Featured image credit: FrankyThreeFingers
Ergo (ERG) is a relatively little-known cryptocurrency which is based on a decade of blockchain development, and has a respectable team behind it. In essence, Ergo is a programmable blockchain that builds advanced cryptographic features and new DeFi (decentralized finance) functionalities on rock-solid foundations. Ergo’s primary role is to enhance and support smart contracts, which are small pieces of code that sit on a blockchain and make it programmable. Up until now, Ergo’s developers were more focused on development, and less on marketing. In May 2021, Ergo gained a lot of attention, partly due to the fact that its price didn’t go down despite harsh criticisms of Proof-of-Work consensus mechanisms being very unecological.
Must read: The Best Graphics Cards for Mining Ergo
According to the developers of Ergo, there are six main aspects that make this project stand out against other cryptocurrencies. These include vision, consensus, light clients, survivability, economy, and applicability.
Ergo’s Main Features
First and foremost, it must be said that Ergo was created in response to stagnation in the blockchain technology. This motivated Ergo’s chief developer, Alex Chepurnoy, to create a blockchain that implements various technical and economic ready-to-use ideas, and add value to the already known blockchain systems. This way, Ergo’s primary goal is to provide efficient and secure way to implement financial contracts, which are the most widely used application of blockchain technology. Compared to other traditional financial systems, which feature bailouts, blacklists, and other forms of discrimination, a system based on Ergo protocol aims to be immune to such problems.
Second main feature of Ergo is its consensus protocol, called “Autolykos”, which is based on the well-known Proof-of-Work (PoW) model. Compared to Bitcoin’s PoW, Autolykos is resistant to specialized hardware (ASICs), allowing ordinary people to participate in mining to secure the network and receive rewards.
Another important feature of Ergo are its light clients. Unlike many other existing cryptocurrencies, which are impossible to use without the help of trusted third-parties (when it comes to wallets, exchanges, and block explorers), Ergo features maximally user-friendly PoW that enables verification of the work done without downloading the full chain. This means that Ergo supports NiPoPoW (Non-Interactive Proof-of-Proof-of-Work) proofs, allowing light clients to synchronize with the network by downloading less than a megabyte of data. This way, a regular user with any device can join the network and start using Ergo.
Ergo is also based on well-tested empirical solutions, which aim to provide foundations for building a resilient network that should adapt to changing environment without the intervention of trusted parties. This makes Ergo a platform focused on survivability, and a number of peer-reviewed papers prove that.
The most interesting part of Ergo project, is its economy. To achieve survivability, Ergo has introduced a storage fee for outdated coins. If a coin remains in the state for 4 years without being moved, a miner may charge a small fee for every byte kept in the state. This is quite similar to cloud storage services, where users pay to store data outside their devices. This gives Ergo several advantages. First of all, Ergo will always remain stable (unlike Bitcoin and other PoW currencies). Second, state size growth becomes controllable and predictable, thus reducing hardware requirements for Ergo miners. And lastly, by collecting storage fees from outdated boxes, miners return lost coins to circulations, thus preventing steady decrease of circulating supply due to lost keys.
Finally, there is the applicability. Ergo aims to become the main network for smart contracts execution. Ergo’s script is Turing-complete, meaning that the functionality of Ergo DApps is virtually unlimited.
Ergo’s Price and Future Prospects
On September 13th, 2021 a single ERG coin cost $18.32, which is a +2,887% increase compared to the $0.54 registered on September 14th, 2020 (one year earlier). This means that Ergo’s price has risen dramatically in 2021, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the cryptocurrency is worth buying.
Ergo’s price is currently heavily tied to the price of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Cardano (ADA), partly due to the fact that Ergo provides oracle pools for Cardano, thus acting like its chainlink.
It is extremely hard to predict Ergo’s value in the near future, let alone in the next five years, however, there are some strong indicators suggesting that its price will keep rising. According to some predictions, Ergo may easily reach $100 price if it truly becomes Cardano’s oracle solution, and if its market cap increases even further.
Where to Buy and Exchange Ergo?
Right now, Ergo can be bought and exchanged on a limited number of crypto exchanges, which include CoinEx, Hotbit, Gate.io, and Waves. This means that most popular crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase, Binance, Gemini, and Kraken don’t support Ergo. Ergo coins can be exchanged for BTC, ETH, or USDT. Not all exchanges which support Ergo offer best liquidity, so keep that in mind when you’ll be trading Ergo.
Best Wallet for Ergo
Besides Ergo’s official wallet, right now the only third party wallet that supports Ergo is Yoroi. Yoroi is a lightweight wallet for both Cardano and Ergo which can be installed either on your mobile phone, or on your personal computer in a form of Google Chrome extension.
How to Mine Ergo?
In order to mine Ergo you’ll need a PC featuring a graphics card with at least 3 GB of VRAM. Both AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards are supported, and it’s highly recommended to mine Ergo with multiple graphics cards in order to maximize your mining hashrate. Be sure to check out or guide on the best graphics cards for mining Ergo in case you aren’t sure which GPU should you use.
However, before you start mining Ergo, you’ll have to join an Ergo mining pool. Here is a list of most popular mining pools that support Ergo mining:
To start mining on a particular pool, you first have to create a wallet (preferably with Yoroi), or use a crypto exchange address. Once you do that, you need to download the Ergo mining software. We highly recommend using NBMiner, however, T-Rex, lolMiner, or TeamRedMiner are also good. Keep in mind that TeamRedMiner only works with AMD graphics cards.
After you download necessary files, you’ll need to edit .BAT file in order to start successfully mining Ergo. Inside the file you need to add your own wallet address, and you can also specify you mining rig’s name. Down below you can see examples of sample .BAT files for each specific Ergo miner.
NBMiner setup:
nbminer -a ergo -o stratum+tcp://ergo-eu1.nanopool.org:11111 -u wallet.workerT-Rex setup:
t-rex.exe -a autolykos2 -o stratum+tcp://ergo-eu1.nanopool.org:11111 -u YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_ID -p x
TeamRedMiner setup:
lolMiner.exe --algo AUTOLYKOS2 --pool ergo-eu1.nanopool.org:11111 --user YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.RIG_ID
Be sure to replace “wallet” or “YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS” with your real wallet address, as well as “worker” or “RIG_ID”, with your mining rig’s custom name. Also be sure to enter the right address of you mining pool, as well as the corresponding port number. And that’s it. You are ready to mine Ergo, and make some money!
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