Ethereum is a cutting edge block chain project that is currently a victim of its own success. Gas prices are outrageous and managing a project on the network is becoming expensive for users. It is my option that this expensive gas problem is temporary and will be solved soon with the implementation of multiple scaling solutions (payment channels, Optimism, zk rollups, etc.). Currently, no other project can complete with Ethereum because it has the network effect, volume, creativity, developer tools, etc. Most other projects are copy cats, or not decentralized or not Turing complete, etc. Don’t let the marketing teams of these other projects fool you.
Due to Ethereum’s network congestion new side chains have been created and one of them is called Cheap ETH. This project is a copy and is compatible with Ethereum. According to their website their goal is to keep the Cheap ETH token price 1,000x lower then ETH and have an environment of trusted compute. As a result this means gas prices will be really cheap.
Keep in mind that side chains are NOT Ethereum and do not posses the same security (less miners on the network). This information is from my findings from their website so please do your own research.
Just like Ethereum this block chain needs miners for security. To mine this Cheap ETH chain you need to configure your MetaMask wallet and configure your miner. I explain each of these steps below.
Configure MetaMask
If you had Ethereum before this project started (at block 11818959) you probably have Cheap ETH in your wallet (cTH is the token symbol). To check your balance configure your MetaMask wallet to point to the Cheap ETH chain.
- Download or open your MetaMask browser wallet
2. Open Network Settings at the top of the application
3. Click on “Custom RPC” at the bottom of the list
4. Input the following information
Network Name: cheapETH
New RPC URL: https://node.cheapeth.org/rpc
Chain ID: 777
Currency Symbol: cTH
5. After you save your setting you will be brought back to the main MetaMask screen so you can view your balance and you are done configuring your wallet.
Mining
To mine the CheapETH chain you need to connect to a mining pool and run an Ethereum miner. Since this is a copy of the Ethereum chain you can use all the same tools you use on Ethereum.
Mining Pool
According to the Cheap ETH website there are at least 3 mining pools to connect to. I do not know the validity of any of these pools so do your own research. These pools are:
cthpool.com
cthpool.org
cethpool.com
For my experiment I chose to use cthpool.com because at the time of this writing it had the most amount of miners and hash power. On the help page of the cthpool website they detail all of the connection information that you need to configure your miner.
Mining Software
To mine cTH there is a link to ethMiner on the help page of the mining pools website. I chose to use Phoenix Miner (a Ethereum miner) as I am most familiar with this software. Since this is Ethereum compatible chain I think any Ethereum miner will work.
To setup in Phoenix miner I configured the following information in the start_miner.bat file.
PhoenixMiner.exe -pool stratum://cthpool.com:8008 -wal YOURWALLETADDRESS
It is that simple.
How many coins am I earning per day?
At the time of this writing I am mining with 1 RX580 8GB Sapphire Nitro GPU and my hash rate is a little over 28 MH/S.
I have been mining for over a week and I have been periodically watching the mining pools statistics. The total network hash rate has been fluctuating between 7 GH and 14 GH
I have been averaging between 25-30 cTH per day. See screen shot below which details my payouts for the last 24 hour period.
According to the cheapETH.org website there are a few ways to sell your cTH. At the time of this writing I have not heard of any of these sites before so do your own research and use caution.
Good luck and remember this is all experimental technology so make sure you do your own research.
