The block number/height is not a part of the block, it is not used anywhere inside the block, when miners are hashing blocks they don't specify something like "we are now mining block n+1, they are mining a random block.

What changes in the process is that in order to mine the next block you need the hash of the previous block, not the number of the previous block.

To explain further, you can assume all miners mine empty blocks just to keep the transaction out of it, so miner A now has this data that he is hashing in order to solve a block

Previous block hash + data + nonce
Let's say it is

4444 + 123 +1 so hashing goes on with a different nonce

4444+123+1
4444+123+2
4444+123+3

Lets say at this point miner B hit their own block, they would inform miner A, miner is here isn't going to start form scratch, it is not like he lost the race, he would just start hasing using the new block hash

5555+123+1

At any given second here miner A can hit a block, or 5 in a row, miner A's ability to hit block is directly related to how many hashes he can perform, it has nothing to do with how many blocks miner B can find or how "fast" miner B does find blocks.

I am probably not good in explaining things, but I think it gets clearer when you really understand that blocks are found by brute force randomness, most online articles say it's solving complex equations, that gives the illusion that all miners are trying to solve the same puzzle, but they are not.

Miners do not solve block n+1, they solve a random block, when they do, the other nodes will label it as block n+1, it was never block n+1 before it was sent to the other nodes, it was just a valid block that meets all consensus.

There are no more shares from large miners, the pool adjusts share difficulty to maintain a fixed number of shares per time unit, 10000 miners under a proxy would submit the exact same number of shares as a single usb miner would.

True for the rates, large miners pay less for fees, because they are, well "large".

I also just got to know that some custom firmware guys started their own pool using the "fees" they collect from miners, and they do find blocks on regular bases, isn't that crazy?

I can't really tell whether large miners are good or bad for a mining pool, but I believe, they are essential for the well-being of any mining pool, as you already know, all manufacturers are focused on large miners, and all these small home miners floating out there don't make up a small fraction of the network hash rate, it's a sad fact I know -- but it's what it is.

Also, I don't believe large miners would require you to have a better infrastructure, in fact, I think the opposite is correct, common sense is that large miners who have thousands of miners would be using proxies, I think the resources required to deal with 5 average miners whom each uses 5 miners is a lot greater than dealing with 5 large miners each using 5000 miners, same goes for support and the other technical stuff.

Nop, when the last block has been mined, every miner is trying to mine A block, it just so happens that it gets the number n+1,


This isn't how it works, using the word faster is simply wrong here, it makes it sound like mining is just like a car race where when one car reaches the finish line, everyone goes back to the start line and races for another round, this obviously isn't the case, because if it was, then all blocks would have been won by the fastest miner, which is what you would expect in a car race whereby the faster car would always win the race, mining is not like that and that's why a miner with a tiny fraction of hashrate can find block n+1 "before" the large pools who have the remaining 99.9999999999999999% of the hashrate.


That's correct, having twice the hashrate means you are able to try twice as much to solve puzzles, it doesn't mean you can do it faster in a sense of a "race", I believe the key point you need to understand here is that when pool x solves a block, it has exactly ZERO affect on pool y's chances of hitting their own block, what other miners solve is irrelevant to you as a miner, the outcome of you hashing your own block is completely independent of every other miner.

I think what makes all the confusion is the block height because blocks go in order "chain", it gives the illusion that if someone found block n+1 it means they won against everyone else and then everything magically resets and they head for another round of block n+2 which as I explained isn't the case, simply everyone is randomly and independently solving blocks, it just so happen that blocks found are labeled/named/numbered in a series of n+1,,,, etc.

The only race miners take is AFTER they solve a block, not before, when you solve a block and tell the network to register it as block n+1, you want to make sure you do that before someone else does -- because at any given moment, you may solve a block and in the same exact second 2 other miners solve a block, here begins the race that would decide which of the 3 blocks is going to be registered in the blockchain as block number n+1, everything before that is far from a race.

Keep in mind that all 3 blocks are VALID based on the protocol, if there was a kind of a race in solving the actual block then only one block would have been valid, but all three blocks are because essentially they are just valid blocks, the miner with the best connectivity to other nodes would likely be the one who manages to make the network recognize his block as block n+1.
 

The word "faster" is probably misleading and wrong to use, it doesn't matter how fast you are, blocks are found once every 10 minutes on average regardless. also, keep in mind that miners are not working on the same block, and there is no such thing as "the next block", every miner is working on a different unique block candidate, a pool that has 20% of the hashrate is very likely to find 20% of the blocks at no exact order, speed or pace.


There is no "next challenge round", as explained above, miners create their own blocks, and to keep this "chain" theory intact, they all have the previous block hash in common when a miner manages to construct a valid block, they inform the rest of the network and everybody continue to do exactly they were doing with the expectation of using the "new block hash" and deleting the transactions that have been already included.

