Should more of us switch to solo-mining instead of pool-mining?

[Gyrsur]

I do ASIC (FPGA since 2012) mining since 1.5 month on a pool and found 4 blocks according to the stats of the pool. I like the steady income which you get with a pool but with the pool I just made the half of what I could made solo with that luck.

Should we miners risk more and mine solo and support also more the decentralized character of Bitcoin? Are pools really necessary for mining if you have not only BlockErupters and BFL Singles as your mining equipment?

An example is also for me the old DeepBit pool. It has a very low hashrate for a pool but still solve blocks (e.g. 11/28):

https://deepbit.net/stats/1385679600

Thanks for your thoughts!

[ar9]

I think it makes more sense to join the smaller pools, like deepbit, then it does to mine solo.

especially if your hashrate isn't in the 5+th/s range.

[Gyrsur]

technical I found this to setup solo-mining:

http://millybitcoin.com/how-do-i-set-up-solo-bitcoin-mining/ (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=158105.0)

[Biomech]

I'd like to chime in on this with some unfounded speculation! (LOL)

Seriously, I've been thinking about this for a while. While I think solo mining has a great deal of merit, I think it's also kinda complicated. The machines don't do it well by themselves, so to be effective, especially if you are purchasing a lot of hashpower, you pretty much have to set up a pool. It can be totally private, of course, but it's still part of the hardware/software chain.

That being said, I can see some pretty serious advantages to that, and to solo mining.

The obvious, you get all the coins. The slightly less obvious, you get all the transaction fees in any block you solve.

The one I'm seriously looking at, though, hasn't been discussed much that I've seen. (granted, my life is a catastrophe and I don't have a lot of time to spend here. Not even as much as I do.) That's merge mining. If you are solo mining with a serious ASIC rig through your own pool, you should be able to merge mine all SHA256 based coins simultaneously at minimal additional cost. Mainly your time in setting it up, if I understand it correctly. Granted, they are extremely volatile even by comparison to BTC, but it could very well cover all of your electricity costs for a rather long time. Plus it sounds fun.

Where my problem lies is I have no idea how to set up a bitcoin pool, or to set up merged mining. I haven't found any sort of step by step tutorial on that, either. I probably just missed it. If any of y'all reading this know of such resources, this would be a rather good thread for it.

[gmaxwell]

you should be able to merge mine all SHA256 based coins simultaneously at minimal additional cost.

No, you can only merge-mine coins which are designed to be merged mineable. Not all of them are.

You can also do this if you run P2Pool, FWIW— P2Pool pools your Bitcoin mining (but in a secure decentralized way) but also gives you the freedom to merge mine anything that can be merged mined. (You're a solo miner on the merged mined things).

[Biomech]

you should be able to merge mine all SHA256 based coins simultaneously at minimal additional cost.

No, you can only merge-mine coins which are designed to be merged mineable. Not all of them are.

You can also do this if you run P2Pool, FWIW— P2Pool pools your Bitcoin mining (but in a secure decentralized way) but also gives you the freedom to merge mine anything that can be merged mined. (You're a solo miner on the merged mined things).

Thanks. That filled in one gap in my knowledge. I don't know that this is universal, but I have heard that Knc miners at least have difficulty with P2Pool. Is this a general thing with ASICS, or just a problem with Knc?

And that still leaves that I have no idea how to set up a non p2pool pool for private use. Let alone the frontend for a public pool Ah well, more research. Hasn't killed me yet.

EDIT: Is there a list of merge mineable coins out there?

[xyzzy099]

I think it's also kinda complicated. The machines don't do it well by themselves, so to be effective, especially if you are purchasing a lot of hashpower, you pretty much have to set up a pool.

Solo mining would be a lot simpler and more viable if someone capable could optimize GBT a little better so that it's viable to use on networked miners built on embedded platforms like the KnC miners.

You can solo mine without a pool easily using BFGMiner's capability to talk GBT straight to bitcoind/bitcoin-qt, but it is too heavy-weight to run on a Raspberry Pi or a Beagle Bone Black as it is now.

If you're using USB-based ASIC miners, like BFL, you can use BFGMiner right now to solo mine without a pool.  If the miner has to run on something less powerful than a traditional PC though, odds are that it won't have the horsepower to handle GBT mining as it exists now.