If you've heard about crypto then it's almost a guarantee you've heard about mining coins and tokens as well. In fact, the very first coin, Bitcoin, came amount because people literally worked around the clock with early computers and processors to churn out the first blockchain confirmations, being awarded the earliest Bitcoin payments as a reward. Today, mining coins comes in all sorts of forms, but the processor approach still reigns supreme. That said, it's fairly impractical to get any of the big coins with a CPU alone. Not only will it burn out your personal computer very quickly, you're just not even working close to the big leagues that get the confirmations and the related coin rewards. Instead, these folks are churning out lots of rewards with the best and fastest video cards or GPUs, and consolidating their efforts in mining pools for lower risk of loss and increased probability of consistent payment.
Okay, so Bitcoin is probably out, and any decent income in Ethereum just ended with the big ETH network merge.
What to do?
HOW FOLDING WORKS
Well, for starters, there are plenty of other coins out there to mine and get some side income with. Banano or BAN is one of them. Interestingly, however, Banano doesn't follow the convention approach of connecting to a chain and mining proof of work blockchain confirmations. Instead, it used medical folding. Wha?
Medical folding involves online groupwork cranking out protein folding, which takes a lot of computing power and time if just done in a medical research office. Instead, medical researchers use the combined power of many, many participates and computers connected by the Internet to crank out the same faster. In return, participants based on their work are paid Banano, which goes direct to the folder's Banano wallet on payment.
So the first question people have is, how lucrative is this? Well, you're not going to be owning a banana-shaped lambo anytime soon, much less any shape. So if you're after big bucks in a month, go away. Instead, Banano is a neat side game folks can play earning some minor passive income every month, which in turn can be used digitally, or you can convert it to fiat and put it in your bank. Even better, you can do this with older computers. Here's how.
So, you know that PC or laptop you had that just got nerfed by Windows 11 and won't upgrade? Or how about an older PC that just doesn't run Windows well at all, being too slow? If it has a video card with a few gigs, you're in luck, but it's going to take some work. First, you have to change the operating system, or OS. This is not that hard to do. Go to Ubuntu and download their latest stable copy of Linux [version 22 as of this article]. This Debian form of Linux runs very well, has most basic features of a Windows PC included, and you have direct access to command line interface or CLI, which becomes handy next.
Read the following steps first all the way through without doing anything. Seriously. Don't scan it, READ IT. Then plan your approach, get the info you need ahead of time, and follow the steps.
Once you've gone through the conversion to Linux, confirmed your OS works, and Ubuntu is running smooth, then next step is to download and install the Folding mining software. This again involves a couple of steps. You could go to their website, download the Debian file, and install it yourself, but it's a pain in the rear if you don't already know how to script Linux commands. So, instead, you can use the CLI to download and install directly. Here's how.
PRE-INSTALLATION STEPS, IMPORTANT
First, you need a BAN crypto wallet. Kalium is a nice choice for an app wallet, but Banano Vault works as a cloud wallet as well. I use both and find they work great and are easy to learn and use. Once set up, you need the RECEIVE address from your BAN wallet for the next step. If you don't have one, you can get it at the link on the Bananominer page described next.
Second, you need an ID and a passkey. You get an ID from Bananominer here:
Type or paste in your BAN address noted above, and Bananominer assigns you an ID. You will also get your Team ID at the same time.
Third, you now need to get a passkey. Why? You get extra BAN when you use it folding. So, why pass it up? This part can be a bit tricky and easy to goof up. The user name you put into the passcode form needs to be the banano user from https://bananominer.com [above], not your discord username, or any other name you make up. Otherwise your score will not count. If you goof up this step, it has a four-hour cooldown to fix and correct. So type patiently and correctly. Your passkey is provided here:
https://apps.foldingathome.org/getpasskey
Now, you're ready to begin the actual Linux installation.
THE ACTUAL INSTALLATION PART, WEEEEE
Pull up the CLI [the Terminal screen in Ubuntu]. It's the command program that looks like a little like an old DOS screen in the Ubuntu icon menu for us older folks. It will give you a black screen with a script entry and blinking cursor. Expand the window so you can see what you're doing.
Next, type in the following:
wget download.foldingathome.org/releases/public/release/fahclient/debian-stable-64bit/v7.5/fahclient_7.5.1_amd64.deb
and
sudo dpkg -i --force-depends fahclient_7.5.1_amd64.deb
[You might need to update the above for the latest FAHclient version depending on what's available at the time.]
