After leaving 1 hour my GPU mining ethereum via dwarfpool is it normal to be still at exactly zero?

Question

Current understanding is that if you start mining a block on your own you might put your (single) machine in a very difficult situation in order to decrypt the block on it own and gain 5 ETH.

That is why you have to participate in mining pools with others. Tried this approach with ethminer command similar to this:

ethminer.exe -G -F http://eth-eu.dwarfpool.com/0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000/a_name_for_my_worker_machine/[email protected]`

where obviously this 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 is replaced with my correct address etc.

After 1 hour I got zero ETH. Is this expected?
What details am I missing of how ethereum mining works exactly?

Note that the GPU is nvidia 960 with 4GB ram so it should be capable enough..

Answer 1

Current understanding is that if you start mining a block on your own you might put your (single) machine in a very difficult situation in order to decrypt the block on it own and gain 5 ETH.

You don't decrypt the block, you generate a valid nonce for it. The block reward isn't 5 ETH anymore, it's 3, plus the transaction fees.

After 1 hour I got zero ETH. Is this expected?

Since transactions cost money, pools usually wait to payout until you've earned a certain amount. This varies by pool. I'd lookup what it is for dwarfpool

Answer 2

Depending on which pool you are mining on most pools you must mine at least 0.1 ETH to get a payout to your wallet

so for example if you are mining at current difficulty (please note this is increasing daily so its getting harder and harder) mining at 180 mhs it would take you around 7-9 full days to reach 0.1 ETH

once you reach this you will get a payout in your wallet

each pool has their own settings and most are higher than this and you have to change the settings to get it down to 0.1

i hope this helps