Mining ETH is now history, but I still see many people curious about the "golden age" when you could still earn coins from Ethereum. Today, I want to share the entire journey of mining ETH—from how it works, the actual costs, to why it has ended.

In fact, mining ETH is similar to mining Bitcoin—you use specialized equipment to verify transactions on the Ethereum network, solve complex mathematical equations (called Proof of Work), and receive a reward of 2 ETH each time. It sounds simple, but the costs are not cheap at all.

Looking back at the profits from ETH mining in 2020-2022, the numbers increased quite impressively. But I must admit, when you do the actual calculations—for example, an 8-card VGA RX470 8GB rig with a hash rate of 230 MH/s, consuming 1100W of power—the investment of about 16 million VND only yields a daily profit of around $5.99 after electricity and pool fees. Not a very impressive figure.

What happened to ETH mining? On September 15, 2022, the event "The Merge" officially ended Ethereum's 7 years of PoW operation. The network switched to Proof of Stake, and immediately—no more ETH mining. Ethereum shared that: 3,271,518 blocks were mined with a total reward of 9,836,656 ETH. At that time, about 1 million miners with equipment worth over $10 billion faced a "loss of direction" situation.

Many people switched to mining Ethereum Classic (ETC) to salvage some of their invested capital. But in reality, this shows the risk of ETH mining—you never know when a blockchain will change its consensus mechanism.

If you still want to profit from ETH, there are safer ways: spot trading on exchanges, CFD trading (without holding coins), or staking—deposit ETH to earn yields (currently the APY is quite attractive). With ETH at the current price of $2.12K, staking can yield about 3-4% annual return depending on the pool.

Regarding equipment, famous mining cards like NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti (45 MH/s, 265W) or AMD RX 480 (25 MH/s, 150W) are now relics—best to sell or use for gaming. Software like ETHminer, Claymore, CGMiner is no longer effective.

Is there a way to mine ETH for free? Yes, but the profits are negligible—playing mobile games, watching ads, participating in airdrops. If you want to make real money from ETH, CFD trading or staking are much more practical options.

Conclusion: ETH mining is a thing of the past, but the lessons from it are still valuable. Always have a backup plan, avoid going all-in on a single mining mechanism, and stay updated on crypto industry changes. Ethereum has proven that a blockchain can completely change its consensus mechanism—this can happen to any coin.