How to mine ECX

Solo mine eCash.com with any SHA-256 ASIC, in about five minutes

ECX is the coin of eCash.com, a hard fork of Bitcoin with drivechains (BIP 300/301). It is mined exactly like Bitcoin, with SHA-256, so any Bitcoin ASIC can mine it without changes. SegPool runs a solo ECX pool: when your miner finds a block, 98% of the reward goes straight to your address inside that block, and we keep 2%. There are no balances to withdraw and no minimum payout.

1. Get an ECX address

Install an ECX wallet, such as the eCash app from eCash.com, and copy a receiving address. ECX uses Bitcoin's address formats, so the address starts with bc1q, 1 or 3. That address is your account: there is no sign-up, and the block reward is paid to it directly.

ECX is not XEC. eCash (XEC) is a different coin from Bitcoin ABC, with addresses that start ecash:q. An XEC address will not work here, and XEC pools will not mine ECX.

2. Point your miner at the pool

Open your miner's web interface, find the pool settings, and enter the URL, worker and password from the table above. Add a different rig name after the dot for each machine, such as .rig1, .rig2, so you can tell them apart on your stats page. Every rig can use the same address.

• Antminer (Bitmain): Miner Configuration → Pool 1. Paste the URL, set Worker to ADDRESS.rig1 and Password to x, then Save & Apply.
• Whatsminer (MicroBT): Configuration → Pools (or WhatsMinerTool). Same three fields, then save and restart.
• Bitaxe and other AxeOS miners: Settings. Stratum URL is stratum.ecx.segpool.com with no prefix, Stratum Port is 3333, Stratum User is ADDRESS.rig1, Password x. Save and restart.
• Braiins OS, Avalon and others: the same three values go into the pool fields; the menu names vary.

Leave your other pools as backups if you like. The pool starts each connection at a share difficulty of 1,024 and adjusts it within minutes so that every rig sends about 12 shares a minute, from a Bitaxe to a rack of S21s.

3. Check that it works

Open the wallet watcher and enter your address, or go straight to ecash.segpool.com/miner/YOUR_ADDRESS. Within a few minutes you should see your rigs and your shares, sorted by how close they came to a block. The hashrate figure averages at least ten minutes, so it reads low until a rig has been connected that long. For alerts, send /watch YOUR_ADDRESS to our Telegram bot: it messages you when you find a block and when your rigs stop sending shares.

Ten-minute hashrate readings wobble by about ±9% even for a perfectly steady rig, because shares arrive at random. The essay on shares explains why; judge your rig on the hourly or daily figure.

4. Know what to expect

Solo mining pays in whole blocks. At the current difficulty, a block takes D × 2³² ÷ your hashrate seconds on average, and luck spreads the real wait widely around that: about 63% of blocks come within the average time and about one in seven take more than twice as long. Use the ECX mining calculator for your rig's expected earnings, power cost and odds, and read On Luck and Patience before you judge your first week.

When a block is found, its reward can be spent after 100 more blocks, about 17 hours. Rarely, another miner's block at the same height wins and yours is orphaned, which pays nothing. When you spend ECX, use a wallet with replay protection.

Troubleshooting

• No shares at all: check the URL and port 3333, and that your network allows outbound connections on that port. AxeOS miners want the host without stratum+tcp://.
• Rejected or no stats for your address: make sure the username starts with an ECX address (bc1q…, 1… or 3…), not an XEC ecash: address, and that the dot comes before the rig name.
• Hashrate lower than the miner says: compare over an hour, not ten minutes. Persistent gaps usually mean stale or rejected shares from a slow connection.
• Still stuck: ask in our Telegram group. Real people run this pool.

Questions

Is ECX the same as eCash (XEC)?

No. ECX is eCash.com, a Bitcoin hard fork with drivechains that uses Bitcoin's address formats. XEC is eCash from Bitcoin ABC, a fork of Bitcoin Cash with ecash: addresses. They are different coins on different chains, and SegPool ECX is not affiliated with eCash (XEC).

What hardware can mine ECX?

Any SHA-256 ASIC that can mine Bitcoin, from a Bitaxe to an Antminer or Whatsminer. GPUs and CPUs are far too slow to matter.

Why solo instead of a pay-per-share pool?

Solo keeps 98% of each block instead of paying a pool's insurance premium, at the cost of lumpy income. On Luck and Patience works through the trade-off with numbers.