Topic: I'm torn between Solo mining and Pool Mining (Read 4577 times)

Update, fixed the rpc error I was getting and have done some solo mining for fun, but on I0coin rather than BTC because that would have been a waste of effort with a few Ghash.  First day reasonable results on two boxes, second day sucked and that was with a lower difficulty.  However, it's not a big diversion of resources given it's only $10/day at the moment.

Free as in large electric bills wagered against potentially no return.

I had mined 65 Bitcoin on BTCGuild when I found my second block using my 1.3 Gh/S of miners. I don't think I would do anything other than pooled mining unless I was statistically-likely to find a block every 5 days or less. The variance would be extremely frustrating.

You should go solo just for the thrill. It's like a free casino.

I think everyone thinks it’s a good idea until they spend week after week checking their client with no indication of progress.  That’s what happened to me.  Then I decided that I had to keep going until I found a block so that all my time would not have been wasted.

I got lucky though when I finally found a block but didn’t have time to switch the miners over to pool mining right away.. Then I found a second block the next day. 

I don’t mind paying 2% (1% donation + 1% stale) to avoid all the stress.

I was a little freaked out on FRS energy drink Not like...



...though. But still, my point is solo mining is typically a 1-4% bonus depending on circumstances.  Totally not worth it.  But if people have low GH/s totals and they're not planning to sell any BTC for a long, long time until the price increases, it kinda works.  If they don't find a block for a month, so what?  They don't really need the BTC immediately.  Of course they have electric bills to pay but why sell off BTC at a low price to pay it when you can basically loan yourself the money to pay the bill now to make more later if the BTC price goes up.

And also, this has been known to greatly affect solo mining:

Is it just me, or has there been a significant rise of interest in solo mining on this board? Seems like there has, and I wonder if this is related to the recent plunge in bitcoin price and mining profitability. I'm imagining miners going through something like the following thought process: "Man, I'm making pretty close to nuthin mining in this pool...I know, if I solo mine I'll get to keep all dem coins fer merself...50 coins per block, sweet...maybe with a little luck I can turn this gig into that easy profit scheme I dreamed of." Basically, I'm wondering if we are seeing miners explore alternatives before they finally face having to shut down their rigs. 

Mathematically and statistically, if you mine for a pool, you lose money 3 ways compared to solo.

First is the fee they charge and there are some no-fee pools.  If the fee is 2% then for every 50 coin block you would have found solo, you'd get 49 BTC from a pool.  BTCGuild has no fee options though so it's avoidable.

Second, you also lose the stale share amount caused by the delay from a pool server handing out processing assignments to people.  Whenever one person solves a block, whatever everyone else is concurrently working on is invalid and they don't get paid for it.  This effect is extremely variable based on your speed but in the neighborhood of 0.5% for most people if I remember correctly. So your 50 to 49 BTC block from earlier is now about 48.75.

Thirdly, almost no pools give transaction fees to their members (which better change within a year!!!!) so you'd also get like 50 and change for finding a block solo.  It's not much really but you never know.  I don't think there's been a 51 BTC block ever.  The most recent block with a high volume of transactions was 50 + 0.064 total transaction fees for 151 transactions.  So solo you'd have gotten 50.064 for solving that block.  So maybe your 48.75 pool mining block is now a 48.74 block on average.  If you have a 21GH/s system, you're potentially losing 1.26 BTC every 4 days if you're mining in a pool.  If you have 1 GH/s solo mining, you're missing out on 1.26 BTC every 3 months so it's not a huge deal.  The math explaining that is below.
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So, if you want to know your exact situation and make a decision for yourself (and I can't believe nobody posted this yet) just go here:

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ which actually appears to be down right now but anyway...

look at the graph for total processing power at this time of the entire network.  I'll pretend it's 12,000 GH/s since it's down right now so if you're mining at 3 GH/s then you mathematically have a 3 in 12,000 or 1 in 4000 chance of finding a block every 10 minutes.  So with approximately 144 ten minutes intervals per day, that's a 1 in 27.7 chance per day that you'll be the one to solve one of the given blocks.  So you can expect to find about 1 per month solo mining at 3 GH/s.  Now if you're at 1 GH/s, that's 1 every 3 months approximately and if you had 21GH/s then you'd find a block about once every 4 days.

If you have 3GH/s and want to get paid more than once per month, join a pool.  If you have 21GH/s and are fine with an average of a payment every 4 days, go for it.  Because of the numbers involved, you could have 21GH/s and be high and dry for 2 weeks or suddenly solve 1 per day just based on random chance (aka luck I guess).


