Bitcoin Forum

I know its a long shot, but I was curious how often a solo miner solves a block?  Probably not a topic that would freely come up by the person solving it for anonymous purposes.

I was just doing some quick math and the odds are way up there-

For example, assume there are 170,000,000 TH/s out there right now.  If you had 5 newpac usb sticks overclocked to 100GH/s, that would be .5 TH/s.  Take the 170m and divide by the .5 and that is 340,000,000 blocks before you theoretically would ever solve one.   Divide that by 144 per day and we are talking 2.3 million days or ~6500 years.

Having said that, you have the same odds as anyone else, you could solve a block on the first try, or get 10 in a row, or never.

It is said that the large pools such as slushpool represent about 15% of all bitcoins mined per pool.  But how often do you think a solo miner solves a block on their own?  Any good stories or discussions on the topic?

no such thing as solo mining.. that disapeared in like 2014 with the invention of asics

if you mean farmed blocks. where a pool is owned fully by one owner and he has warehouses of asics.. well that can happen

but a home user with USB sticks in his pc.. or a couple asics in their basement working alone. forget it

No serious person would solo mine Bitcoin, it's a waste of electricity, you would most likely die before you see even 1 block. It's simply uneconomical to waste electricity if you could instead join a pool and make steady profit if you have decent hardware. And outdated hardware like those USB miners are not going to be profitable ever, the electricity needed to find 1 block would cost you more than the block reward.

You'll have better chances going to some crypto casino, as they offer 1% house edge or even less, that's much better odds than wasting energy on solo mining Bitcoin or buying lottery tickets. 

So what have you heard, how many of these people are out there?

bitmain.. aka antpool. is a big mining farm. they actually manufacture asics and run them in their warehouses.

things like slushpool are just random people linked to a syndicate(pool) so not a farm

As the OP said, it's all random luck.
Remember, no matter what the size of your farm, only 1 machine in the world finds a block. We can only hope that it is one of ours.

I've been on KanoPool since late 2014 and to-date have found 10 blocks for the pool. The last one (block #608428) was found on 2019‑12‑16 by one of my A841's in a 60THs cluster, one before that (#570025) found on 2019‑04‑03 by a M10 and another (#566019) found on 2019‑03‑07 by a 8-9THs R4. That same R4 also found a block (#543875) on 2018‑10‑01.

Point is that individual miners CAN and DO find blocks. Yes I would have LOVED to have hit those running solo but knowing how the Fates can work I prefer to think it would not have happened...

it depends on you luck and your hashrate  ;D

if you have mining farm with Exahash Scale could be mine 1 or two in single day  ;D

You could but the odds are not the same at all.
Think of it as a lottery, if you buy one ticket you only have 1 chance and your odds are low. If you buy 10, 10000, ... then you increase your odds.
Considering the fact that mining is not a competition for find only one block, but it is a competition to find every block every day of every month in every year the long duration makes it so that the odds of finding the block is proportional to the amount of hashrate you have compared to total hashrate.

It depends on what you mean by a "solo" miner. Strictly speaking a solo miner is person or company that hasn't joined a pool.

For example, Bitfury is a solo miner. They have been doing large-scale mining since the beginning. They don't advertise in the blocks that they find, but I'm sure that they find a significant fraction.

In fact, the miners that find about 30% of the blocks are unknown. I'm sure that there are many solo miners in that group, though they are probably all large-scale operations.

Anyway the math is simple. During the current difficulty period, one S19 at 110 TH/s will find a block on average once every 2.06x10¹³ * 2³² / 110x10¹² = 8.04x10⁸ seconds = 25 years. Note that this is the same whether you mine solo or in a pool. If you want to average 1 block a year, you will need 25 S19s.

Solo mining is almost impossible because most miners are professional and industrial managed. A normal person, even if he has huge coding skills, will only find a block very luckily, because hashrate is relevant for finding a block. Normal devices have not enough power for a considerably high hashrate to find a block.

Does the number of inbound and outbound network connections to your blockchain play any role in who is awarded the block?  For example, if a solo miner solves a block and then say 1 second later a large pool solves the same block before all the nodes record the block in the blockchain?  Who wins?

That's called an Orphan race. Which found block is confirmed first wins. So yes, connections matter but not how exactly many you have but rather how fast of a connection they have to the Bitcoin network so their found block is available to be confirmed and have the next block built on it.

To easily calculate your chances use this website > http://solochance.com/.


