Ethereum: How does Ethereum Mining work?

Ethereum Mining Working

In addition to the Bitcoin, Ethereum has been enjoying a rapidly growing popularity for some time now. One of the reasons for the fascination of these digital currencies is that they can be mined. Those who follow bitcoin-live.de on a regular basis know that we have already been involved in the subject for years and that in particular the Ethereum Mining and its profitability are taken up again and again.

Attention: This page has been updated on 21.08.2017 so that the content has been adapted, updated and partly postponed. The old contents of this page are now under: Instructions: Ethereum Mining

In our opinion, Ethereum Mining is especially interesting because it can be done with almost any standard computer. Well, you should already have good and powerful hardware, but in theory, any normal "office computer" can participate in the ethereum mining process.

More about this for example here:

Ethereum Mining Computer / Rig
Is the Ethereum Mining worth it? "still"?
Is Ethereum Mining worth it again ?!
How do I build a GPU miner?
A short introduction to Ethereum ...

The foundations of Ethereum were laid in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin by publishing a white paper with the basic ideas and functions about Ethereum. The special thing is that Vitalik Buterin 2013 was only 19 years old, so that he was celebrated in the world as a kind of child prodigy. In 2014, Buterin then managed to collect a whopping $ 18 million through a crowdsale to begin the launch and development of Ethereum. In 2915 that was the time, Ethereum was presented to the public and the first blocks were gemined, so that the decentralized Ethereum network went online.

Since then, Ethereum is constantly developing, the 2015 was more or less a kind of "beta version" online, which still contains some errors and in which not all functions were available. Overall, 4 phases are planned in the development of Ethereum:

Frontier (from July 2015)
Homestead (from March 2016)
Metropolis
Serenity
At the moment we are in Ethereum in the homestead phase, so there are two more stages of development following. For example, when you reach Serenity, you want to switch from POW (Proof of Work) to POS (Proof of Stake). At the moment, however, the developers are lagging somewhat behind schedule so that they delay the further stages of Ethereum.

How does Ethereum Mining work now?

The Ethereum Mining can be thought of as a worldwide race in which miners compete and solve math problems. Since graphics cards are particularly well-suited for these calculations, the miners have specialized in large GPU rigs so that they can perform Ethereum mining as effectively as possible.

If a miner resolves the task correctly, he will receive 5 ETH as a reward - these 5 ETH currently have a value of approximately (271.96 € x 5 ETH) = 1359.8 €. So a very appealing sum.

It should be noted that the decentral Ethereum network is set so that about every 20 seconds (as of 21.08.2017) a block is found. However, this time will increase in the future as Ethereum is in a kind of "ice age" that will allow the switch from POW (proof-of-work) to POS (proof-of-stake).

Since the block time, ie the time between blocks at Ethereum is relatively short and it can happen that two miners have the same solution at the same time (very shortly after each other) transmitted to the decentralized network. However, these solutions do not become blocks, but are known to the network as uncle / aunt. Nevertheless, miners also get a small reward in ethers for solutions from uncle / aunt