Topic: A solo Bitcoin miner just won block 718214 reward worth 6.25 $BTC - page 2. (Read 859 times)

And yet:


and


And here you still haven't really answered the question yet, have you?  Instead you offered some nonsense about how it would never happen. That doesn't tell me if you would consider it to be a pool or not.

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That really depends on what you mean by "attempts to solve a block".  As franky1 correctly points out, every unit if ASIC equipment is receiving a completely different block header than every other unit, so (regardless of whether you are in a pool or not) it could be said that there is no way possible to mine in any way other than "all by yourself". Alternatively, an important part of the mining process is the building of the block header (which generally does not use ANY ASIC power at all). So, it could be said that you are only mining "all by yourself" if you yourself (or rather, software that you have direct control over) are creating the block headers that will be fed to the ASICs.

In my opinion, it doesn't matter who creates the block headers. If the block rewards are split up amongst a group that are all contributing hash power, then it is "pooled". If the block rewards are not split up amongst a group that are all contributing hash power, but rather are kept by the person whose ASIC finds the solution, then it is "solo".

Apparently in franky1's opinion, it doesn't matter how the rewards are split up. If the block header was created by software that is under the control of someone else, then it is "pooled". If the block header was created by software that is under the miner's own control then it is "solo".


This is where franky1 and most of the rest of the world disagree.

From what I can tell from what franky1 has said so far, it has nothing to do with the reward.  franky1 seems to be saying that if the miner is depending on a piece of software that someone else is running to supply the "work", then it is a "pool" EVEN IF THE REWARD GOES ENTIRELY TO THE MINER WHOSE ASIC SOLVES THE BLOCK. franky1 also seems to be saying (but I haven't gotten a straight answer from him yet) that if the miner is running their own software to supply the "work" then they are "solo mining" EVEN IF THAT MINER IS IN A GROUP THAT ALL SHARES THE REWARD FROM ANY BLOCKS THAT ARE SOLVED BY ANY ASIC  IN THE GROUP.

Myself, and apparently yourself along with most others, would state that if the reward isn't being shared with others that are contributing "Work" then it is "solo" and if the reward is being shared then it is "pooled".

I'm utterly confused on which statements Danny and Franky disagree. Isn't solo mining when the miner attempts to solve a block all by themselves and whose reward will go entirely to them? Isn't pooled mining when miners are gathered to compute hashes and get rewarded accordingly to how much each contributed when one of those solves a block?

you have not asked me in multiple threads.. but anyway
if your making your own block and hashing it, you wont need a pool. because.. drum roll....  YOUR MAKING YOUR OWN BLOCKS
why would you make your own blocks putting in your own collated data and then hashing it yourself to then share 9X.XX% random others... when they done absolutely nothing to help you
no one would do that.

its not even a thing. no one does that. thats just a silly made up scenario

the only reason ck gives away 98% is because he is not doing the work of hashing

collating your own blocks and hashing them SOLO is what solo mining is
solo mining is a term that existed way before the reward had a value.. solo mining is a thing that existed way before reward sharing..

anything involving requiring a pool is not SOLO mining

there was no pool mining in 2009-2010. no one really cared about the reward value in 2009-2010. but they all knew what solo mining was.
creating and hashing your own block all by yourself independent of anyone else

again every pool has a pool manager that collates block data and gives unique allotments for each asic to churn through so they are all not doing the same work as each other.
ALL pools including ck

so if you think that this means that if asics have different work it makes them solo.. then all asics in your world are solo MINING
but they are not.

the only difference between ck and other pools is the reward. not the mining.. just the reward split

Most wouldn't.  But franky1 keeps saying that solo mining is when you create your own block headers and has nothing to do with how the reward is shared, so I assume he would disagree with you (however, he hasn't answered the question yet even though I've asked it of him in multiple threads now so we don't know for sure).


You've stretched the analogy too far.  In that particular analogy, the restaurant isn't meant to represent the pool. It's meant to represent the Bitcoin mining process. You'll notice that ALL the participants in the analogy work in the same restaurant, just like all the participants being discussed participate in the Bitcoin mining process.  I chose it specifically BECAUSE "tip pooling" is a concept that many people are already familiar with.
 