Once that loads in your Linux terminal, you will then see questions come up with the initial FAHclient configuration. Then follow the onscreen prompts:
- enter user name
- enter team number
- enter passkey
- autostart or no [I prefer to avoid an autostart on anything. Many times I want to do other things with my computer first. Since the FAHclient runs at the root level, autostarting basically makes it begin working as soon as your machine completes login, which can get annoying if you want to work hard on something else first. Remember your CPU and GPUs can only take so much of a demand before they get overworked.
The configuration saves your info and completes the install. Then it reverts back to the CLI blinking cursor and nothing happens. What? That's it? No, not quite.
The software is present, and is already work, it's just waiting for the command to start. The start command and stop command in CLI format are:
sudo /etc/init.d/FAHClient start
sudo /etc/init.d/FAHClient stop
However, the stop command doesn't always work. Plus, all you will see when it starts is a confirmation that it's running, and noise from your tower or computer as the cooling fan ramps up to maximum. So how do you keep track of what's going on and which job it's working on for folding? Now you need to open up your Internet browser and go to this address:
https://client.foldingathome.org/
The browser window then pulls up with folding's website and your local machine status. It shows everything working. If you just have your CPU, the default, that's all you'll see show spinning and progress. If you need things to stop to update your Ubuntu version or something else needs to be done, just restart your computer. It kills the client and folding won't start again after restart until you issue the start command. It's a roundabout way of stopping things, but it works consistently.
GREAT, BUT MY NOW CPU IS DYING FROM FOLDING, HOW DO I SHIFT TO MY VIDEO CARD?
A GPU-only operation involves more configuration. First, if you started your machine already you will need to stop it. Unfortunately, folding doesn't really stop once started, so you will need to close out of the CLI window, go to your Ubuntu shutdown option, and restart your PC. It's no big deal, but everything clears, the program stops and waits for a start command and now you can make your configuration file tweaks. You will need to modify the configuration file again to add the GPU as your primary folding machine, or you can leave your CPU working as well [not recommended due to burnout]. Here's how.
Go to your Terminal/CLI window again and the blinking cursor. Type in the following:
sudo nano /etc/fahclient/config.xml
This opens up the configuration file in a BASH editor [BASH being the command scripts used in Linux] and now you can edit it. Most of the commands of how to navigate in Nano and save your changes are at the bottom of the screen. You want to tweak the command script so that it shows GPU versus CPU in the slot id 0. This way your video card takes the beating.
Your configuration should force the command to only apply to your GPU if done as above. Now you can start it up with the CLI start command. Everything should fire up, but the fan will sound a bit different as your GPU is now working, not your CPU. If you run sensor mapping you will see the difference, both in activity as well as temperature levels. Obviously, you want to run things as cool as possible, but if you have to run hotter let that be your GPU versus your CPU.
All of the above takes a bit of playing with to find your sweet spot. Of course, though, the real question is then, is it working? You don't really know, and there's not a real confirmation until you see that first Banano payment to your wallet. That's the real test pass. When the deposit arrives, the first ones will be somewhat small. You're new in the pool and getting established. Once you get past production of ten work units, however, then your permission code passkey kicks in and you will see bigger payments. The tell-tale address will have the word "folding" in the send address, and it looks like this:
HOW MUCH IS THIS GOING TO MAKE?
On average, I'm making about 15-30 Banano daily. I'm only running one four gig GPU most of the day except from 5 - 9pm when the family is hammering the home bandwidth. Like I said, this isn't going to generate big bucks, but it's nice little passive income to aggregate daily and nightly while you sleep.
Most folks mining/folding Banano are not doing this for cash flow. We're piling and stacking and combining it with other flows like contests on the Banano discord server and JungleTV [check those out, I make about 150-200 on good days when things are hopping. I even won over 850 Banano on one contest. They run multiple daily, and some get up to 2,000 at a time.
REFERENCE AND STUFF
The FAH website will give you just the basic instructions how to run the CLI Linux version of the FAHClient and little else. I have no idea why they don't write a basic, comprehensive guide like I just did above, but they didn't. Instead, you're going to have to cobble various pieces of reference from different sources. It helps when questions come up or you have weird issues. I just go to all the links, print out the PDFs, and keep a local library on my machine so I can always reference them as needed:
- FAHClient Guide - https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/installation-guides/linux/
- Folding Points Calculator - https://malkaroy-vrrp.github.io/bananocalculator/
Happy Folding!
[If there is something off in this article, let me know. I'll test it and confirm. Things change over time, including mining and folding].
