[How To] FREE invites + GPU mining of MERIT coin (Windows / Linux)

One week ago I was intrigued by this post Free Invites to the Merit Community!! from @berniesanders, it talked about how to obtain an invitation to mine the MERIT coin.

I gone on https://www.merit.me/ for a quick peek and a better knowledge of MERIT because never hearing about this coin before. A quick explain (45 sec) of MERIT:

A crypto working only on invite? Hahaha, I need one!

Most seriously, on the paper few functionalities look like interesting as sending link by Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram whether recipients are on the network or not. see more features

How to obtain an invite?

Easy, I give you! Priority to people who want mining (have a limited quantity of invites)

Go to https://wallet.merit.me
Click on I received an invite to Merit by someone I know
in invite code fill with imtase (same my 2nd steemit account @imtase)

Or faster follow this link https://wallet.merit.me/?invite=imtase

Choose a username and follow the instructions!

As all crypto take care to put in safety place your passphrase, better if you not loose it :)

When finished to validate your request make a comment on this post with the username you created.

How to MERIT mining

To help you to not lose too much time, not as me, to start mining I made a little how to ;)

Algorithm used by MERIT : cuckoo cycle

You have 2 possibilities for mining, by the cold wallet, can download on Github here: meritlabs releases or with the miner only.

Mining with the Cold Wallet

In this case, when it will be installed you will need to download the full blockchain. Have 2 possibilities to do it, one fast (half hour) and another one very long (more than 1 day). When done, just go to Mining menu and select Start Mining

Disadvantage : Not really a good view on what you mining!

Mining with the miner

light way with more information of what your miner do.

Mining on Windows (GPU)

Prerequisites : driver Nvidia up to date and CUDA Toolkit

Ok, start with the most easy!

Download the miner : merit-minerd-0.2 (Nvidia only, sorry AMD owners they not release a version for you yet)

To launch the miner it's really easy and common way. Make a bat file with:

merit-minerd-0.2.exe --url stratum+tcp://pool.merit.me:3333 --address MTSd79pTqZAvSfGpjs3eZfvXXYyH1Z3Qsx --gpu 0  --cores 6

Where address is your wallet address, gpu ID of your(s) GPU and cores the number of cores of your cpu that you want to allocate to the mining.

You will obtain a cmd window like this where the cycles/s is the hashrate.

for help you can run the command merit-minerd-0.2.exe --help

Mining on Debian/Ubuntu (GPU)

Prerequisites : I suggest you to install these packages:

sudo apt-get install cmake libblkid-dev e2fslibs-dev libboost-all-dev libaudit-dev

it prevent errors like Boost header files or Imported targets not available for Boost version ;)

As windows miner you will need to have driver Nvidia up to date and CUDA Toolkit

Clone the git repository of the miner library and install it

git clone https://github.com/meritlabs/libmeritminer.git
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

Have also a node wrapper in case you want (I not tested yet) here: https://github.com/meritlabs/merit-miner-node

When done left to run it (you can create a bash file)!

merit-minerd --url stratum+tcp://pool.merit.me:3333 --address MTSd79pTqZAvSfGpjs3eZfvXXYyH1Z3Qsx --gpu 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 --cores 0

Where address is your wallet address, gpu ID of your(s) GPU and cores the number of cores of your cpu that you want to allocate to the mining.

You will obtain the same information than the windows version.

Tools and useful information

Mining Pool

address: https://pool.merit.me/

You will find usual information of a mining pool. If you click on the worker you will see the active worker list where you will see your worker (if you use more than one machine/rig you will have same number of line). Tips: replace username with your in this link for a payment detail for your account: https://pool.merit.me/account/username/

Warning : Since this week have a new pool at parachute.merit.me who give you invites, depends of the number of share you mined on the period. More information on the Discord

Mining calculator and Network

address: http://blockstats.merit.me

You will find on all stats about the network (Difficulty included) and a tool to calculate how many MERIT you can earn on average (just put the total of cycles/s for your mining).

Market place

Since this morning a market place to exchange MERIT wit BTC is available (better than the Discord way) at the address https://market.merit.me/dashboard

it made the price of MERIT go down but the coin stay a good coin to mine ;)

Discord

You can access the Discord of MERIT here will have always someone to answer your question (have a lot of users)

To conclude

With few days we can make a global idea of whet is MERIT but certainly not an idea who serve of base for a certitude. I will invite you to continue your learning about this coin and make your own opinion about it. I saw interesting things, ok, but it's not enough! it's time to investigate more and cross all informations to sure about this project.