Well, the first thing to understand is that in bitcoin mining the miner that solves the block does NOT increase his chances of solving a block by participating in a pool.  In your analogy you indicate that the fishers "cannot penetrate the sea" individually, but that on the boat "one person catches the dolphin". This implies that he improved his ability to catch the dolphin because he was on the boat. That doesn't happen with bitcoin mining and mining pools.

Let's make your analogy more accurate...

There is a sea for fishing.  This sea has VERY big fish that don't bite hooks very often, but if they do bite then they are easy to pull in.  Catching a single fish will set a fisher up for decades of fishing costs.  So, hundreds of thousands of fishers go out and try to catch fish in this sea.  Every once in a while 1 fisher will catch a fish and be VERY happy. The money he will get for this fish will take care of his family for a VERY long time. Meanwhile, the other hundreds of thousands of other fishers will come home empty-handed again, and again, and again for their entire lifetime. You can fish from the shore, or you can fish from a boat that you own, or you can fish from someone else's boat.  It doesn't matter, your chances of a fish biting one of your hooks are the same.  You can, however, drop as many hooks into the water as you can afford to buy and maintain.

Eventually, someone with a very big boat comes along.  This person states that anyone can fish from his boat. Everyone understands that fishing from his boat won't make them any more likely to catch a fish, so why should they fish from HIS boat? The owner of the boat tells everyone that he is offering 2 important things for those that fish from his boat.  First, there is some effort involved in the fishing process and he is willing to assist in that effort.  He personally will monitor the hooks and bait them if they no longer have bait on them, he'll also personally reel in the fish if they bite, The fishers just have to provide and maintain the functionality of all the fishing equipment themselves.  ALSO, there is an important condition to be allowed to fish from his boat...  If you catch a fish, you do not get to keep it all to yourself. Instead, he'll remove a small portion of the fish for himself as a fee and then all the remainder of ALL of the fish caught from this boat will be split up amongst all of the fishers on the boat with each fisher receiving an amount of fish that is proportional to the number of hooks they put in the water. Now everyone sees a good reason to participate. The chances for each individual fisher haven't increased at all, but the chances that they'll go home with SOME fish that day are much better since it's a pretty good chance that SOMEONE on the boat will catch a fish. Instead of fishing for their entire life hoping to maybe catch 1 BIG fish, they can fish on this boat and take home a small amount of fish regularly. This would be analogous to traditional "Bitcoin Pool Mining" where the boat owner is the pool operator and the hooks are the hash power.

Now, someone else comes along with another big boat (perhaps not quite as big).  He also offers people the ability to fish from his boat.  Again, everyone understands that fishing from his boat won't make them any more likely to catch a fish, so why should they fish from HIS boat? The owner of this boat tells everyone that like the other boat, he will monitor the hooks and bait them if they no longer have bait on them, he'll also personally reel in the fish if they bite. The fishers still have to provide and maintain the functionality of all the fishing equipment themselves. HOWEVER, if your hook is the one that catches a fish, then you don't share that fish with the others on the boat.  He will remove a small portion of the fish as a fee for himself, and then just like when you were fishing all by yourself, you'll get to keep the rest of the fish for yourself. So, just like when you fish alone, if you're lucky and get a fish on YOUR hook, then you get a HUGE fish, but most end up fishing from this boat for their entire life and never going home with any fish. This would be analogous to CK Solo Pool where the boat owner is again the pool operator and the hooks are the hash power.

In the first scenario, you are "pooling" with the other fishers, sharing in the rewards.  In the second scenario you are "partnering" with the boat owner (paying him a small fee to handle some of the work for you), but you are not "pooling" with other fishers. You are still keeping all the rewards for yourself (minus the small fee you paid to the boat owner). It seems that franky1 would call the second scenario "pooled" because the boat owner is handling some of the work for multiple people.  Most people don't seem to consider that a "pool" since there is no increase in your chances of catching anything or with going home with anything.

