Mining Cortex CTXC

How to mine CTXC

September 6th, 2022 (updated April 3rd, 2023) by Max Mustermann

In this post, I will briefly describe the Cortex blockchain and provide mining tips for those who want to participate.
There is also an example bash script to help manage the temperatures of your NVIDIA cards while mining.

What is Cortex AI?

Cortex is an open-source blockchain that supports Artificial Intelligence (AI) models that can be uploaded and executed on a distributed network. The best way to get an overview of how it enhances blockchain technology is to watch this video provided by Cortex Labs.

Mining CTXC

Cortex uses a variation of the Cuckoo Cycle algorithm. Cuckoo Cycle is a promising ASIC-resistant algorithm family used by various blockchains. ASIC resistance helps avoid centralization of mining, which is crucial for censorship resistance and blockchain security. The specific variant used in Cortex is Cuckoo30.

Mining software

At the time this post was written, CTXC could be mined with a handful of mining applications.

To start mining

Download and unpack your selected miner. If Windows suggests that the miners are “potentially unwanted” software, you may need to select the “Allow on device” option in Windows Security settings.

Find the nearest server to your geographic area and ping it. If the ping is under 100 ms, you can consider this server for mining.

$ ping nushypool.com

$ ./miner --algo cortex --devices 0 1 --ssl 1 --server https://nushypool.com:44002 --user [address].[workername]

You can quickly configure your command on our Cortex Page and tap the "Start Mining" button.

Tips and tricks

Overclocking

There is plenty of information online with benchmark results for CTXC mining. Each card is unique, so the only way is to test each one individually. This is not an easy job and requires patience.

Challenges to solve

Fortunately, the Cuckoo algorithm does not overheat video cards. However, in the summer the ambient temperatures are high, and your cards can quickly reach 70+ degrees Celsius.
How to solve this?
Many miners install dedicated ventilation systems, while others add air conditioning to cool the room.
One possible approach is to periodically adjust the power limits on your video cards to keep them at a constant temperature. This approach works well for Cortex miners. Power consumption impacts hashrate, but keeping the GPU temperature low has a big impact on its lifespan. If you are mining on a Linux-family OS, the script below can help manage it.

#!/usr/bin/sudo bash
  # --------------- BEGIN: Check card temperatures ---------------------------------
  TEMP=62		    # max desired temperature
  MAX_POWER=300 # max power limit
  tmpt_list=`nvidia-smi --query-gpu=temperature.gpu --format=csv,noheader`
  mapfile -t StringArray <<< "$tmpt_list"
  length=${#StringArray[@]}
  for (( j=0; j<${length}; j++ ));
  do
      powr=`nvidia-smi -i $j --query-gpu=power.limit --format=csv,noheader`
      powr=${powr//[!0-9.]/}
      powr=${powr%.*}	
      if (( ${StringArray[$j]} > $TEMP )); then
          newpower="$(($powr - 1))" 
          # printf "Device #%d old power: %d decreased to: %s\n" $j $powr $newpower
          res=`nvidia-smi -i $j -pl $newpower` 
          # echo $res
      elif (( ${StringArray[$j]} < $TEMP )); then
          newpower="$(($powr + 1))" 
      if (( $newpower < $MAX_POWER )); then
        # printf "Device #%d old power: %d increased to: %s\n" $j $powr $newpower
        res=`nvidia-smi -i $j -pl $newpower` 
        # echo $res
      else
        printf "Device #%d max power riched\n" $j
      fi
      fi
  done
  # --------------- END: Check card temperatures ---------------------------------

TEMP=62	      # max desired temperature
MAX_POWER=300 # max power limit

Good luck!

Yours Max Mustermann
Developer, Miner