[ANN] Ghosthour – Public Bitcoin Solo Mining Pool | 0% below 50 TH/s

What Ghosthour is

Ghosthour is a small independent public Bitcoin solo mining pool operated in Germany.

The pool is part of my self-hosted Bitcoin infrastructure and runs against my own Bitcoin Core full node.

Ghosthour is not a large commercial mining operation. It started as a personal Bitcoin and self-hosting project and is now publicly available for other miners who would like to use it.

At the moment, most of the hashrate comes from my own small miners. I am opening the pool to the community and would especially like to see other home miners, Bitaxe users and similar small miners join and test it.

Quick configuration

Pool:

Code:

pool.ghosthour.de:3333

Network: Bitcoin Mainnet
Protocol: Stratum V1
Connectivity: IPv4 + IPv6
Registration: None

If your miner requires the protocol prefix:

Code:

stratum+tcp://pool.ghosthour.de:3333

If your miner uses separate Host and Port fields:

Code:

Host: pool.ghosthour.de
Port: 3333

Use your Bitcoin address as the mining username.

A worker name can be appended if your miner supports it:

Code:

YOUR_BITCOIN_ADDRESS.workername

Password can normally be anything, for example:

Code:

Pool fee

Ghosthour currently uses a dynamic fee policy.

For total pool hashrate below 50 TH/s:

0% pool fee

The miner receives 100% of the configured mining reward output.

If the pool grows beyond 50 TH/s, the configured fee policy may change.

Any relevant fee changes will be announced publicly before they are intentionally introduced.

There are no regular proportional payouts. This is solo mining.

Solo mining means solo mining

Ghosthour does not increase your mathematical probability of an individual hash finding a valid Bitcoin block.

Mining through Ghosthour is still extremely high variance.

You may mine for a very long time without finding a block.

There are no guaranteed earnings, no expected regular payouts and absolutely no promise that you will ever find a block.

A NerdMiner, Bitaxe or other small miner can theoretically find a valid Bitcoin block, but the probability is extremely small.

Ghosthour is for people who understand and accept those odds.

Who is Ghosthour intended for?

Anyone can connect, but the project is particularly aimed at people running their own mining hardware at home:

- Bitaxe and similar open-source miners
- NerdMiner and very low-hashrate devices
- Older ASIC hardware
- Home miners
- Hobby miners
- Anyone who simply prefers solo mining

You do not need an account with Ghosthour.

Point your miner at the Stratum endpoint, use your Bitcoin address as the username and mine.

Infrastructure

Ghosthour is self-hosted infrastructure rather than a rented pool frontend.

The project currently includes:

- Bitcoin Core full node
- Public Bitcoin solo mining pool
- Public Bitcoin explorer
- Lightning routing node
- IPv4 + IPv6 connectivity
- Public Ghosthour website

The services are operated under the Ghosthour name.

Website:
https://ghosthour.de

Bitcoin Explorer:
https://explorer.ghosthour.de

Solo Mining Pool:
pool.ghosthour.de:3333

Current status

Ghosthour is a new and very small pool.

At the time of writing:

- The pool is online
- Most/current hashrate is generated by my own miners
- Only a small number of miners are connected
- Ghosthour has not found a Bitcoin block
- The infrastructure is still being developed and improved

I prefer being transparent about that instead of pretending Ghosthour is an established large mining pool.

The goal is to build a reliable small public solo pool and see whether a community of independent miners develops around it.

IPv4 + IPv6

Ghosthour originally operated its public mining endpoint via IPv6 only.

The infrastructure has since been upgraded to full Dual Stack.

The same hostname can now be used by miners with either IPv4 or IPv6 connectivity:

Code:

pool.ghosthour.de:3333

There is no separate IPv4 or IPv6 pool address required.

Transparency

Ghosthour is operated by one person.

It is not presented as a company, large mining operation or established mining pool.

There is currently no independent audit of the pool infrastructure.

The pool is provided on a best-effort basis.

No uptime guarantee is made.

No mining income is guaranteed.

No block discovery is guaranteed.

The current pool hashrate is small and currently consists primarily of my own mining hardware.

If external/community miners join, I intend to make that development visible rather than disguising operator hashrate as community adoption.

Security

Ghosthour will never ask you for:

- Your wallet seed phrase
- Your private keys
- A Bitcoin deposit in order to mine
- Remote access to your wallet
- Payment to unlock mining rewards

You only need a Bitcoin payout address to use the pool.

Never give a pool operator your private keys or seed phrase.

Why am I doing this?

Mostly because I enjoy building and operating Bitcoin infrastructure.

Ghosthour started with my own Bitcoin full node and gradually grew into a larger self-hosted project including Lightning, a Bitcoin explorer and a public solo mining pool.

The pool currently works and my own miners are using it.

The next interesting step is finding out whether people outside my own network are interested in using it too.

I am not expecting Ghosthour to compete with the large established pools.

I would rather build a small, transparent and technically interesting service for people who enjoy running Bitcoin hardware themselves.

Feedback and testing welcome

Since Ghosthour is still small, technical feedback is very welcome.

If you try the pool with a Bitaxe, NerdMiner, older ASIC or other hardware, I would be interested in:

- Miner model
- Approximate hashrate
- IPv4 or IPv6
- Connection stability
- Any Stratum errors
- Anything that behaves differently than expected

Critical feedback is welcome too.

If something is wrong, I would rather know about it and fix it.

Pool connection

Code:

stratum+tcp://pool.ghosthour.de:3333

Username:

Code:

YOUR_BITCOIN_ADDRESS.workername

Password:

Code:

Official Ghosthour addresses

Website:
https://ghosthour.de

Explorer:
https://explorer.ghosthour.de

Solo Pool:
pool.ghosthour.de:3333

Lightning Address:
mining@ghosthour.de

Thread updates

I will use this thread for important Ghosthour pool updates, including:

- Configuration changes
- Fee-policy changes
- Major infrastructure changes
- Incidents
- New features
- Community hashrate milestones
- And, if we ever get extremely lucky, a found Bitcoin block.

Questions, criticism and independent testing are welcome.

-- nohup
Ghosthour