Now there's another scenario that I keep asking franky1 about and he does answer:
A group of fishers see what's going on with the first boat and like the idea of getting a small amount of fish regularly, but they don't want to pay the fee, and they want to have control over their own bait. They form an organization. Anyone can join this organization, and you can fish from wherever and however you like. The only condition for being a member of this organization is that you agree that if you ever catch a fish you will split it up with everyone else that is a member of the organization. Each member will get a portion of the fish that is proportional to the number of hooks that they've put in the water.  Note that there is no longer someone else handling the baiting and reeling in for you, but you get to share in all the fish caught by everyone in the organization.  Is this a fishing "pool"?  According to franky1's explanation, it would seem that it is not since you have full control over your own equipment, but I think most people would say that the point of the "pooling" is to increase the frequency that you get some fish.

I wouldn't call it a solo mining.
The scenario of the waitress in the restaurant seems that the miner is paid based on his hash power (working ability) just as an individual waitress. Let's assume the most hardworking waitress is thrown out of the restaurant to serve customers out of nothing, he will not make such money. The waitress is successful because a restaurant(pool) exists.

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Let's see a scenario where there is a sea for fishing, and the target fish is dolphin. Individual fishers have small canoe that cannot penetrate the sea, then decided to join their canoes to build a big boat. Everyone of them climbs the boat for fishing and then one person catches the dolphin.
Is is correct to call him a solo fisher, because his hook caught the dolphin? Besides there would never be a scenario that two hooks from two fishers will catch the dolphin simultaneously.

CK Pool won another block recently.

Here, just to warm the thread a little bit (as if it were necessary), an article from Bitcoinist:


What’s CK Pool? And, Why Are There So Many Solo Miners Getting Block Rewards?

First they pour a little bit of water on the matter, interviewing CK and letting him explaining it's perfectly normal:




Then, they advance some doubt:


Journalism at his best!

I guess this explains it properly,,, and I guess the technical understanding of pool is different from a rational understanding since I would still see this scenario as tip pooling (I enter the pool, the pool manages my funds and payments, I only get rewarded for the work I do from the customers that pay, especially because the pool takes a commission my mind sees this strictly as a pool.

In other words,,, I would say, ckpool is a rewards pool, but you would be doing solo-mining if you join. So this makes the thread topic to me perfectly accurate.

and your quote you underlined
when they were assigned work

and then re read the page from the prospective of MINING. not rewarding

its pool MINING and solo MINING
not pool REWARDING and solo REWARDING

the main task of a pool is to manage the blocktemplate and the getwork messages.

i know end users that never mined before and dont know about bitcoin technically only think about and care about the reward. but the technical side is different

EG
most users think a car is 'vroom vroom speedy thing' but a car is actually a motorised vehicle for transport of driver and passengers

i know you might want to spend multiple posts being a social drama queen saying "franky wrong coz waitress deserves a tip'
but a waitress is actually a worker for a restaurant. her job is not "tipy tipy" its "clean and serve".

i know a certain group wants to play games, telling people to prune their node and not store blocks, and use altnets instead of bitcoin. and now i have been seeing some trying to break the mining protocol by trying to make mining seem like a useless task apart from getting paid by greedy people... sorry but mining is important and its about the mining of blocks. not the social drama of pretending its only about the tips.

here is a compromise of accurate description of terms

pool mining, 98% solo rewarding

That's not really an answer to the question, is it?


Is it though?

Here's a direct quote from YOUR SOURCE (bold and underline added by me for emphasis):

By the way, YOUR SOURCE also disproves your nonsense about the extranonce in the coinbase transaction being called an extra-extra-nonce.

solo mining was a thing even before the reward had a value.
solo mining was about confirming transactions by collating transaction data and getting a difficult hash of that collected data.

you might have a tardis in your avatar, but you do realise this little detail.. you cant actually go back in time and change history with a tardis avatar


heck. i dont need a tardis avatar to have a sci-fi, fantasy entertainment view of history. i can actually find a real life documentary better way to look at history. its called searching up quotes, and statements made in history

https://braiins.com/stratum-v1
^ hint its all about the 'getwork' and blocktemplate stuff, not the reward share

Happy to do so.


I'm not aware of a single pool that uses OP_RETURN in this way, and I can't think of any reason that they would. It would be inefficient to use OP_RETURN in this way when they can (and do) just use the input section of the transaction for extranonce.


Pool (vs. solo) was created specifically because of the reward. It was created as a way to reduce the time between rewards (and the amount of luck needed to get paid) by entering an agreement with others to all share the rewards that are received.

