Guides

How to Mine Firo (FIRO)

This is a general guide on how to mine the Firo (FIRO) cryptocurrency and it assumes you already have the hardware.

JULIAN, Andrei Rotariu

Aug 2, 2022 • 3 minutes read

How to Mine Firo (FIRO)

Firo is a well-known privacy-centric cryptocurrency that rebranded from Zcoin in October 2020. Firo was first developed under the Zcoin brand by Poramin Insom after reading Matthew Greens paper about a Zerocoin Protocol. The project was funded by Roger Ver and launched officially in 2016 after much testing in 2015.

Firo is currently being guided by project steward Reuben Yap.

Firo's consensus mechanism is Proof of Work (PoW). Firo uses the FiroPoW mining algorithm and offers 6.25 FIRO per block with the next halving expected to occur September 2024. The block time is 2.5 minutes.

FiroPoW has been specifically designed to be mined by Graphics processing units (GPUs) in order to maintain a fair distribution of the currency. The idea is that your average GPU cost is about $500 and a popular ASIC miner is ten times the price. The Antminer S19 Pro for example costs $5,800 at retail.

Crypto Fireside asked Reuben Yap the project steward for his thoughts on PoW in relation to ASICs:

One of PoW's benefits is that it's a fair way to distribute coins as long as the miners are on a relatively even playing field. ASICs do not provide this equality as their manufacturers have a strong incentive to mine with the machines that they produce and sell only a limited quantity out for cash flow. This makes ASICs especially for more specialized coins very hard to obtain. GPUs on the other hand are widely available and are already in place in many home rig setups. While CPUs also are widely available, the prevalence of botnets that utilize CPUs are much higher giving an unfair advantage to botnet operators. GPUs cuts a balance and provide the best approximation of an even playing field.

-Reuben Yap

Step-By-Step Guide to Mining FIRO

Let's get started!

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This guide assumes that you already have the GPU mining hardware. If you are going to look for a new card, you will need one that has more than 6GB of memory because this is what the FiroPoW algorithm requires. This guide is for pool mining only.

Step 1: Choose a Wallet

You need a wallet to create an address where you can accept FIRO. There are a number of official desktop and mobile wallets available as well as popular third-party wallets such as Guarda and Trust Wallet.

You may already have a wallet that supports FIRO and so it's good to check with wallets you already have downloaded and installed first before rushing ahead and having to go through the process of creating new accounts, passwords, and backups.

You can find a full list of accepted and supported wallets here.

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It is not advised to use the wallet address from an online cryptocurrency exchange. Not your keys, not your coins.

Step 2: Choose a Mining Pool and Register

I recommend you do this step before downloading the mining software because it will likely save you a few minutes later on.

You can find a list of FIRO mining pools online in various locations such as this one. You can also refer back to the Firo guide as it has some suggested pools.

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Firo recommends that you share the hash rate around, meaning that when selecting a pool you should try to use one that controls less of the current total hash rate so as to further decentralize the network but also, should one of the larger pools fail, negative impacts are reduced. There is a donut chart at this link that shows hash rate distribution.

Step 3: Download Mining Software

Once you have chosen your mining pool, most of them will prompt you to download the correct mining software. This is why it is recommended to do these steps in this order otherwise it can get a little bit confusing for the newer miner, but of course, for competent miners, this is not necessary.

Firo has its own mining software however they do caution that performance is poor on newer AMD brand cards. Firo's official mining guide links to 3 other software options depending on your hardware and your operating system.

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Software and hardware go together like lego pieces. You won't always get the right match and so it's good to match up the software that will work best with your existing hardware.

Final Step: Configure the Mining Software Settings

This last step requires that you configure the mining software so that it connects to the correct pool server and can begin mining but also so that they know who to pay.

Depending on the pool you have chosen in Step 2 and the mining software you will need to input some details such as the recommended pool server address, and your wallet address.

This configuration is done in a bat file similar to a notepad file and if you get stuck 9 times out of 1o the miner will have a readme or help file that you can open and look for help. If you really get stuck most miners and pools have chats, forums, and groups available where you can ask for help.

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Be careful when asking for help, hackers and scammers are known to patrol forums looking for victims.