Seems like really simple decision, right?  WRONG! lol.  You probably should stop reading right now.  Seriously You are going to regret reading further  Just pretend it's that simple and walk away lol.  Here's the sparknotes version:  If you start mining and predict that the current total GH/s of the system results in about 1 block every month for you and then the total GH/s of the entire system goes up before 1 month's time and before you've found a block, you're more screwed than you might think.
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Okay...remember that the total processing power of the entire network is extremely variable and your processing speed is not.  That causes some problems with the above calculations.  If Bob started solo mining because the total network was at 10,000 GH/s and suddenly the network grows to 30,000 GH/s and Bob hasn't found a block prior to the change, everything gets screwed up.  Bitcoin miners are only concerned with results and results can only be measured after they happen since bitcoin mining is (pretty) perfectly random.  So looking back at the statistics of the results caused by that increase mid-term is that all Bob's solo mining he just did without finding a block yet gives him a retroactive disadvantage.  That's because Bob's 1 in xxx shot at finding a block failed to produce results prior to the probability change so the start time and conditions are irrelevant because past events don't influence future results.

So as soon as it's at 30,000 GH/s all of a sudden, it's exactly the same odds for "total end results from then on when later looking back at the results" probability for the entire operation at that present time as it would be if Bob had started soloing versus a 30,000 GH/s total speed the entire time.  But like I said, that's purely from a results after the fact standpoint which you have to look at it from because of the simple fact that mining at a better probability to find a block doesn't benefit you unless you actually find a block.

If that made your head hurt, the short version of that is if you solo mine vs a total mining speed of the system of 10,000 and are estimated to find a block every month then it shoots up to 30,000 after 3 weeks and stays there for the entire year but you didn't find a block before it changed, your statistics at the end of the year would be the same results that probability-wise should have happened, had you mined at 30,000 the entire time.  Quite simply, if you're attempting to do something at really likely odds and don't accomplish it before the odds go up, those easy odds counted for nothing and yes, that carries over and reflects in your BTC balance if you solo mine.

So because of ALLLLLLL that, the only way to make a 100% accurate decision that benefits you the most is to predict the future as far as the total speed of the network for a period of time of a duration equal to the results of a current probability calculation of how often you'll find a block.  If you think you can predict future total mining volume and it's going to increase before you find a block, don't solo mine.  If you think you can predict it and mining is going down, I don't have an answer because the logic behind that makes my head hurt.  It seems like you would logically "win" and "lose" at the same time.

Now that your mind is sufficiently blown, attempt to make a decision

this is a popular topic, with many posts to read.

When I got to 16G i went completely solo thinking I could get a block a week and bla, bla, bla....  I lasted about 8 hours and went to ars.  now I get about 9btc a day solid. I get paid for every share I submit.

I have since found 3 blocks with 4732612 shares at ars. in 2 days I will have about 150btc's at ars.

I have seen large pools go over 10-13 million shares without finding a block.  In that case I would only be halfway there after 12 days of mining....  I am so glad I am in a pool.

Depends on your appetite for pain - if you are happy with the possibility you will never find a block, go solo.  Reading around the forum you might find the outside limit is probably at the three month mark, but that's just my impression of what I've seen other people suggest.

For contrast, I did some I0Coin mining for fun last week when the difficulty was around 400 and I was contributing about 1/4 of the hash power - made for a lot of blocks, but I pushed it through a pool because I was having rpc resolution issues that I haven't bothered to sort out yet.

So what would you recommend as a good rule to decide if it is worth going solo? 1 block per day, week, month? Some of you recommended ~20GH, which falls in the week category...

Unless you have 20g hs i wouldnt bother myself

If you have to use some percentage of the the profits to cover costs (like any real business at scale) pool mining is the way to go.

Unless you have 20-25 GH/sec, don't bother solo mining.  Unless the difficulty drops pretty significantly, you stand a good chance of never finding a block solo mining with 3 GH.

even with that kind of speed, at this point you risk not finding a coin while solo mining until after the point at which blocks change to only giving 25 BTC instead of 50.  You should leave that crappy pool and mine at a better one with better features and better security though.  They need to be stopped before they cross over 50% of all processing or they'll probably start mining forged coins and verifying them themselves.  BTCGuild is pretty awesome and FREE (and the 2.5% fee features are nice too)

^^ This.  The work assignment your miners completed was from the pool’s starting point.  I think of mining like a giant game of battleship.  Unlike battleship you are assigned a random starting point and you have to proceed across the grid square by square in order.  Each other Bitcoin client and pool has a different starting point on the grid.  Pools assign blocks of work to their members based on their starting point.  It is nearly impossible that you would receive the same work assignment from a pool and a solo client so you would not have solved those same blocks while solo mining.

This too.  If you do not have enough capacity to hit a block in each difficulty you could end up chasing your tail forever.  The expected return of pool mining in a 0% fee pool is about the same (excluding stale shares) as your solo expected return except you will be able to able to participate in block awards in each difficulty.

I would not solo mine unless you have enough gh to statisically solve a block in a 2 week period currently 6.5 gh for this difficulty probably closer to 6 next change

I found my first block the other day through btcguild. It took me over two months to find it and I'm currently running at 2.6 gigahash.

So it is a month later now and I've found 5 blocks in total for deepbit... THATS 2 MORE BLOCKS IN ONE MONTH!