If a pool exists where the rewards are shared among participants based on the amount of hash power that they each contribute to the pool, BUT each participant gets to run their own software to choose for themselves which transactions are included in the block (and builds those blocks themselves), would you call that solo mining?  Most wouldn't.

no two asics ever do the same work on any pool or any pool.
because thats just inefficient

its about who manages what work each asic should do. who collates the blocks to create the work to be done

analogy:
if you own a cleaning company. and there is 5 different toilets under your management and contract. and you direct the cleaners what to clean..
you dont send all cleaners to clean one toilet. you as a cleaning manager(pool) send one cleaner to each toilet and scrub each toilet until they are all clean

a solo cleaner chooses her own toilets to clean and cleans as many as she can without a manager telling her anything about a toilet

ckpool (hints in the name) do direct asics on what work to do. the asics dont have their own bitcoin node to collate data. they need to be managed and told what work to do.


.. gotta laugh at danny
waitress scenario.. he talks about the reward. not the work
funny part is in all three waitress scenarios.. he talks about a waitress that has a restaurant boss..

scenario 1(old solo, concept accepted for over a decade) should be
a restaurant owner also cleans and serves the tables. he works for no one he is the solo owner and worker of the restaurant, he decides what work to do, no one tells him. he keeps all the tips

scenario 2(early pools, concept accepted for over a decade) should be
a restaurant has several workers. the restaurant owner sets the work for them and he takes the tips. and evenly splits the tips at the end of the month to whomever worked based on their share of work, even if they were not personally tipped

scenario 3(ck pool) should be
a restaurant has several workers. the restaurant owner sets the work for them, but they only get paid in tips, and if they work a table and get a tip they keep 98% of the tip.

..
solo MINING emphasises the work. and who manages the work. its not about the reward.
ck pool is a 98% reward POOL. not a solo managed local independent miner

Perhaps a better analogy would be tip pooling in a restaurant.

Scenario 1 (early days of solo mining):
Restaurant only accepts cash.  All waitstaff are tipped with cash.  Tips are paid directly from the customer to the person waiting on their table. Waitstaff keep their own tips and don't share them with any of the other waitstaff No pooling is happening. Lots of people are working, and sometimes they get a tip from a customer, but they don't share those tips with any of the others that are also working.

Scenario 2 (early days of mining pools):
Restaurant switches to exclusively accepting credit cards. Since restaurant handles payment processing, they end up with all the tips. Restaurant pools the tips together and then distributes them to the waitstaff on payday based on how much time each spent working during that pay period, regardless of how much tips any single employee did or didn't bring in. Now the entire restaurant is acting like a single pool. Everyone gets a share of the tips, even if the. customers that they themselves waited on never tipped.

Scenario 3 (ckpool):
Restaurant still exclusively accepting credit card, and still handling payment processing. Instead of distributing the tips based on how much time each employee spent working during that period, the restaurant keeps track of exactly which tips were paid for which employee.  On payday each employee receives ONLY the tips that were paid by customers whose tables they waited on. Restaurant keeps 2% of the tips from each employee to pay for handling the payment processing and distribution of funds. Like Scenario 1, you only get the tips that were paid by your customers, but like Scenario 2, all funds and payment processing are being managed by the restaurant.

Would you call Scenario 3 "tip pooling"?  One answer might be, no, because each employee only got the tips that were paid to them from the customers, and didn't share in the tips that any other employee received.  Another answer might be, yes, because the restaurant handled the payment processing and kept a bit of the tips for themselves.  This is where the confusion arises. Since ckpool is creating the blockheaders, and is keeping a piece of the earnings for themselves, some people are saying it is not "solo mining".  On the other hand, since the miner receives only the rewards from the blocks that they themselves find the solution for (and don't participate in any rewards from any blocks that anyone else finds the solution for), most people are calling this "solo mining".

As pooya87 has pointed out, the widely accepted definition of "solo mining" is someone that is not pooling the work. If the only way you get paid is when you yourself (or the equipment that you are running) solve a block, then it's generally understood that you are solo mining (regardless of who is creating the block headers that you are working on).  If you get paid for every share of work that you complete (regardless of whether you ever find a block solution yourself), then it's generally understood that you are not solo mining.

