Can Apple M1 Macs Mine Ethereum Effectively? A Hands‑On Test
This article documents a technical experiment that runs Ethereum mining software on an M1‑based MacBook Air, detailing the required code patches, build process, performance logs, and the resulting profit of roughly one Chinese yuan per day, while comparing the M1’s capabilities to traditional GPU miners.
Background
Ethereum mining is most profitable on high‑end GPUs. Some users experiment with Apple Silicon (M1) Macs.
Project
Yifan Gu created a GitHub repository https://github.com/gyf304/ethminer-m1 that builds ethminer for an M1 MacBook Air. The compiled binary runs but yields only ~2 MH/s.
Required modifications
Add the Apple GPU to Ethereum’s device whitelist by treating it as an Intel GPU.
Upgrade Boost to the latest version and remove the obsolete -fcoalesce-templates flag that recent Clang no longer supports.
Patch ethminer’s use of Boost.Asio to match the newer Boost API.
Upgrade OpenSSL to a version that supports darwin + arm64.
Build steps (example)
Clone the repository, apply the patches, and compile:
git clone https://github.com/gyf304/ethminer-m1.git
cd ethminer-m1
# apply Boost, OpenSSL, and device‑whitelist patches
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make -j$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)Runtime output
ethminer 0.19.0-17+commit.ce52c740.dirty
Build: darwin/release/appleclang
i 19:51:36 Configured pool eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999
i 19:51:36 Selected pool eth-us-east1.nanopool.org:9999
i 19:51:36 Connection remotely closed by eth-us-east1.nanopool.org
i 19:51:36 Stratum mode : EthereumStratum/1.0.0 (NiceHash)
i 19:51:36 Established connection to eth-us-east1.nanopool.org [144.217.14.139:9999]
i 19:51:36 Spinning up miners...
cl 19:51:36 cl-0 Using Device : Intel GPU 0.0 Apple M1 OpenCL 1.2 Memory : 10.67 GB
i 19:51:36 Extranonce set to 778d
i 19:51:36 Epoch : 397 Difficulty : 10.00 Gh
cl 19:51:38 cl-0 Generating split DAG + Light (total): 4.10 GB
cl 19:51:38 cl-0 OpenCL kernel
cl 19:51:38 cl-0 Creating DAG buffer, size: 4.10 GB, free: 6.57 GB
cl 19:51:38 cl-0 Creating light cache buffer, size: 65.62 MB
cl 19:51:38 cl-0 Loading kernels
cl 19:51:38 cl-0 Creating buffer for header.
cl 19:51:38 cl-0 Creating mining buffer
m 19:52:31 0:00 A0 1.96 Mh - cl0 1.96
m 19:52:36 0:01 A0 1.98 Mh - cl0 1.98
**Accepted 150 ms. eth-us-east1.nanopool.org [...]The miner reaches a peak of about 2 MH/s, which translates to roughly 1 CNY per day – negligible profit.
Comparison
Even the weakest dedicated Ethereum mining GPU (~26 MH/s) outperforms the M1 by an order of magnitude, although the M1 consumes far less power. Future Apple‑silicon GPUs with many more cores may narrow the gap.
Conclusion
Running ethminer on an M1 Mac is technically feasible after applying the listed patches, but the resulting hash rate and earnings are too low to be practical for serious miners.
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