Masternode and ZenCash SecureNode SuperNode Setup Service (Outdated)

by Pat Heyman | Jan 1, 2020 | Pat

Masternode and ZenCash SecureNode SuperNode Setup Service (Outdated)

Outdated Article

I no longer consider Masternodes to be a good investment. Most of them are scams or the return is just too small. So unless you want the governance involved with a masternode project, I’d stay away from them altogether. I no longer host any masternodes except for Horizen Supernodes and Securenodes for a very select clientele. For the most part, if you want to host a masternode, you should use an automated service like Allnodes. The information on this page is kept just as legacy information.

The average person looking for returns is FAR better off using Defi or simply staking their coins than using masternodes. I am currently working on a Defi introduction and tutorial and will update this page once that is done.

Masternodes 2018-2020…Legacy information (Outdated)

Masternodes are incredibly popular right now. There has been an explosion in the number of masternode projects, and a kind of nuclear arms race to attract new buyers with high ROI. Many of the new coins start out with 1000% ROI or higher. This means that you could get your initial investment back within 2 months (if the price holds).

But setting up a masternode often requires a bit of Linux know how. The most popular set up is called a “cold wallet” where the coins that are kept as collateral live in your desktop wallet (preferably encrypted). Then a Linux Virtual Private Server (VPS) is set up that connects to the collateral and provide 24/7 masternode status regardless of whether your local wallet is open or connected to the internet.

Most of the masternode coins provide instructions on how to set up your Linux VPS. If you’re reasonably good at following directions, AND the guide is set up well, then it’s not too hard to figure it out yourself. However, many of the newer coins have incredibly bad guides.

They skip steps.
There are spaces where there shouldn’t be, and no spaces where there should be.
Commands that belong on one line are split, and commands that should be two separate commands are joined together.
Sometimes commands are missing altogether.

Some of the projects have nifty install scripts, so all you have to do is download an install file and run it. Qbic is an example of this, however, the script doesn’t fully work, and will leave you with a broken installation.

That’s where I come in. I’ve installed more than 30 masternodes from more than a dozen different coins. My first client had been trying to set up his Goa masternode unsuccsesfully for 6 days. He was losing $225 a day!!!

Here are the services I provide:

In addition to setting up the Masternode VPS, I also walk you through the process of setting up your local wallet and troubleshooting any issues that come up.

All prices are quoted in USD and payable in LTC, ETH, or BTC at the current market rate.

Masternode (setup only)

You supply the VPS
Cost is $75 per coin
Discount of $25 per coin if ordering multiple at the same time.
One week of troubleshooting is included.
I will show you how to maintain the VPS and update the server.

Masternode hosting (setup and 1 year of hosting)

Setup costs are the same as above (same as above)
One year of VPS hosting and server updates is $140
Note, if you host multiple coins with me, you may be able to host 3-4 coins on the same VPS. The fee to host an additional coin on the same VPS is $60.
Subscriptions are renewable

Discount example 1: Masternode hosting for 2 coins on the same VPS

Setup costs $50 x 2 = 100
Hosting cost $140 + $60 = 200

Discount example 2: Masternode hosting for 3 coins on the same VPS

Setup costs $50 x 3 = 150
Hosting cost $140 + $60 + 60 = 260

HoriZen (formerly ZenCash) Super/Secure Nodes

Horizen (formerly ZenCash) is my favorite masternode type project. It is an incentive-driven application platform with optional zk-SNARK based privacy features that aims to provide everyone with complete control of their digital footprint. Launched in May 2017 (no ICO and no pre-mine), the platform is said to enable real-life use cases beyond the ZEN currency, including the ability to privately chat with others, publish information and go anywhere on the web with complete privacy.

As of Fall 2019, the team is reportedly working towards releasing the Horizen SDK which would allow developers and enterprises to build what they call “an unbounded set of applications, products and services on top of the Horizen technology platform which is a truly decentralized side-chain based system powered by Horizen’s globally distributed multi-tier node network.”

Horizen Secureand Supernodes Nodes are quite a bit more involved than Masternodes both in set up and VPS requirements.

If you supply the VPS
Cost is $100 per Secure Node
One week of troubleshooting is included.
I will show you how to maintain the VPS and update the server.

HoriZen Secure Node hosting (setup and 1 year of hosting)

SuperNode: One year of VPS hosting and server updates is $232
SecureNode: Due to automation and economies of scale, I can offer Secure Node hosting including set up and maintenance for $60 per node. (Yes I know this is less than set up only. It’s a shook up crazy world.
Super/Secure Nodes cannot share a VPS with another coin.
Subscriptions are renewable

Frequently asked questions

What servers do you use?

I generally use OVH.com servers. Their VPS SSD 1 for masternodes and VPS SSD2 for secure nodes. I use Contabo for Super Nodes.

