Bitcoin Forum

Is there anyone try solo mining?
In theory, may be 100 days or more to find a new block!
Is there anyone ever have a more good time?

What is your Mining rig?

There's 2 problems with solo-mining that stopped me from doing it once the difficulty got too high:

• Too much luck involved (or bad luck for that matter)
• Having an average time to find a block that is greater than the difficulty window will increase the average difficulty you're mining at if difficulty rises (which it usually does)

It's just too much of a gamble for me.

Roughly speaking, the best time to solo mine was from 2009-10, and it went downhill pretty quickly in the early spring of 2011 (my understanding is that that is when pools started gaining popularity - deepbit for example started 2/24/11). You can still do it of course, but if so, you have to be OK with mining for months on end with no result.

Most people like pool mining because of the steady payout. I'm using BTC Guild because of the zero fee's. With zero fee's I can't see any advantage to solo mining.

Have you tried BTCmine?

And to mine for 100 days and get your block orphaned/rejected would really really suck

I guess it is more likely that you will mine for 100 days and not find the block at all. And it sucks exactly the same way :)

You could solo-mine for 30seconds and find a block.

From how I understand it 100 days (if that is right) means a 50% chance of finding a block.

In theory the best times for solo mining would be when a new technology is introduced, so there was the start of the project, beginnings of GPU mining and there will be FPGAs (or similar stuff) and then ASICs.

But shouldn't it all be the same for pool mining?

Being that the network finds around 5 blocks an hour of late I think that unless you have something like 1 Thash or more it's just not worth it?

No single person will have this kind of hashing power as long as mining is possible even with asics that would still consume several kilowatt. A organization could do it though.

The most efficient chip I know, still a "computer" something between fpgas and standard asics (not custom asics, the holy grail) gives you 85Mhash/watt this would give us 23kwatt for 1 Thash, but it wasn't made for that purpose so in that case the architecture can shrinked down from 180nm to 130nm, but you'll still need alot of power.
I won't tell what it is obviously  :P

(No seriously implementing something like bitcoin on that low level takes skill, and time which I don't have ;))
But its all relative solo mining can always pay up, you can get lucky and find a block the first day, in which case better move on, you only get that lucky once in your life ;)

Better to join a pool unless you feel lucky. You need some major hardware to make solo mining worth it.

As everyone else has mentioned, pool mining is the way to go, stable and steady.

Is this really correct?
 If i start a block today at difficulty 1.
 and the difficulty changes tomorrow and becomes 100.
 would the part of my block that is left then really be mined at difficulty 100?
 
I would think that the block would be mined at the difficulty it was issued at.

Just wondering
/GoK

This isn't how Bitcoin works, all miners are working on the same blocks, and theyre just trying to solve it faster than one and other.

No, that's not correct. There's no "issuing" of a block. You're probably thinking in terms of a "round", as pools often call the timespan until they find a block. If the difficulty changes during a "round", the block has to be found with the new difficulty.

Even if you had enough solo hashing power to find it, I can't imagine the huge delay between "starting" and "Eureka!"

Sure, you might lose some with the pool, but you can actually see incremental flow of BTC, which is always fun.

This might not be the right thread but after i read your answer i thought id better get dirty and get rid of my missconceptions.

So i went to the lions den (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block) and honestly, that page could use some clarifying.

As i understand it now the generation of blocks is actually done when the block is solved (and several blocks can be solved competing for the same space in the block chain).

But other pages (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm) talk about it as if the block exists from the beginning, which i guess it does: "When generating, you constantly hash the block header. The block is also occasionally updated as you are working on it."

When reading about the generation algorithm (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Generation_Calculator) it says that:
     "Divide by 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639935, which is the maximum value of a 256-bit number. You now have the probability of a single hash solving a block."

If this holds true there is a finite number of hashings that would guarantee that a block is solved.
Thus the following statement on the https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block page is incorrect.
     "What if I'm 1% towards calculating a block and...?
      - There's no such thing as being 1% towards solving a block. You don't make progress towards solving it. After working on it for 24 hours, your chances of solving it are equal to what your chances were at the start or at any moment. Believing otherwise is what's known as the Gambler's fallacy [1].
      - It's like trying to flip 53 coins at once and have them all come up heads. Each time you try, your chances of success are the same. "

The citation above is only true if we are talking about an infinitely long serie.
As an example.
   - The maximum value is: 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639935.
   - If the calculation above (Generation_Calculator) is true the chances of finding the hash when   115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639935 - 1 hashes has been done equals 1.
   - Thus proving the block page to be wrong.

I have no idea what the correct answer is  ???

Maybe this should have been in another thread...


Best
/GoK

First off: it's really nice to see you're digging into this stuff. A lot of people don't really bother, but I think it's important to understand.
Also: I'm not a full expert on this either, but I think I can clear things up a little.


I think it helps here to talk about different kinds of blocks, or different stages a block can be in. Initially it's merely a "block candidate". The bitcoin client constructs a "block candidate" with all the transactions, a nonce (initially "0"), previous blocks hash, etc. Then all that is needed to make it a "valid block", is the hash of the block being smaller than the target. This can be accomplished by manipulating the nonce (usually increasing it by 1) until the hash matches the target. Once this is done (usually by the miner software), that "winning nonce" is put into the block and the block becomes a "valid block". It's now sent to the network and the block is added to the chain by all nodes and becomes an "accepted block". Once enough new blocks are accepted to the chain after this block, it becomes a "confirmed block" and is now truly part of the bitcoin block chain and will very very likely remain part of it forever.


The answers do not contradict each other. Let's make an example: Let's say we're not solving a bitcoin block, but where throwing a dice with 6 sides. Let's say rolling a 6 is analogous to solving a block:

Answer 1 is analogous to: "If you divide 1 by 6, you have probability 1/6 of rolling a 6"

Answer 2 is analogous to: "Question: 'if I'm 1% towards rolling a 6 and...?', Answer: 'There's no such thing as being 1% towards rolling a 6. After rolling the dice for 24h the chances of rolling a 6 are equal to what your chances were at the start or at any moment. Believing otherwise is what's known as the Gambler's fallacy''"

Rolling a dice 6 times doesn't guarantee you throw a 6, does it ;), probabilities don't add. The probability of rolling a 6 in 6 rolls is not 1/6 * 6, but: 1 - (1 - 1/6) ^ 6 = 0.6651, in words: it's the probability of "not rolling a 1,2,3,4, or 5 six times in a row"

So, both answers are correct.

I hope I was of help.