I've been renting hash power and trying to send to my solo pool but it doesnt work because the difficulty is too low. Is there anyway to increase that or is it not worth it?
A. Renting hash to point at your node is a bad idea. Throwing $$ at your private node is insane... Do you have redundant infra and connections to the 'net to broadcast Block Found info to the multiple sites around the world that well run pools use? Odds are - no. I would NEVER risk losing a block in an orphan race against better connected pools like that...
B. Most hash rentals require an initial connection minimum diff of 1,000,000 to run due to the size of the 'mega-miner' they are providing.
This is a misconception propagated (no pun intended
) by those that dont want more solo miners involved or more pools in the mix and scare them off with incorrect information.
If you are solo mining simply increase your connection count, be on ethernet, and have at least 10mbps upload. Bitcoin was designed to run on systems in 2008 and the block size has roughly doubled since then, with bandwidth and processing 10x.
Mean propagation times have come down from 6+ seconds to nearly a second now...dont take my word for it here is some research we have helped out with:
https://www.dsn.kastel.kit.edu/bitcoin/For most "average" nodes your block will be seen in 1 second especially other bigger miners which are even more well connected. You are probably less than two-three peers away from all major pools.
Thats a 1/600 orphan chance or a tenth of one percent.
Real orphan rates currently are closer to 1/2000 blocks or so.
Statistically its nothing you have to worry about, and the network is designed for exactly that...people with low end hardware to be able to submit a block and have it accepted at nearly the same rate as everyone else, even pools with server grade machines.
The bigger threat is whether the cabal of Bitmain and foundry pools are doing something more sinister, like intentionally withholding blocks from their own nodes in case they find another block (essentially crippling smaller pools and solo miners) and forcing orphans
Research still ongoing on that one...