FIRO (ex Zcoin) cryptocurrency hard fork, FiroPoW mining

The developers of the FIRO cryptocurrency (previously called Zcoin) carried out a hard fork on October 26, 2021, as a result of which the mining algorithm was changed from MTP to Firo Proof-of-Work (FiroPoW). The update has been rolled out to the FIRO mainnet along with InstantSend instant payment technology.

The new algorithm has been tested since August 30, 2021. Those interested could try their hand and test mining on the FiroPoW algorithm on the mintpond and minermore pools.

After the implementation of the hard fork, a significant drop in mining difficulty is expected, which will positively affect the earnings of miners. In this regard, it is worth preparing in advance for the upcoming changes by downloading suitable miners and creating files to run them.

What are the features of the FiroPOW mining algorithm?

The FiroPOW mining algorithm, which is a type of ProgPoW, is designed in such a way that calculations are performed with maximum efficiency on video cards. It has the following features:

• both the video core and memory are intensively loaded. In this regard, this is a rather gluttonous mining algorithm;

• a pseudo-random DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) file access mechanism is used. The DAG data size increases by 8 MB every 1300 blocks (this is the duration of one epoch, which is approximately 4.5 days);

• Periodically, the order of mathematical operations, which receive the initial data from the DAG file, is changed in a deterministic manner;

• in the calculations, a random element constantly changing from block to block is used, which makes it almost impossible to create ASICs and program FPGAs.

• In addition, the FiroPoW algorithm requires significantly fewer block confirmation operations, their size will be reduced by about 500 times. This will significantly reduce the used traffic and growth of the Firo blockchain compared to the previously used MTP algorithm.

What video cards are needed for Firo PoW mining?

To perform calculations on the Firo PoW algorithm, you need to use video cards with at least 4GB VRAM. Due to the constant growth in the size of the DAG, after about 562 days it will grow by 1 gigabyte, so then you will need to use a GPU with 5GB + video memory.

Currently, mining on the Firo PoW algorithm on a processor, ASICs and / or FPGA will not work.

Mining FIRO cryptocurrency on the FiroPoW algorithm

To mine FIRO coins after a hard fork, you need to use video cards with 4GB + VRAM and any suitable miner for the Firo PoW algorithm. These include:

• firominer is a fork of ethminer, an open source miner for various flavors of the ProgPoW algorithm for OpenCL and CUDA devices (AMD and Nvidia video cards). The first versions of the program are full of bugs, for example, the ready-made miner version 1.0 for Linux, when launched on a computer with an AMD GPU, gives errors related to the lack of CUDA. Miner does not compile on Linux, giving CMake Error: (no CmakeLists.txt file). Closer to the fork, most of the problems with the official miner are expected to be fixed;

• T-Rex version 0.22.1 and newer – a closed source program that supports mining on Nvidia video cards;

• SRBMiner-MULTI 0.8.1+ (AMD video cards);

• Teamredminer 0.8.6 and newer – AMD graphics cards;

• other miners – Firo PoW support will be added in new releases before and after the hard fork.