Last update: September 2, 2021

Mining

Configure CPU mining

To enable CPU mining, start Hyperledger Besu with the following options:

besu --rpc-http-api=ETH,MINER --miner-enabled --miner-coinbase=<account>

Where <account> is the account you pay mining rewards to. For example, fe3b557e8fb62b89f4916b721be55ceb828dbd73.

Start and stop mining using the miner_start and miner_stop APIs.

Configure GPU mining

Besu supports GPU mining, tested using Ethminer with the stratum+tcp scheme.

To enable GPU mining, start Hyperledger Besu with the following options:

besu --rpc-http-api=ETH,MINER --miner-enabled --miner-stratum-enabled --miner-coinbase=<account>

Where <account> is the account you pay mining rewards to. For example, fe3b557e8fb62b89f4916b721be55ceb828dbd73.

Optional command line options are:

• --miner-stratum-host to specify the host of the mining service.
• --miner-stratum-port to specify the port of the mining service.

Note

Besu also supports the getwork scheme. Use the --miner-stratum-enabled option and enable the ETH RPCs.

The getwork scheme is supported as the http scheme in certain mining software.

Start and stop mining using the miner_start and miner_stop APIs.

Mining APIs

The JSON-RPC API methods for mining are:

• miner_start to start mining.
• miner_stop to stop mining.
• eth_mining to determine whether the client is actively mining new blocks.
• eth_getMinerDataByBlockHash and eth_getMinerDataByBlockNumber to get the miner data for a specified block.
• eth_hashrate to get the number of hashes per second with which the node is mining. Not supported for GPU mining.
• eth_getWork to get the hash of the current block, the seed hash, and the target boundary condition. Only used when using the getwork scheme.
• eth_submitWork to submit the PoW solution. Only used when using the getwork scheme.

Hyperledger Besu mined blocks

Hyperledger Besu has successfully mined blocks on the Ropsten testnet, ETC mainnet (uncle block only) and Mordor ETC testnet. Blocks mined by the Hyperledger Besu team contain the version number used in the block’s extraData field. The following accounts have been used to mine on public networks with Hyperledger Besu:

• Ropsten: 0x2f14582947E292a2eCd20C430B46f2d27CFE213c
• ETC: 0x3125309aa670f5e60493b50884a7e7abf9ebb701
• Mordor: 0x2f14582947E292a2eCd20C430B46f2d27CFE213c