Will my coins be safe?

The coins will always remain in your local wallet. HOWEVER, I recommend that

As soon as you receive the coins that you make a back up of your wallet.
Store the back up in a safe place (from theft, fire, and water)
Encrypt your wallet and DON’T lose the password.

It’s far more likely that you lose your coins due to negligence or your computer crashing than to being hacked. Please, for the love of God, back up your wallet and don’t lose the password.

How long have you been doing this?

I set up my first mastenode coin for myself and on December 28, 2017 and set up my first client a few days later. I have been using Linux since 2003. I have been running Linux VPSes since 2011.

What happens if you decide to quit this business?

If I decide to stop providing this service,

All hosted clients will receive their full year’s subscription.
OVH allows transfer of a VPS to another account. A month before the expiration, I will help migrate all client VPS to their own accounts.

How do we get started?

If you haven’t filled out the sign up form yet, that’s a great place to start Once we’ve talked/chatted and both agree to the work to be done, then I’ll need

Your payment and the txID (so I credit the right person)
Your masternodeprivkey (In your local wallet, go to Debug Console and type “masternode genkey”
If you’re providing the VPS, I’ll need the IP address and root password.

What's involved on my (the client's) end?

You’ll need to

Buy the coins
Transfer them to your local wallet.
Create a new address and send the EXACT amount of collateral to the wallet.
Wait for at least one confirmation
Go to the Debug console in the wallet.
Type “masternode genkey”
Type “masternode outputs”
Copy all of the codes generated and save them in a text file.
I will walk you though what to do with them.

What's the difference between a Zencash Securenode and a Masternode?

Masternodes mostly speed up network transactions and sometimes vote on the direction of the project. Secure nodes receive daily challenges where they receive and send a shielded (private) transaction each day. This provides the network with thousands of private transactions making it much harder to track. A secure node needs needs more memory than the typical masternode needs in order to run the challenges. There is also a performance aspect to secure nodes and super nodes, in that the node must complete the challenge under a time limit.

Secure nodes and Super Nodes are also paid differently than a masternode. Masternodes are paid (usually) from a lottery system based on a list of all masternodes running at a given time. Once a masternode has received its rewards, it goes to the bottom of the list. Horizen nodes are based on daily uptime. A nodes that is up for ~93% of the day is paid for that day. Payments are manually reviewed and paid out once a week.

Additional Horizen Resources:
Horizen Website – https://horizen.global
Horizen Academy – https://academy.horizen.global/
Horizen Discord – https://discord.gg/SuaMBTb
Horizen Blog – https://blog.horizen.global
Horizen Github – https://github.com/ZencashOfficial
Horizen Forum – https://forum.horizen.global/
Horizen Twitter – https://twitter.com/horizenglobal
Horizen Telegram –https://t.me/horizencommunity
Horizen on Bitcointalk – https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2047435.0
Horizen YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/c/Horizen/
Horizen Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/horizenglobal/

What is the best way to get in touch with you?

Telegram and Discord are probably the best ways to get in touch with me. My username on Telegram is @patrokov. I have a Discord Server for the Masternode Service. My username is patrokov#7056. If you can’t start a DM with me in Discord, it’s most likely because we are not on the same servers. I can also Skype (same username) but Skype doesn’t alert me when I get a message, so it’s better to use a different method unless we pre-arrange a meeting or chat. E-mail also works. You can fill out the form below, and I will get in touch with you.

When do you do this work?

I mostly do the work in the evenings after work and on weekends.

Cryptocurrency Investment and Speculation Primer – Part 1

by Pat Heyman | Dec 31, 2017 | How to

Okay, you’ve decided to take the big plunge and invest (or speculate) in the wild world of cryptocurrencies. The potential rewards are overwhelming but so are the choices. In this article, I’ll be covering the major strategies (as I see them) and what is involved. In part 2, I’ll be going over some specifics of how to implement some of the strategies below. Note: Mining is not included in this article as I touched on it in my Beginner’s Guide to Cryptocurrency.

Motivation and Goals

The first question to answer is what is your motivation and what are your goals? Are you just looking to earn a little extra or are you trying to save up to put your kids through school? Your individual situation will influence which strategy might be best to take.

The FOMO is real

In case you’re not up on your internet lingo, FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out. Although FOMO might have its place (for example motivating you to learn about this stuff in the first place), if you make your investment and speculations based on FOMO, then you’re going to sell low and buy high and lose your shirt. Sometimes it’s better to just hold and wait for another opportunity.

Satoshis or Dollars or Something else?

