Alphaminer

• Alphaminer is a free, high performance, open source, cross platform CPU miner for mining Alpha.
• The software has been tested on Linux, Windows, macOS and on Intel/AMD x86-64 and ARM64 processors.
• Alphaminer uses RandomX 1.2.1 as its mining algorithm.

Features

Alphaminer supports:

• Solo mining with Alpha node (RPC getblocktemplate)
• Mining pools (Stratum V1 protocol)
• Hiveon OS
• Large pages for improved performance
• Multi-threading capability

Community Mining

If you would like to support the development, then you can add the community address to the list of mining addresses - see below for setup. Current ALPHA community address is

alpha1qmmqcy66tyjfq5rgngxk4p2r34y9ny7cnnfq3wmfw8fyx03yahxkq0ck3kh

Download

• Binary Releases
• RandomX Algorithm

Build dependencies

Alphaminer depends on the following libraries:

• libcurl, https://curl.se/libcurl/
• jansson, https://github.com/akheron/jansson (jansson is included locally)
• RandomX, https://github.com/unicitynetwork/RandomX (RandomX is included as a Git submodule)

Linux

Ubuntu/Debian

Install dependencies

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install autoconf git build-essential pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev

Build instructions

git clone https://github.com/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner --recursive
cd alpha-miner
./autogen.sh
./configure
make

CentOS/RHEL/Fedora

Install dependencies

For CentOS/RHEL 8+:

sudo dnf install autoconf git gcc gcc-c++ make pkgconfig libcurl-devel

For older CentOS/RHEL 7:

sudo yum install autoconf git gcc gcc-c++ make pkgconfig libcurl-devel

Build instructions

git clone https://github.com/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner --recursive
cd alpha-miner
./autogen.sh
./configure
make

Arch Linux

Install dependencies

sudo pacman -S autoconf git gcc make pkg-config curl

Build instructions

git clone https://github.com/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner --recursive
cd alpha-miner
./autogen.sh
./configure
make

MacOS

Install dependencies

brew install git automake libtool pkg-config curl

Build instructions

git clone https://github.com/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner --recursive
cd alpha-miner
./autogen.sh
./configure
make

Windows

MSYS2 is required to create a native Windows executable.

Install MSYS2

Download and run installer (https://www.msys2.org/)

• Launch the MSYS2 terminal running default UCRT64 environment.
• You should see 'UCRT64' in the terminal prompt.

Install dependencies

In MSYS2 terminal:

pacman -S git autoconf pkgconf automake make mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-curl mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc

Build instructions (for running in MSYS2)

To build a native Windows application which must run in a MSYS2 terminal. In MSYS2 terminal:

git clone https://github.com/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner --recursive
cd alpha-miner
./autogen.sh
LIBCURL="-lcurl.dll" ./configure
make

Build instructions (for running anywhere on Windows)

To build a native Windows application which can run in Terminal and PowerShell. In MSYS2 terminal, build a static version of libcurl which uses Windows SSL (Schannel) instead of OpenSSL.

pacman -S libtool
wget https://curl.se/download/curl-8.7.1.tar.gz
tar xf curl-8.7.1.tar.gz
cd curl-8.7.1
autoreconf -fi
./configure --with-schannel --disable-shared --disable-ftp --disable-file --disable-ldap --disable-ldaps --disable-rtsp --disable-dict --disable-telnet --disable-tftp --disable-pop3 --disable-imap --disable-smb --disable-smtp --disable-gopher --disable-sspi --disable-mqtt --disable-manual --disable-docs --disable-ntlm --disable-largefile --without-libidn2 --disable-tls-srp --disable-libcurl-option --disable-alt-svc --disable-headers-api --disable-verbose --disable-ares --disable-aws --disable-netrc --without-brotli --without-nghttp2 --without-libpsl --without-zstd
make
make install

Now build the miner using this new static version of libcurl.

git clone https://github.com/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner --recursive
cd alpha-miner
./autogen.sh
LIBCURL=`pkg-config --static --libs libcurl` LDFLAGS="-static -static-libgcc" ./configure CFLAGS="-DCURL_STATICLIB"
make

How to use

• Help message and options:

./minerd -h

• First test the performance

./minerd --benchmark 

• Test the performance with largepages. Largepages can give a 2x improvement in hashrate.

