Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

In the GuiMiner, when mining solo at the bottom of the window there is a status screen that usually reads something in the lines of "Difficulty 1 Hashes 3". The hashes number increased from 0 to 3 over time,
but what does that actually mean? What does it mean when the number of hashes increases? And does Difficulty 1 also change?

Finally, how will the Guiminer know where to send my coins once it has found a block? Does the bitcoin client/server software tell it?

Thanks!

Another question - if I quit/stop the Guiminer, will all of my progress be lost?

Are you solo mining or mining as part of a pool?

Difficulty 1 hashes are found all the time, and the only use is to send to the pool to prove that you're mining (they're really easy to check, but hard to generate). The same work that's looking for hashes of the current "real" difficulty generates those low-difficulty hashes as a by-product. Mining pools call them shares.

When you stop guiminer, the progress isn't lost, it's saved (as the number of shares you've sent so far). The pool settings determine where the payouts are sent (and what the threshold is).

Cool, it's good to know about the system when used for pooled mining, but at the moment I'm trying solo mining. I'm up to almost 40 hashes now and I still understand what does that mean in solo mode? Also not sure if my progress is saved when mining solo, for pooled mining I understand that stoping is not a problem hehe.

Yeah, if you're solo mining then the bitcoin server you're connected to (your own client, hopefully) tells what address to send the coins to. Then the difficulty 1 hashes serve no purpose apart from showing that calculations are happening; they are "near misses".

When solo mining, there is no "progress." There is only sudden success by a stroke of luck, and if you keep at it for long enough, statistically you'll find a block eventually. Sometimes it takes 40000 shares, sometimes 1500000, or it could be even less or more. But if you have 40 so far, you'll probably be waiting a long time to gain anything :)

But for most people it's best to join a mining pool. I recommend Eligius!

Oh, and coincidentally, the current difficulty is the number of shares (or difficulty 1 hashes) that need to be found on average before a block is solved. So, 877227 currently, and much more very soon :)

Great, so with those calculations, I would need 19,493 times more shares than I have now (45) in order to maybe find a block! Guess I'll just try for a few days and see what happens lol!

Btw the server I connected to, I specified localhost/127.0.0.1 and everything seems to be working correctly (the GPU is over 90C), so I'm guessing the money will go to the right account :D

you can solve one hash and be lucky or you can solve 200k hashes and not solve 1 Block. Welcome to variance ;)

Just one last question - some people mentioned opening ports, etc. Is it possible that my GUIMiner and bitcoin client/server software to be working correctly and making new hashes, while at the same time they are not communicating with the network, or is that not possible? I've had a few incoming transactions, and all of them went through properly.

If you're getting new transactions, you are connected to the network. If you're paranoid, check your block count against block explorer's count.