Is your goal to accumulate satoshis (1 millionth of a bitcoin) or dollars. Trying to do both at the same time may lead to compromises that result in neither. Satoshi gatherers usually have a longer term view thinking that eventually cryptocurrencies will become a viable (if not dominant) way of buying goods and services. Dollar accumulators want the value of their investment to be worth more dollars even if it costs them satoshi value in the short term. Decide on a goal up front.

Strategy 1: The HODL

This comes from a famous misspelled forum post from back in 2013 that reads in part, “I AM HODLING. I type d that tyitle twice because I knew it was wrong the first time. Still wrong. w/e. BTC crashing WHY AM I HOLDING? I’LL TELL YOU WHY. It’s because I’m a bad trader and I KNOW I’M A BAD TRADER.”

The strategy is pretty simple. It’s basically Jeremy Siegel Stocks for the Long Run applied to cryptocurrencies. Choose a selection of crytpocurrencies that you think may have a future, and HODL them for all you’re worth through thick and thin. You probably want to hold some mainstream (Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, etc.) as well as some newer, cheaper, up-and-coming alt-coins.

This strategy probably the best one for people with limited time and tolerance for anxiety. Once you buy, don’t look at the price on a weekly, daily, hourly basis. Just check once a year. This strategy is also best for a longer time horizon.

Strategy 2: Sleep at night speculation

This is similar to the HODL strategy except that whenever a coin doubles whatever you put into it, you withdraw half and put it into another potential up and coming alt-coin. As an example, let’s say you buy 100,000 PurplePill coin for the equivalent of $0.001 (total of $100). The price of PurplePill goes to $0.002, now your PurplePill is worth $200. Sell $100 of it and use it to buy another new alt-coin.

If the PurplePill becomes worthless, you still have $100 in the new alt-coin. If the price of PurplePill goes up to $0.1, then your initial $100 is now worth $5000.

But if you hadn’t sold, then it would be worth $10,000!!! This strategy sucks!!!

The FOMO is real. Yes, you halved your potential profit, but you also preserved your original capital, and own a new alt-coin that might do just as well.

This has a couple of benefits over the HODL.

Over time your portfolio will become highly diversified.
This will limit your potential for catastrophic loss
AND put you in a position where you own lots of alt-coins which may one day breakout and make you “instantly” rich after you held them for however many years.

Strategy 3: Day trading

Just like it sounds, this involves frequent trading in and out of various alt-coins. People who do this are usually skilled in the dark art of Technical Analysis. It doesn’t take a huge effort to learn how, but boy can you lose your shirt fast if you don’t know what you’re doing. You can combine this with Strategy 2 to provide a short term and long term combined strategy.

Strategy 4: Masternode investing/speculating

Dash was the first coin to implement masternodes. These are computers that hold a large number of coin (1000 in Dash’s case) and are used to verify and speed transactions. In return, masternodes receive “interest” in the form of new coins. As of this writing, a Dash masternode receives about 200 new Dash each year, representing a 20% annual return on the initial investment.

Sounds like an awesome deal right? Plus if the price of Dash rises, the value of both your masternode and its interest rises. Unfortunately, at the current price of Dash, a masternode will set you back a cool million dollars. If you had bought your masternode just 12 months earlier, it would only have cost you $12,000.

This is the closest to true value investing (IMO) because you get an income as well as a speculative assest (even if you’re being paid in said speculative asset).

So the key is to look for solid up and coming coins that have the potential to go up in value. Good luck.

As a more speculative play, you can look for brand new coins that often pay out more than a 1000% interest. These will pay back the original cost of the coins within 15-40 days. So if the price can hold out for one month, you’ll have your initial investment back plus a masternode in that coin. Keep it or cash out and repeat.

Do this strategy over and over with various new coins. After 1 year of this, you’ll have 6-10 masternodes providing an interest return in that many new coins. Now if just one of them doubles or quintuples in value…. well, you get the idea.

Personally this is my favorite strategy. It does take a little server administration know how to set up a masternode, but you can learn it or outsource it fairly easily.

Warning!! Danger Will Robinson!!!

NEVER NEVER NEVER put your coin in a wallet on the masternode. Never give anyone the private keys to your wallet. Your wallet should reside on your own computer, and the masternode just references the wallet. People have been scammed out of their coin by people they hired to set up their masternode. Don’t fall prey to it.

Bonus: How to evaluate a cryptocurrency

No matter which strategy you adopt, you need to be able to analyze a potential alt-coin investment. Here is a handy checklist that you can use to evaluate the worthiness of a potential investment/speculation.

What are the coins fundamentals?

What problem is coin or project trying to solve? How is their approach different?
Does the project have a compelling story?
Who is on the team? A 30 person team with experience is more credible than a project of 2 people with no experience.
Who is the leader of the team.
What partnerships does the project have in place? It’s one thing to claim a future benefit to…someone. It’s another thing to have a client signed up in advance.
What is the community response to the project?
How much capital is backing the project? Technology is wonderful but without capital to back it up, there’s no there there.
Are there any anticipated events (such as the CEO being featured on a cable news show)?

