How is difficulty relevant when you know your percentage of your net hashrate?

[nu1mlock]

Hello everyone,

I've been looking into difficulty and its impact on how quickly one can find a block when solo mining. However, I'm having a hard time understanding what the difficulty actually means and what it is for.

Let's say I know the difficulty of a given coin. I also know the average time to find a block. I also know the total net hashrate and of course my own hashrate.

And let's also say that I know that I have 10% of the current hashrate, I'm assuming that I'll on average find 10% of the blocks per day.


What good indication is the difficulty of the coin then? I'm assuming that if I have 10% of the total net hashrate, I'll find 10% of the blocks. The difficulty seems irrelevant to me as long as I know what percentage I have of the total network hashrate.  

I'm sure I'm missing something very important here, so please enlighten me!

Thank you!

[VRobb]

True If you have 10% of total you'll mine 10% of the blocks, but how many is that?   

[nu1mlock]

True If you have 10% of total you'll mine 10% of the blocks, but how many is that?  

So you're saying that the difficulty increases the time to find a block on a network level. An average block time of, for the discussion, say, one hour will be doubled if the difficulty is doubled, even if I still would hold 10% of the total hash rate after the difficulty increase?

[Amph]

True If you have 10% of total you'll mine 10% of the blocks, but how many is that?  

So you're saying that the difficulty increases the time to find a block on a network level. An average block time of, for the discussion, say, one hour will be doubled if the difficulty is doubled, even if I still would hold 10% of the total hash rate after the difficulty increase?

if the diff increase by 100% you will have a 50% reduction in your chance of finding a block, so if before you were solving 1 block a day, now you will solve 1 block every two days

[nu1mlock]

Sure, but the difficulty increases with increased hash rate, no? The difficulty itself doesn't increase the time to find a block at a network level, correct?

[philipma1957]

Sure, but the difficulty increases with increased hash rate, no? The difficulty itself doesn't increase the time to find a block at a network level, correct?

correct.. 

so if you have  1 ph of 10 ph   that is 10 %

if diff jumps  10 %

hash jumped 10%

so network is 11ph

you need to jump to 1.1 ph to maintain your 10%

and the time to hit blocks stays  level.

Unless it is a weird coin with  strange rules about difficulty.

ie not BTC or LTC or many other with standard diff rules


  I believe PPC has weird rules about hash increase and difficulty

[nu1mlock]

Right, so then we're back at my initial question: Is difficulty irrelevant as long as you know the net hash and your own hash rate?

Sounds to me that it is irrelevant. I mean, the difficulty by itself doesn't mean anything if you don't know net hash and your own. But if you know the net hash and your own, the difficulty number is irrelevant.

[philipma1957]

Right, so then we're back at my initial question: Is difficulty irrelevant as long as you know the net hash and your own hash rate?

Sounds to me that it is irrelevant. I mean, the difficulty by itself doesn't mean anything if you don't know net hash and your own. But if you know the net hash and your own, the difficulty number is irrelevant.

for calculation of your chance of blocks at solo mining would would be correct.

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty


Bitcoin Difficulty:   804,525,194,568
Estimated Next Difficulty:   872,153,520,785 (+8.41%)
Adjust time:   After 946 Blocks, About 6.2 days
Hashrate(?):   6,427,553,497 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):   
1 block: 9.4 minutes
3 blocks: 28.2 minutes
6 blocks: 56.4 minutes
Updated:   7:30 (2.3 minutes ago)


above the hash rate for btc is        6,427,553,497 gh  that is  6427.5 ph

so if you had  642.75 ph  or 10%  you would hit 14 to 15 blocks a day  about 200-210 coins

[Amph]

Right, so then we're back at my initial question: Is difficulty irrelevant as long as you know the net hash and your own hash rate?

Sounds to me that it is irrelevant. I mean, the difficulty by itself doesn't mean anything if you don't know net hash and your own. But if you know the net hash and your own, the difficulty number is irrelevant.

for bitcoin maybe, but there are coins where, simply knowing the net can't make you know your income, you need to knwo also the diff, i think it was the case with pascalcoin

however when the diff adjust you may find that you will earn less for that time because the diff still need to catch the nethash, this happen with a slow diff retarget like the oen with bitcoin...

[Tomintx]

Right, so then we're back at my initial question: Is difficulty irrelevant as long as you know the net hash and your own hash rate?

Sounds to me that it is irrelevant. I mean, the difficulty by itself doesn't mean anything if you don't know net hash and your own. But if you know the net hash and your own, the difficulty number is irrelevant.

So I'll throw another 2 Satoshis-worth into this discussion.

You're correct.  Difficulty is not a direct factor.  You have 10% of total, then you'll earn roughly 10% of the total payout.   I say Roughly, because of the random nature of crypto-currency mining.  Some miners are luckier than others in the short term.  In the long term, it will mostly even out.

Depending on the rules of the particular coin, difficulty will change +/- as the total hash-rate affects the rate of production of the blocks/coins.  Your portion of the total is the only thing that affects your payout. 

If you had an Antminer S9, back in January of 2013, you would have been 1/2 of the total network, earning 72 blocks (* 50) or 3,600 BTC per day.  That same machine today is 0.0002% of the network, and will earn you roughly 0.0044 BTC per day.  Until next week, when it will earn you maybe 0.0038 BTC per day.

The difference is caused by the difficulty change since then.

Pardon me, I've got to go over some settings on my time machine...

[alh]

Pardon me, I've got to go over some settings on my time machine...

So, do you have the "DeLorean" version, or something else??? My "Flux Capacitor" is damaged beyond repair, I am afraid....

Are your settings for forward, or backward from here?