this is probably a very stupid question but i have mined on software like nicehash ect, they paid out as you were mining. with solo mining do you only get paid if you find a block ?
When you are mining solo, you are the miner. You get the entire block reward when you find a block.
When you mine in a pool, the pool is the actual miner and the members are just providing hashes. In general, each member is paid according to the payout system which can vary from a fixed rate to a share of the block reward based on their hash rate whenever the mining pool finds a block.
You will earn about the same amount of money when solo mining or mining in a pool, however:
- The pool generally takes a small percentage of your revenue, so you will earn slightly less in a pool.
- You will be paid much more often when mining in a pool compared to solo mining. How often you get paid when solo mining depends on your hash rate, since you only get paid when you find a block. You can estimate how often you find a block by dividing the total network hash rate by your hash rate.
For example, let's assume that you are running 10 Bitmain s21+ miners for a total hash rate of 2160 TH/s. The network hash rate right now is about 800,000,000 TH/s, so you would expect to find a block once every 800,000,000 / 2160 = 370,000 blocks on average, or once every 7 years.