Technical aspects

What exchanges is the coin listed on? This can dramatically affect the ability of the someone to acquire the coin.
What is the volume of trading? Be very very wary of purchasing coins with low volume. You might not be able to sell it at any price.
What is the price history
If you do technical analysis, feel free to do so.

Minergate Quick Tutorial – Mining Bitcoin and CryptoCurrency the Easy Way

by Pat Heyman | Dec 15, 2017 | Uncategorized

In the wake of the recent run-up in Bitcoin, and then LiteCoin, and then Ethereum, you may be thinking, “Well I’d like to get involved in this, but I can’t afford that.” So then you learn that you can “mine” for cryptocurrencies, but it all seems ridiculously complicated.

Well, it turns out there’s a ridiculously easy way to get started mining.

Enter Minergate

Minergate is a mining pool, which means that when you join it, any computers that you use to mine with them get added to a group of other computers, and you each get a reward proportional to your computing power. They’re not necessarily the “best” mining pool, but they are the easiest to get started with, and done is better than best.

I’ve created a short video. You can be up in mining within about three minutes. Written Instructions are shown below the video. If you found this guide helpful, consider using my link to sign up for Minergate. I’ll get a small commission at no cost to you.

Minergate Starting Instructions

Click the link to go Minergate.
Click “Sign up” and fill out the form.
Click downloads
Download the GUI miner for your operating system
Run the install program and just choose the default prompts.
Run the Minergate program.
Choose start mining.
Done

Configuring Minergate

By default, Minergate will try to mine whatever coin it thinks was most profitable in the last hour and supposedly switches to keep you profitable. Some things to consider.

Core Decisions

You can choose the number of cores to mine with. Most computer processors these days are “multi core” which means that the processor is made up of multiple processors.

There is a dropdown that allows you to choose the number of cores to use. The more cores, generally the faster you can mine, but also the more heat you generate and quicker you may wear out your processor.

Some people report that using one or two cores fewer than the maximum number sometimes results in a higher hash rate (indicator of mining progress), so you may want to experiment a bit.

CPU vs GPU Mining

Bitcoin and most of the alt-coins are mined more efficiently with graphics processors (GPU) than with the central computer processor (CPU). However, a few -coins, such as Monero (XMR) and Aeon were designed specifically to be mined with a CPU. This means that if you’re on a laptop (or cheap desktop), chances are good you should stick to Monero and Aeon. If you have a gaming computer, chances are good that you have a GPU and should use it to mine a different -coin, such as Zcash.

There are so many coins, AAAGGGHHHHH

Don’t freak out. You don’t have to become a crypto-savant to do this. Just choose automatic mode, and Minergate, and you’ll be mining. But if you want to take things to the next level, you can learn more about the different types of crypto-currencies. At the time of this writing, the best bests are: 1) CPU mining…either Monero or Aeon. 2) GPU mining…Zcash.

Okay I’m mining; how do I get paid?

Look in your Minergate dashboard on the website, and you’ll see something that looks like this:

Minergate dashboard

This is your overall account balance. You can choose to see its value in Bitcoin, US Dollars, or Euros.
This is the total value of what you have mined in your account (not sure the exact time frame). Same denomination choices.
This is the amount of whichever coin you’re looking at that you have mined and its value in Bitcoin, USD, or Euros. Note that this amount of coin is yours but it’s being held in Minergate’s wallet, not yours at this moment in time. You can use the buttons next to this number to change your mined coin into another currency. For example, if you’re mining Aeon, you can use Changely to exchange your Aeon into Bitcoin or Litecoin.
This is the total number amount that you have mined and how much of it has been confirmed. Confirmations can take a few minutes to several days depending on how fast your machine is and other factors. It’s not really yours until it’s confirmed.
This is a choice you have in terms of fees. It takes longer to confirm the PPLNS but there’s a lower fee. If you’re going to be mining for a long period of time, you’re probably better off leaving it as PPLNS.
These buttons can be used to move the dashboard of the coins you’re mining upward or lower for your viewing convenience. Put the coins you’re mining at the top.
As noted in Number 3, the mined coin is being held for you in Minergate’s wallet. To truly make it yours, you need to transfer it to your wallet. Click the Withdraw button to transfer the coin to your private wallet. (Note: you have to have a wallet for that currency to use this option. Otherwise, use Changely to exchange your mined coin for a currency for which you do have a wallet.

Here’s a video explaining some of the more advanced options and how to get your money out.

That’s it for the moment. There’s more to learn though. It’s reported that the GUI miner is not as efficient as the command line (console) miner, so in a future post, I’ll walk you through setting up a console miner.