It's not "way off" Nicehash isn't a mining pool, so if there is no other mining pool that did this, then the statement in the article is correct.

Anyway, good to see Braiins Pool making some moves here and there, although, sadly, as things look, I don't see how this pool will continue operation, looking at this last 6 months' status, I only found 1.5% of all blocks, this puts them in a very difficult spot, things took a very bad turn at one point when there were accused of mixing a dozen blocks to some code related issues, which up to this point -- they have not admitted although many people believe that the odds of them having that terrible luck stream for 200 blocks or so was too low.

I really hope they recover and start attracting large miners again.

An Antminer S3 does roughly 0.5 terahash, the modern miners do 200th~, with that said, 0.5TH is good enough to register a few shares on most pools since the pool difficulty is far less than the network's, just give it some time and it should hit some shares and report some hashrate.

I would try cksolo pool since that would display the shares your miner submitted, most pools don't do that and would just show you the hashrate which is a different representation of how many shares you submitted at x difficulty but still not so helpful in your situation.

It's also worth mentioning that most pools have a minimum payout (0.005 BTC for most large pools), which means this S3 is probably never going to hit the required payout if it's mining alone.

Fees are hight due to Bitcoin Runes protocol, created by the same guy who invented Ordinals, it went live with the halving which is the reason why this happened.

Also, just like how things ended for Ordinals, I believe this hype will be short lived, when not enough people buy into it -- it will stop, greedy people are looking for ways to get rich overnight, some of them will, the majority will just lose money.

Antminers(Bitmain) make different miners for different algos, but majority are SHA256, Whatsminer (MicroBT) only make SHA256 miners

 

No you can't, yes they come with an operating system



Antminer usually, because they use C13 which is not capable of doing the 3kw+ they need, Whatsminer use C19 a single cable.


Supplying a PSU that takes a single input from two different sources is probably not recommended,  i have seen a C19 - male C20 Y cable which means the same input supplies two PSUs but not the opposite, i won't do that unless approved by the manufaturer.


Nop, only one cable

So viabtc mined the last block, Braiins pool mined the first one in this halving.

The current numbers are as follows:



Let's see how we do going forward, the ordinals folks are jamming the blockchain with fees up to 2500sat/vbyte, antpool just mined a 27btc block, so rewards are even greater than before the halving, this would likely stop difficulty from going down until Ordinals folks decide which block number is not worth much.

When you have a code this large you want to be touching it as little as possible, it's probably a few minutes' job but if it's not super important it would only be

1- A waste of time.
2- Might break something along the line.

I have been here for 5 years or so, written thousands of posts, and read tens of thousands of posts, it never bothered me, I got used to it -- I don't even notice it now.

Censorship is

source: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095558166

So by definition, censorship already exists as far as BTC transactions are concerned, the foundation is there and some miners already practice it, so we are past that point already, what you are describing as something that "can't happen" is "banning" transactions, as long as there exist blocks that are mined by any miner that is not participating in the censorship, a complete ban is not possible.

 The great danger of all that hash power in the U.S or any other country for that matter, is the fact that they are all subject to the same rules, written by the same group of people, which is why I have always emphasized that the physical centralization of hash power is a lot more dangerous than the centralization of the mining pools, it's worth noting that any hash power that is located in any U.S puppet counties is also subject to same rules.

Bear in mind that I had the same concern when the hash power resided in China, with the expectation that back then another huge portion of the hashrate was located in the U.S. and many other places that are not subject to the CCP's rules, the CCP ban on mining brought great damage to BTC centralization and we won't see it until it's too late, the U.S government/lawmakers will eventually crack down on a dozen things BTC related, every U.S miner will have no choice but to abide by the law.

This may be too far stretched but I'd imagine the next big move from them would be the usage of a whitelisting approach rather than black listing, whereby only KYCed addresses are allowed to transact freely on the blockchain, every U.S miner would need to include only the whitelisted transactions, and excuses such "I don't construct my own blocks" isn't going to cut it.


You may still argue that if 25% of the hashrate is out of the U.S reach, all those transactions will still go through once every 4 blocks, but that will also make those transactions a lot more expensive and eventually probably even worth a lot less since they won't be able to "mix" with the other transactions, it would be like having forked BTC without actually forking it, that's very bad for the fungibility of BTC.

I think it's quite evident that governments worldwide and especially the U.S did not attempt to destroy BTC a decade ago when doing so was relatively easy, simply because they understood exactly how it works and they allowed it to grow, and they had a plan of how to control it when the time comes, and as far as things seem to me right now, they have already got the keys -- it's all those large miners located in the U.S.

How would your bitcoin core "control" your miners and point them to whichever server you want? it's the mining software that does that, what mining software are you using? all most all known mining software can be batch configured by tools available for free or you can batch configure them using SSH, what miners are you using and what is your setup?

a 3-bay NAS would be what 30*15*15cm? that would not fit any modern Antminer out there, or do you mean 3 bays? if so, then ya you may fill one or two gears, probably Whatsminers since they are smaller in size, but then, as danieleither mentioned, you can't have a miner running at "stock design" in an office room, unless you are willing to do some costly modification it won't work, you are going to have to extract the hot air, can you make a large hole in the wall?

