I need help to better understand how does SOLO mining work.

[mikeywith]

So until just recently '2 days ago' i thought I did understand how 'bitcoin mining' actually works. but now i came to understand that I really don't know shit  

by looking at solo miners status on antpool > https://www.antpool.com/poolStatsRankings.htm  . you can see some crazy results !

take no.20 for an instance, with 322.18 GH/s AVG. he get's to solve/find block in 74 days !.

if you look at the online calculators ,  the number to generate a block with that kinda hashing power is so  many dozen years.

now i do understand that there is a LUCK factor in all this mining process. but i am just lost in trying to understand the basic simple methodology behind this.

I did a lot of reading with no result , not the content online was not great, but simply because I am kinda slow and dumb  

so please help me understand these a few terms.

Q1- provided that every block takes 10 mins on average HOW can  these online calculators even estimate the time someone needs to find a block ?

because form what i understand the right after the blockchain is done with a block, all miners need to start working on the NEXT block, and of course the more hashing power one has the MORE results they can submit within those 10 mins therefore raising their chances to find that MAGIC number, but again to every hash submitted there is a chance of it being the right one, so if this is true. then all those calculators are worthless !.

Q2- as a solo miner , do you GENERATE / SOLVE or FIND blocks ? what is the right term to use ?

i am asking this question because  calculators like coinwars says 'estimated time to "GENERATE" . i need to understand the technical difference " if there is any' between these different words.

Q3- when solo mining ,  what happens if you get disconnected from the internet or encounter a power outage ,after say a few months ? does that  mean you have to start all over ?

no this question is the most stupid one i know, but provided that it really does take a certain time for one to solve/generate block then how is this handled? because i read on  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/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].

now if that statement is correct then i have another question

Q4 - if every miner has to start all over every 10 mins to hopefully solve that puzzle. what ensures that more hashing power = more bitcoins

if luck factor is THAT important ? what if someone get's so lucky too often ? what if a pool with 40% the hashing power just get's unlucky on every block ? the word luck is quite broad it always has a 50% chance , for every hash you may get to solve a block or not. so it's quite scary to me.

excuse my nooby questions, it's just too much for my brain to handle .

[ccgllc]

Q1)  It can be calculated based on hash rate alone, if you only use the current difficulty.  eg:

Current overall network hashrate:  51,808,852,539 GH/s
Sample hashrate:  322.18 GH/S
Chance of finding the next block:  322/51808852539.  (ie, a very small number)
Of course, it gets less likely the larger the overall network hashrate becomes.

Q2)  "Mine a block" (with an implied "and its gets confirmed")

Q3)  No - Your rolling dice trillions of times a second.  Dice have no memory.  Its just random luck.

Q4)  It doesn't.  Its a horse race - you vs. everyone else.  If you owned 0.01% of all the hash, and upgrade so that you owned 0.02% of all the hash, you chances of mining a block double - but only if nobody else is adding hash...

And to quote all investments:  "Past performance is not an indicator of future performance"  (Eg.  A "lucky" pool's luck can change at any time.  There is ZERO value in pool hopping to "unlucky" pools since "they are due".  It just doesn't work that way.  "The past is the past"  "Its water under the bridge"  "Dice have no memory"

[mikeywith]

thanks for your answers, i have a comment on Q4 ; seems like you didn't get me or it's me that can't put the question in a way that can be easily understood,

the question is , since we rely on LUCK for this matter, let's assume there are only 2 miners out there.miner A and miner B ! each has 50% of the network hashing power.

what if pool 'A' finds 100 blocks in  a row before pool "B" does find a single block ?

from a mathematical point of view, it's possible.
from a luck point of view , since pool 'A' has 50% chance of finding every block.

the more scary scenario is, a new miner 'C' with only 1% of the network hash leaving A and B with 49.5% each.
from a luck point of view , pool C may hit 100 blocks in a row ! which then would be very unfair for A and B, so how does the blockchain go about this ?

[Steamtyme]

"Blockchain" doesn't care about fair. The system doesn't really care about anything except when a submitted hash is the right difficulty to solve the block.

Assuming all things being equal with power; everyone in that instant has the same chance of solving the block.

The time really doesn't mean anything except that mathematically given a difficulty and your hash power in theory you should solve a block in x amount of time.

The 10 minutes of work isn't related to that one block it attributes to the total timeframes you solo mine attempting to solve 1 block. It could be 1 minute it could be 100 years. Damn luck.