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Topic: How often does a solo miner solve a block - page 2. (Read 479 times)

jr. member
Activity: 33
Merit: 8
Does the number of inbound and outbound network connections to your blockchain play any role in who is awarded the block?  For example, if a solo miner solves a block and then say 1 second later a large pool solves the same block before all the nodes record the block in the blockchain?  Who wins?
jr. member
Activity: 50
Merit: 1
Solo mining is almost impossible because most miners are professional and industrial managed. A normal person, even if he has huge coding skills, will only find a block very luckily, because hashrate is relevant for finding a block. Normal devices have not enough power for a considerably high hashrate to find a block.
legendary
Activity: 4522
Merit: 3426
I know its a long shot, but I was curious how often a solo miner solves a block?  Probably not a topic that would freely come up by the person solving it for anonymous purposes.

It depends on what you mean by a "solo" miner. Strictly speaking a solo miner is person or company that hasn't joined a pool.

For example, Bitfury is a solo miner. They have been doing large-scale mining since the beginning. They don't advertise in the blocks that they find, but I'm sure that they find a significant fraction.

In fact, the miners that find about 30% of the blocks are unknown. I'm sure that there are many solo miners in that group, though they are probably all large-scale operations.

Anyway the math is simple. During the current difficulty period, one S19 at 110 TH/s will find a block on average once every 2.06x1013 * 232 / 110x1012 = 8.04x108 seconds = 25 years. Note that this is the same whether you mine solo or in a pool. If you want to average 1 block a year, you will need 25 S19s.
legendary
Activity: 3472
Merit: 10611
Having said that, you have the same odds as anyone else, you could solve a block on the first try, or get 10 in a row, or never.
You could but the odds are not the same at all.
Think of it as a lottery, if you buy one ticket you only have 1 chance and your odds are low. If you buy 10, 10000, ... then you increase your odds.
Considering the fact that mining is not a competition for find only one block, but it is a competition to find every block every day of every month in every year the long duration makes it so that the odds of finding the block is proportional to the amount of hashrate you have compared to total hashrate.
copper member
Activity: 2156
Merit: 983
Part of AOBT - English Translator to Indonesia
it depends on you luck and your hashrate  Grin

if you have mining farm with Exahash Scale could be mine 1 or two in single day  Grin
legendary
Activity: 3822
Merit: 2703
Evil beware: We have waffles!
As the OP said, it's all random luck.
Remember, no matter what the size of your farm, only 1 machine in the world finds a block. We can only hope that it is one of ours.

I've been on KanoPool since late 2014 and to-date have found 10 blocks for the pool. The last one (block #608428) was found on 2019‑12‑16 by one of my A841's in a 60THs cluster, one before that (#570025) found on 2019‑04‑03 by a M10 and another (#566019) found on 2019‑03‑07 by a 8-9THs R4. That same R4 also found a block (#543875) on 2018‑10‑01.

Point is that individual miners CAN and DO find blocks. Yes I would have LOVED to have hit those running solo but knowing how the Fates can work I prefer to think it would not have happened...
legendary
Activity: 4424
Merit: 4794

if you mean farmed blocks. where a pool is owned fully by one owner and he has warehouses of asics.. well that can happen


So what have you heard, how many of these people are out there?

bitmain.. aka antpool. is a big mining farm. they actually manufacture asics and run them in their warehouses.

things like slushpool are just random people linked to a syndicate(pool) so not a farm
jr. member
Activity: 33
Merit: 8

if you mean farmed blocks. where a pool is owned fully by one owner and he has warehouses of asics.. well that can happen


So what have you heard, how many of these people are out there?
legendary
Activity: 3038
Merit: 2162
No serious person would solo mine Bitcoin, it's a waste of electricity, you would most likely die before you see even 1 block. It's simply uneconomical to waste electricity if you could instead join a pool and make steady profit if you have decent hardware. And outdated hardware like those USB miners are not going to be profitable ever, the electricity needed to find 1 block would cost you more than the block reward.

You'll have better chances going to some crypto casino, as they offer 1% house edge or even less, that's much better odds than wasting energy on solo mining Bitcoin or buying lottery tickets. 
legendary
Activity: 4424
Merit: 4794
no such thing as solo mining.. that disapeared in like 2014 with the invention of asics

if you mean farmed blocks. where a pool is owned fully by one owner and he has warehouses of asics.. well that can happen

but a home user with USB sticks in his pc.. or a couple asics in their basement working alone. forget it
jr. member
Activity: 33
Merit: 8
I know its a long shot, but I was curious how often a solo miner solves a block?  Probably not a topic that would freely come up by the person solving it for anonymous purposes.

I was just doing some quick math and the odds are way up there-

For example, assume there are 170,000,000 TH/s out there right now.  If you had 5 newpac usb sticks overclocked to 100GH/s, that would be .5 TH/s.  Take the 170m and divide by the .5 and that is 340,000,000 blocks before you theoretically would ever solve one.   Divide that by 144 per day and we are talking 2.3 million days or ~6500 years.

Having said that, you have the same odds as anyone else, you could solve a block on the first try, or get 10 in a row, or never.

It is said that the large pools such as slushpool represent about 15% of all bitcoins mined per pool.  But how often do you think a solo miner solves a block on their own?  Any good stories or discussions on the topic?
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