That's not exactly true, it's easy to say now simply because you can't unsee what you have seen, but a single visit was never enough for anyone to come to the current realization everyone now has, when the mixer ban took place I personally took a look at jambler, and I even made a post explaining how it was not a mixer per se, if you only visit the main page and you don't do some digging and reading, you would still arrive at the same conclusion and by "you" I mean the average person who isn't looking too deep to find something or that person has no unordinary skills of some sort.

Be it as it may, even looking at the diagram gives the impression that the part on the left which is labeled as a "mixing platform" still looks as if it's only a piece of the code that is sold by Jambler and owned by the "actual mixer", I personally only came to fully understand all the details after having read everything in the FAQ and some of the posts in the other topic.

So I would like to assume that theymos, have probably skimmed through the website in the same way I did, and things looked to him the same they looked to me, I am sure they would look the same to most people who don't know what we already know, your average mixer main page would have "start mixing now" , "set your fees" , " paste your return address", "set your privacy level" with all those sliding buttons and input fields, Jambler on the other hand, all it has on its main page is "create your mixer" and "become a seller" it certainly doesn't look even close to all other mixers I have seen and used.

---

Fail Only for Fun ?

Thanks willi for organizing this once again, hopefully this time we hit a block. Good luck.

So the current difficulty is 86388558925171.02 (86.1T), it's the week before the halving, so for @stompix to be correct in his double down bid, we need to be at > 86.1T by the end of June, I think that was a bit too far stretched for stompy and he is going be to be wrong yet again .

Anyway, this epoch is going to drag a little longer than average, the halving takes place at block 840,000, we are at block 838,822 so 1,178 blocks away from halving and 1,849 blocks away from diff change, the remaining 671 blocks are probably going to take at least 20% more time to finish, in other words, 12 minutes on average, so far the pace is -10%, we are roughly 8 days away from the fireworks.

I believe fees are picking up because

1- the current pace is slow
2- people expect it will keep getting worse as we move further to the halving
3- diff change is going to drag and the remaining days post-halving before diff drops would make the block intervals even higher which would bring fees to higher levels.

Seems like everyone is trying to outsmart everyone else..

All these Kill A Watt like products are a bit expensive because they offer a few readings and not just amp draw, $10 is probably going to be the cheapest you find, but then, most are rated at 15A which is roughly 3.3kw on 220v, hardly enough for any modern asic miner out there, there is no cheaper option to be honest, you are going to need a tool of some sort if you need very accurate measure, check if you have an amp clamp or maybe one of your friends has it.

However, the real equation, why do you care so much about getting a 100% accurate reading? whatever you get on the screen is pretty accurate, the fans don't consume enough power to even matter as far as a 3kw miner is concerned, if you own a Whatsminer you can get the perfectly accurate reading from whatsminer tool, it shows you the exact amp output/input of the power supply, it measures everything that's being powered on by the PSU and that includes fans, LEDs and the control board.

Some monitoring software like AwesomeMiner would also give you an estimate of the total power draw based on some variables, it isn't 100% accurate but maybe 90% accurate.

o_solo_miner calculation is solid, however, There is an easier and probably slightly better calculation since the hashrate price is always changing, you just divide how much you are going to invest in nicehash by the average block total rewards, say the current block reward average is 7 BTC per block, and you are going to invest 1 BTC, your chances are 1/7 in other words you have 14.2% chance of hitting a block, if you invest 7 BTC your chance is 1/1 which 100% (slightly lower due to fees)

The logic is simple, nicehash miners get on average 100% of just pool mining, so the hashrate required to mine one block = 1 block worth of bitcoin + fees.

The second thing you need to consider is your risk-to-reward ratio, if we invest 0.7 BTC now while block fees are averaging 7 BTC, it means we have a 1 in 10 chance or 10% of winning, it also means if we hit a block the reward would be whatever you invest * 10, so if you invest 0.1 BTC in the run, you either lose it all or make 0.1 * 10 BTC which is 1 BTC, I know most veteran members here understand this logic, just want to make it clear for everyone else, I believe it's worth understanding what they are getting into.

لا اعتقد ان هداذ المكان المناسب لموضوعك، اعتقد انه يجب ان يكون في قسم التعدين خصوصا ان جهاز التعدين المطروح للبيع هدا خاص بتعدين غملة بديلة غير البتكوين لذلك وجوده في قسم البتكوين الرئيسي غير مناسب ولكن على العموم المشرف سيتصرف بما يراه مناسب.


اعتقد ايضا انه تم استعمال الترجمة الالية لكتابة هدا الموضوع باللغة العربية