Table/Blog/How to Start Mining Verus (VRSC) on a CPU

How to Start Mining Verus (VRSC) on a CPU

June 15, 2026Tested on Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04

In short

Verus (VRSC) is one of the most CPU-friendly coins there is — its VerusHash 2.2 algorithm runs on AES instructions that every modern CPU has, and it barely touches RAM. But three things trip up beginners:

xmrig won't work, and neither will SRBMiner — VerusHash is not RandomX. You need a dedicated miner: hellminer (fastest, closed-source) or nheqminer (open-source).
Verus is a hybrid PoW/PoS coin. Roughly half of all blocks are minted by stakers, not miners — so a CPU miner competes for only ~50% of the block rewards. This is by design ("Proof of Power").
Use all your threads — including SMT/Hyper-Threading. VerusHash loves them: on our Ryzen 9 5900X, 12 threads did ~10 MH/s but all 24 threads did ~28 MH/s. (The only thing that scales poorly is a second CPU socket — see Step 4.)

Everything below was verified live on 15–16 June 2026 with hellminer 0.59.1 (VerusHash 2.2 + PBaaS) on two rigs: a Ryzen 9 5900X (Ubuntu 24.04) and a 2× Xeon E5-2690 v4 (Ubuntu 22.04). The miner connected to the pool and the pool accepted shares on both.

Honest upfront: VRSC is a low-liquidity coin and CPU income is small. On our Ryzen 9 5900X (~28 MH/s, ~112 W) gross income at the current price was about $0.02/day — while electricity at $0.07/kWh costs roughly $0.30/day. So you are net-negative unless power is very cheap or free. This is "for fun / for the network", not a paycheck. Check live profitability on the VRSC coin page.

What you need

A CPU with AES and ideally AVX2 (any chip from the last ~10 years). VerusHash is compute-bound on AES — unlike Monero/RandomX, RAM speed and dual-channel matter much less here (our rig pulled only ~8 W on the memory controller while mining).
OS: Linux or Windows. Commands below are for Linux (verified).
A Verus wallet address to receive payouts — an R… transparent address or a name@ VerusID (Step 1).
A pool. hellminer only works with LuckPool; for any other pool you need nheqminer.

🌡️ Cooling. VerusHash keeps every core pinned at 100%. Watch temperatures with sensors (sudo apt install -y lm-sensors && sensors). If the CPU overheats it throttles, and your hashrate drops.

Step 1. Get a Verus address

You need a VRSC address to receive payouts. The quickest option is the Verus Mobile wallet (lightweight, no blockchain sync); the Verus Desktop wallet also works but downloads the full chain. Create a wallet and copy your R… address — that's where the pool pays you.

Use your own address. You can point the miner at any valid address for a quick test, but then the coins aren't yours.

Step 2. Download the miner (hellminer)

hellminer ships as a prebuilt binary. Almost every CPU since ~2015 supports the avx2 build; very old chips need the avx build instead.

cd ~
mkdir -p hellminer && cd hellminer
# Which build? If this prints "avx2", use the avx2 file below; otherwise use the avx file.
grep -qm1 avx2 /proc/cpuinfo && echo avx2 || echo "use avx build"
# Download (check the newest tag at github.com/hellcatz/hminer/releases):
wget https://github.com/hellcatz/hminer/releases/download/v0.59.1/hellminer_linux64_avx2.tar.gz
tar xzf hellminer_linux64_avx2.tar.gz
chmod +x hellminer
./hellminer --list   # shows your CPU + AES/AVX2 support

If ./hellminer --list prints Illegal instruction, the build is too new for your CPU — download hellminer_linux64_avx.tar.gz (or the plain hellminer_linux64.tar.gz) instead and try again.

Why not the open-source nheqminer? It's the open alternative and works with any pool, but the VerusCoin fork no longer compiles on modern toolchains — on Ubuntu 22.04 (GCC 11) the build fails in blake2.h (size of array element is not a multiple of its alignment). It needs patching. If you want a pool other than LuckPool, you'll have to fix that build; otherwise hellminer + LuckPool is the path of least resistance.

Step 3. Start mining

Replace YOUR_ADDRESS with your R… address from Step 1:

./hellminer -c stratum+tcp://eu.luckpool.net:3960 \
  -u YOUR_ADDRESS.rig1 -p x \
  --cpu $(nproc) --ping --keep-alive

-c — pool URL. Use eu.luckpool.net (Europe) or na.luckpool.net (North America); port 3960 is plain TCP, 3958 is SSL.
-u — YOUR_ADDRESS.WORKERNAME (the worker name, rig1 here, is just a label).
--cpu $(nproc) — use every logical thread (that's the fastest — see Step 4).
--ping --keep-alive — keeps the stratum connection alive; without them we saw periodic Force disconnect drops that lower your average hashrate.

Within ~30 seconds you should see accepted share lines and a Total X MH/s readout.

Step 4. Pick the right thread count

Simple rule: use all the logical threads your CPU has. VerusHash benefits strongly from SMT/Hyper-Threading — two threads per core keep the AES units fed. What does not scale well is a second physical socket (NUMA), which a normal desktop doesn't have anyway. Our measurements:

Rig	Threads	Hashrate	Note
Ryzen 9 5900X	12 (cores only)	~10 MH/s	SMT idle — leaves ~⅔ on the table
Ryzen 9 5900X	24 (all)	~28 MH/s	best — use this
1× Xeon E5-2690 v4	28 (1 socket, all)	~23 MH/s
2× Xeon E5-2690 v4	55 (both sockets)	~28 MH/s	second socket barely helps (NUMA)

So set --cpu to your total thread count (--cpu $(nproc)). The only place worth experimenting is a multi-socket server, where pinning to a single socket (taskset) can be nearly as fast as using both — and runs cooler.

Honest expectations

Income is small. Our Ryzen 9 5900X (~28 MH/s, ~112 W) earned about $0.02/day gross at the current price — and electricity at $0.07/kWh costs ~$0.30/day, so it runs at a loss unless your power is very cheap or free. The server Xeon (~23 MH/s) is in the same ballpark.
You only get ~half the blocks — but pay full electricity. Verus is 50% PoW / 50% PoS. We sampled 120 recent blocks live: 56 were mined (PoW), 64 were staked (PoS) — so a CPU miner realistically competes for about half of emissions. Important: your CPU still hashes 100% of the time at full power — it never idles, so the reward is halved, not the electricity. Our profitability numbers reflect exactly that (full power draw, half the income).
Memory doesn't bottleneck you here. Unlike Monero, you don't need fast dual-channel RAM for VerusHash — it's all about CPU AES throughput and thread count.

See the live, electricity-aware numbers for your exact CPU on the VRSC coin page, and compare CPUs in the profitability table.

Common problems

Force disconnect, share valid response not received within 5 seconds — pool latency. Add --ping --keep-alive, or switch to the LuckPool region closest to you.
Hashrate lower than expected — too few threads. VerusHash wants all logical threads; try --cpu $(nproc). (On a multi-socket server, also try pinning to one socket with taskset.)
nheqminer won't build — known issue on GCC 11+ (blake2.h alignment). Use hellminer, or patch the header.

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