In ckpool, as a solo miner, your odds of solving a block, and of therefore getting paid at all, can be calculated based entirely on the ratio of the hash power that you personally have control over vs. the current target difficulty.  This is exactly the same as it is for a solo miner that is creating their own blockheaders.  If you participate in a pool where you are not solo mining, then the odds of a block being solved by the pool can be calculated based on the sum of all the hash power contributed by all the pool participants vs. the current target difficulty.  You therefore get paid much more frequently (albeit a much smaller reward since all the participants in the pool are sharing that reward based on the amount of hash power each contributed).

Just arrived here because of the title,,, and now I am reading the latest discussions saying this guy is not one guy but many people,,, but at the same time it is a solo miner?

So it is like saying, instead of 10 football teams trying to form a league, it is only one football team that also has 23 people on the squad.

A solo team.

I got this right, right?

I already did.

The definition of solo mining is someone who isn't sharing/pooling the "work". Whether or not they run their own node isn't changing that.
However, you can and should criticize that these miners are not independent since they don't run their own node and rely on a third party.

yes please correct me
show me how a ck pool is not a thing. and how users of CK are not pooled, but are all full node users collating transactions into blocks independently to create their own individual blockhash to send only to their own miner

if you think im wrong. explain it.
just explain it without the social drama or your 'confident opinion',
just show some stats or quotes from the service. explaining how users are their own independent block creators, without a pool manager doing the collating and blockheader organising of extra nonce/coinbase

funny how you wish to pretend im wrong by saying the crypto industry has has not yet set accepted concept widely

im sorry to inform you that solo mining* pretty much stopped for bitcoin in 2011-12 when GPU's miners really started to join pools. and then even more so when asics dominated the pools 2013+.

for 8 years now solo mining* has not been a thing on the bitcoin network.

yep solo mining* is a widely understood concept. and trying to pretend it isnt by you setting a new narrative in 2022 just to say "franky wrong" wont defeat the concept of solo mining that has been known about since 2009+
.. but do try to explain where i am actually wrong.
oh and dont confuse solo rewarding(economic buzzword) with solo mining(technical concept)*

*(widely accepted concept 2009-2012+)
solo mining(technical concept of transaction collating and block formation by the user to have their own unique hash to work on without a pool manager doing it for them)

so please show me where ck pool is not collating the transaction data and forming templates and adding in the coinbase to create the hash. and show me where the requirement is of users doing all the transaction data and coinbase creation stuff

It is mathematically expected for solo miners to occasionally find blocks. Like someone winning the Powerball, even if it is expected that someone will eventually win, people still like to talk about the Powerball winner.

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While I am sure the person using the ~$11k miner is happy they were able to get a ~$262k payout, it is -EV for a miner to mine if the expected number of blocks they will find every frequency that the difficulty increases is less than 1.

For example, if a miner expects to find 0.2 blocks every two weeks, and for the difficulty to increase by 10% every two weeks, if they mine via a pool, they will get approximately 0.2 blocks worth of revenue for the current two week period, and if they are solo mining, they will expect to not receive any revenue during that two week period. Since the difficulty is increasing, the solo miner would not expect to find a block until after the difficulty changes 7 times. After that, they would not expect to find another block for over a year.

Difficulty adjusts based on the amount of hashrate though. So, while these might have effected things temporarily, don't mistake this for permanently making it easier to mine a block. Its an incredible feat to be able to mine a solo block these days even with the issues you mentioned.

Depending on this persons situation this could either mean a nice retirement fund or a ways of investing more. Either way, I wouldn't mind waking up to that figure.

It's all relative. Since, while yeah winning the lottery is expected every few weeks, that's because of the sheer amount of people that enter, and the point your making is definitely valid i.e the amount of miners mining, this sort of thing is expected from time to time. However, its still a pretty nice return on the mining equipment you invested in, so while this isn't a miracle in statistical terms, this could be a life changing amount of money depending on who actually mined it.

As I am not a technical person about mining, could you please point those “facts wrong” and tell me the widely accepted concept of pools vs solo mining?
I just want to understand, no sarcasm.

franky1 speaks very confidently about his opinion regarding ckpool, solo-mining, pool-mining, nonces, and extranonces.  Please do not mistake confidence for knowledge or understanding.  He's got some facts wrong, and his concept of what it means to be solo mining vs pools mining is not the widely accepted and understood concept.