server. All three pay the same wallet, and you can combine them. This guide takes each one step by step and says what to expect from it. For what mining pays, when you can spend it and how long a block takes, see Mining.

Which one is for you?

What all three have in common:

• One wallet. Create it in the app and keep the 24 words safe. Every device and server mines to its address, and the app shows what each one finds.
• The same work. A phone, a laptop and a server all hash real block headers with Argon2id; a block from any of them pays the full reward.
• Pool or solo. The app mines in the pool by default: every block the pool finds is shared by everyone in it, by work done, less a 1% fee. Solo, one tap away, the whole block pays your address when you find one. The node always mines solo. See Pool mining.
• The same lock. A reward can be spent 100 blocks after the block that paid it, about 17 hours at 10-minute blocks. Until then the app shows it as Maturing.
• Your chance is your share. The Mine page shows your hashrate, the network's, and the Expected time to a block from live figures. Finding a block is random: two blocks in a day and then nothing for a week is normal.

On a phone or tablet

The app runs in the phone's browser. Nothing is installed from an app store, and the 24 words never leave the phone.

1. Open app.argonmine.com in Chrome, Safari, Samsung Internet or Firefox.
2. Create a new wallet and write down the 24 words, or Log in with your 24 words if you already have a wallet.
3. Open the Mine page and press Start mining.

Then make it comfortable to leave running:

• Put it on the home screen. Under More, choose Install the app (on an iPhone or iPad: Safari's Share button, then Add to Home Screen). The app then opens full-screen like any other app, and keeps your wallet.
• Keep the screen on. In Settings, turn on Keep the screen on. Phones slow down or stop a browser in the background, so mining only counts while the app is in front. Dim the screen to save battery.
• Start when the app opens. Also in Settings. Mining then resumes whenever you open the app, without pressing Start.
• Processor cores. The app uses 4 by default. If the phone gets uncomfortably warm, lower it under Settings, Mining.
• Plug it in. Mining uses as much power as a game. Leave the phone on a charger, out of direct sunlight and not under a pillow or in a bag.

What to expect: a phone makes the fewest attempts of the three, and fewer still when it is warm. Solo, it can wait months for a block, which is why the app mines in the pool: the Mine page shows Estimated per day, and payouts of 0.1 ARG or more arrive by themselves as pool blocks mature. A computer or a server mines more, pool or solo.

On a computer

A laptop or desktop has two ways to mine. The app is the quickest; the node makes more attempts per core and does not depend on the explorer.

With the browser app

1. Open app.argonmine.com, create a wallet or log in, and press Start mining on the Mine page.
2. Under Settings, Mining, choose the Processor cores. Half of them is the default, which leaves the computer responsive. Use more when the computer has nothing else to do.
3. Turn on Start when the app opens, and keep the tab open. Closing the tab stops mining; a reload pauses it for a moment, then it resumes.

Keep a laptop plugged in and set the computer not to sleep while mining: on Windows under Settings, System, Power, on macOS under System Settings, Battery or Energy. The lid can stay open; the screen may turn off.

The browser runs the miner as WebAssembly, which makes fewer attempts per core than the node's native code. Install the app from the browser's address bar (Chrome and Edge offer Install) to run it in its own window.

With the node

The node is a single program with a built-in miner. It keeps its own copy of the chain, builds its own blocks, and keeps mining if the explorer is ever down. It is the right choice for a computer that mines most of the day.

1. Download release 1.1.0 for your system and check its checksum, exactly as Run a node, Download describes, or build it from source. Releases before 1.1.0 cannot mine from block 300.

2. Install it with the script in the archive (Install): sh install.sh on Linux and macOS, install-windows.ps1 on Windows.

3. Take your address from the app: Wallet, Receive. Rewards then show up in the app under your 24 words.

4. Start mining in a terminal:

   argonmined -mine arg1… -threads 4 -tag "my laptop"
   

   -threads is how many cores mine; the default is all but one. Each thread needs about 8 MiB of memory. -tag is optional: a short label of your choice written into the blocks you find.

5. Watch the log. Every 60 seconds a status: line shows the height, the hashrate and the blocks found. On first start the node downloads the chain first, which takes a few minutes.

Stop it with Ctrl+C. To mine again, run the same command. When you upgrade, stop the node, replace the programs, and start it again; see Upgrades.

Rewards from a node pay no referral share, and the node needs a correct clock: a clock more than two hours fast produces blocks the network refuses.