./minerd --benchmark --largepages

• Ensure you have access to a node that accepts RPC calls. Use the -server flag when running the node daemon or add the following to the alpha.conf configuration file. Choose a secure username and password.

server=1
rpcuser=YOUR_RPC_USERNAME
rpcpassword=YOUR_RPC_PASSWORD

• If the node software is running on a different machine from the miner then you need to allow the miner to make RPC calls by adding the following to the node alpha.conf configuration file.

rpcbind=0.0.0.0
rpcallowip= MINER_IP_ADDRESS

• For editing the alpha.conf file in the node software UI:

  • go to "Settings" tab -> "Options" -> click "Open Configuration File", make the necessary edits and save the file
  • make sure that "Enable RPC server" is ticked under "Options"

• Create an addresses file, e.g. "addresses.txt". This allows for a different address to be randomly selected every time the miner wins a block reward. If you would like to support developement then add the community address to the list of addresses. The addresses file should contain one address per line:

alpha1qhhjespxz2wrd8l39d0m5ntswhsxza7dxz02yfg
alpha1q54mypfl9wyx7z6h523qx242dr77nmensthmfu5
...

• Solo mine on 4 CPU threads, connected to a local Alpha node. Replace username:password with the RPC user and password in the Alpha configuration file alpha.conf.

./minerd -o 127.0.0.1:8589 -O YOUR_RPC_USERNAME:YOUR_RPC_PASSWORD -t 4 --afile="addresses.txt" 

• Solo mine using large memory pages

./minerd -o 127.0.0.1:8589 -O username:password  --afile="addresses.txt" --largepages

Pool Mining (Stratum)

• Connect to a mining pool using your wallet address:
  • http://www.unicity-pool.com pool maintained by the Unicity development team
  • http://www.nopoolnogain.net community operated pool
  • http://alphapool.ddns.net:8686/#alpha1 community operated pool
  • https://unicity.luckypool.io/ community operated pool

./minerd -o stratum+tcp://unicity-pool.com:3054 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS

• Pool mining with large pages:

./minerd -o stratum+tcp://unicity-pool.com:3054 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS --largepages

Docker

Using Pre-built Docker Image

The official Docker image is available at ghcr.io/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner:latest. You can use it directly without building:

Solo Mining with Docker

docker run --rm --name alpha-miner \
  --cpus=1 \
  --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway \
  -v $(pwd)/addrs.txt:/home/miner/addrs.txt \
  ghcr.io/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner:latest \
  -o 'host.docker.internal:8589' \
  -O user:password \
  --largepages \
  --no-affinity

Docker arguments explained:

• --rm: Automatically remove the container when it stops
• --name alpha-miner: Give the container a name for easy management
• --cpus=1: Limit the container to use 1 CPU core (adjust as needed)
• --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway: Allow the container to connect to services on the host machine
• -v $(pwd)/addrs.txt:/home/miner/addrs.txt: Mount your local addresses file into the container

Miner arguments explained:

• -o 'host.docker.internal:8589': Connect to Alpha node on host machine port 8589
• -O user:password: RPC credentials (replace with your actual credentials from alpha.conf)
• --largepages: Enable large memory pages for ~2x performance improvement
• --no-affinity: Disable CPU affinity (recommended for containers)

Pool Mining with Docker

docker run --rm --name alpha-pool-miner \
  --cpus=1 \
  --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway \
  ghcr.io/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner:latest \
  -o 'stratum+tcp://unicity-pool.com:3054' \
  -u YOUR_ADDRESS \
  -t 1 \
  --largepages \
  --no-affinity

Additional arguments for pool mining:

• -u alpha1qek8v...: Your wallet address for receiving mining rewards
• -t 1: Number of mining threads (should match --cpus value)

Building Docker Image Locally

If you want to build the Docker image yourself:

# Clone the repository with submodules
git clone https://github.com/unicitynetwork/alpha-miner --recursive
cd alpha-miner

# Build the Docker image
docker build -t alpha-miner ./docker

# Run your locally built image
docker run --rm --name alpha-miner alpha-miner [miner arguments]

Docker Tips

1. CPU Allocation: Adjust --cpus to control how many CPU cores the miner uses
2. Running in Background: Add -d flag to run the container in detached mode
3. View Logs: Use docker logs alpha-miner to see miner output
4. Stop Mining: Use docker stop alpha-miner to gracefully stop the container
5. Large Pages: The container needs appropriate privileges for large pages to work effectively