This is the last block solved on CKsolo


The miner was lucky to solve a block with 77.7th being his 7d average, of course, we don't know for how long it was, but he most certainly earned more than we could ever earn mining on a pool.

But not everyone is lucky enough, solo mining should be done for fun (I do it for fun on Cksolo), but your main hash power should be pointed towards a pool if you want to make some profit.

If by "confirmed" you mean another block follows it, then yes. The block that is first to have the next block built on top of it wins. Of course, the earlier block has a head start, but it is not guaranteed because the chain follows the longest branch, and the later branch could get lucky. And, if the next blocks are produced at about the same time, then it is the next block that determines the winning branch. And so on ...

I am solo mining with my own blockchain and wallet hosted by me, I have opened the firewall to allow inbound connections, not just outbound, I figured it may be relevant in the off chance of success.

To answer your original question about connections, you want as many connections as possible. Also, getting on a relay network will help. You want to be mining on the latest block as soon as possible and you want the major miners to start mining your block immediately. Read this: https://galaxsis.com/posts/bitcoin_relays_part_1/

Alas, this link misses the main issue that Matt shut down the public relay and there are no available replacements for the general public that use the FIBRE code that is much faster than any other public relay.

idk but my plan was to build a USB mining rig with a couple of super old bitcoin block erupters (for luck/look, not performance lmfao) and a handful of OC'd newpacs and point em to ckpool as a "lotto miner" / art piece.

no idea how to set that up, i never really was a lotto player but idk i feel like this would be fun just to tinker around. and it does help decentralize the network lol

What does block-relay mean in this context?

How many transactions/blocks you have relayed to or have been relayed by other clients.

1 BTC per month during (this/next) difficulty?
needs 5.71 PH/s - 0.175219 - 4.80 PH/s









my stolen account lowbander80 was legentary
mining since 2013
1JgddX4AWtLxn9G3hMFzR99CVcZk2U66mQ

I've watched some pretty recent videos on Youtube about USB stick mining, and even if you're mining in a pool with a bunch of Moonlanders, you're still going to earn next to nothing.  The video makers usually say that the USB devices "are great for learning about mining" but the only thing I think they're good for is learning how to lose money.

It's been said here many times: mining bitcoin solo is like playing the lottery, though I think the odds of discovering a block are even less than winning Lotto.  You can try it of course, but you're basically just wasting your time and electricity.  

They look super cool, but if you think about that setup with the logical part of your brain (and not the gambling one), you'll realize it's not worth it to do.  You'll get sick of getting nothing every day, just like all the other people who've tried it and ended up selling those block eruptors and Moonlanders on eBay.

It would be much more rational to mine an altcoin with a GPU or even a CPU and then sell the proceeds for bitcoin.

I skimmed the rest of the thread but didn't see anyone reply asking what I wanted to ask, so I'll go ahead and ask even though it's been six weeks since you posted this.

How does your total income at pools to date compare with what you would've earned had you mined these blocks solo?

Can't say I've ever bothered to do the math, mainly depends on how many coins the reward was back then. Currently is 6.25BTC+fees, back then might have been 12.5BTC+fees. Do remember that I've been running a total of several hundred THs. Those miners that found blocks were part of that farm.

I CAN say that running solo that long with no income from others in the pool finding blocks would have been - very expensive. I may be patient but not that much.

I have 1200th.

assuming flat difficulty which is not true over a long time

I make
0.007 per day
0.070 in ten days
0.700 in 100 days
7.000 in 1000 days

so a block in three years would be “normal”

a block in three months would be very lucky.
a block in 30 years would be very unlucky.

All on the assumption of flat difficulty.

which has not lasted more than a year or so. since mining began.

I am fairly certain no 2 years have passed without diff rising .

I cant mine 1200th for more than 100 days with no income from it.

fixed that for you ...

That makes things a bit easier to visualize, thanks. If you don't mind me asking... how much DOES it cost you to mine 1200TH? Roughly.

My deal is 1/2 the coins.

So when price and profit is low I get half the coins. Good for me

And when price + profit is high I get half the coins. Good for the warehouse owner.

So you own the hardware and the warehouse owner gives you space and power in exchange for half the gross profit?

Yes.  He has a complex with 7 large buildings. He made a deal for multiple megawatts for five year.

He then lost an icecream company that burned lots of power for the freezers.

This left him with an excess amount of paid for power.

So the deal works for him and for us.