On a rented server (VPS)

A virtual server at a hosting provider can run the node and its miner around the clock. It needs no graphics card and no special hardware: mining is limited by memory speed, which every server has.

Before you rent one:

• Read the provider's terms. Many providers forbid or limit cryptocurrency mining on their servers. Find the clause before you start, not after.
• Count the cost. A server costs a fee every month, and ARG has no market price. Rent what you are happy to spend on taking part, and check the Mine page's expected time to a block before you add cores.
• Pick cores and memory, not disk. The chain is small. A plan with 2 to 4 cores, 2 GB of memory and 20 GB of disk is plenty, on x86-64 or ARM64. Cores that are shared with other customers make fewer attempts than dedicated ones; a plan with dedicated cores is worth more per core.
• Choose Linux. The steps below are for Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 and Debian 12, and assume you can log in with SSH.

Set it up

1. Download and check the release. On the server:

   sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y unzip curl
   curl -LO https://docs.argonmine.com/downloads/argonmine-1.1.0-linux-amd64.zip
   curl -LO https://docs.argonmine.com/downloads/SHA256SUMS
   sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing
   

   The last command must print OK. If you would rather compile it yourself, see Build from source. On an ARM server use argonmine-1.1.0-linux-arm64.zip instead.

2. Install the node under its own user, with its data in /var/lib/argonmine:

   unzip argonmine-1.1.0-linux-amd64.zip
   cd argonmine-1.1.0-linux-amd64
   sudo useradd -r -m -d /var/lib/argonmine argonmine
   sudo install -m 755 argonmined /usr/local/bin/argonmined
   

3. Create the service. Put your address after -mine, the number of threads after -threads, and a name after -tag:

   sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/argonmined.service > /dev/null <<'EOF'
   [Unit]
   Description=Argonmine node and miner
   After=network-online.target
   Wants=network-online.target
   
   [Service]
   User=argonmine
   Group=argonmine
   ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/argonmined -network mainnet -datadir /var/lib/argonmine -listen :9333 -mine arg1… -threads 4 -tag "my server"
   Restart=always
   RestartSec=5
   NoNewPrivileges=true
   ProtectSystem=strict
   ProtectHome=true
   ReadWritePaths=/var/lib/argonmine
   PrivateTmp=true
   LimitNOFILE=65536
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   EOF
   sudo systemctl daemon-reload
   sudo systemctl enable --now argonmined
   

   The service starts with the server and restarts if it ever stops. Use as many threads as the plan has cores; leave one free if the server does anything else.

4. Watch it work:

   journalctl -u argonmined -f
   

   The node downloads the chain, then a status: line every 60 seconds shows the height, the number of peers, the hashrate and the blocks found. Press Ctrl+C to stop watching; the service keeps running.

5. Open the peer port if the server has a firewall, so that other nodes can connect to yours. The RPC port stays closed; the node only answers it on the server itself.

   sudo ufw allow 9333/tcp
   

6. Keep the clock right. timedatectl must say System clock synchronized: yes. Hosting providers set this up; if yours did not, sudo timedatectl set-ntp true.

Keep it running

• Change the threads or the address by editing the ExecStart line in /etc/systemd/system/argonmined.service, then sudo systemctl daemon-reload && sudo systemctl restart argonmined.
• Upgrade by stopping the service, installing the new argonmined with the same install command, and starting it again. Release notes say when an upgrade is required (Upgrades).
• Several servers can mine to the same address; each one fetches nothing from the others and every block pays the same wallet.
• Back up nothing on the server. It holds no keys: the address only receives. Your 24 words stay with you.

How many attempts to expect: measured on cloud servers with shared cores, about 700 attempts per second with 4 threads and about 1,000 with 8. Per thread, that is a wide range, from about 20 to 200 attempts per second depending on the processor and above all on how fast its memory is. Adding threads beyond what the memory can feed adds little, so compare the status: hashrate at 2, 4 and all cores before settling on a number.

Checking that it pays you

• The Mine page shows the hashrate of this device, the blocks it has found and the network figures.
• The Dashboard adds up everything your address has mined, from every device and server.
• The explorer shows every block, who it paid, and your address's full history: explorer.argonmine.com.
• The miners map on the website counts browser miners by country. Nodes mine without asking the explorer for work, so they count from the blocks they find, without a country.

If a block does not appear within a few times the expected time, check the hashrate first: a phone in the background, a laptop that went to sleep, or a server whose service stopped all show as zero. See Troubleshooting for the app and Run a node for the node.