Group Solo Mining Is it the Future?

Imagine if a small group of people decided to solo mine together instead of joining a huge pool. Would splitting profits among 6 to 10 folks be better than a pool with thousands? Anyone tried this approach before? Am I missing something or do I sound dumb? I'm not an English native, so be nice.

People have done this before. I used to be involved in one, but not sure how the current laws affect it. I'm in the USA and if I gather ten miners, the legal stuff gets complicated because of the block value. Willie, are you still in the game?

Yeah, I just checked, they have around 90 TH/s and about 110 members. Not sure if they’ve hit a block yet. I was thinking along those lines but aiming for a higher hashrate per miner. I'm capable of putting out 160-200 TH/s myself. So good to know it's been done.

There used to be this software called P2Pool. It let people mine in a peer-to-peer system, but it faded out when bigger pools took over. It didn't scale well for low difficulties. You’d mine a block every 30 seconds with easier difficulty than the mainnet.

If you hit up viabtc.com and solo mine BCH with around 200 TH/s, you could find a block in about 100 days. You'd earn BCH, but you can convert that to BTC on the site. A BCH block’s worth around 900 to 960 bucks. I'm pointing 18 TH/s there, which means a block every 3 years or so. But fingers crossed for quicker results.

Gonna look into this more. Sounds promising. Appreciate the info!

What a brilliant thought! I never even considered this, but it’s totally doable. Just feels like it should be with trusted folks, like friends. But what if there are issues? How do you decide where the mined BTC goes? Whose address do you send it to?

Yep, totally agree. Trust is key. Maybe a multi-signature BTC address could work? That way, no one can move the BTC without getting everyone else's sign-off. Gotta think about safety first. Any better ways to do this?

Yes! We do these team solo mining events at upendo.xyz. You can direct your hashrate there or buy extra hashrate to boost your chances of hitting a block. We get our hashrate from rigly.io.

I can back Upendo I'm a co-founder. Inspired by Willi’s block parties, wanted a place for people to solo mine together easily. You can either buy hashrate or use your own equipment. It’s a fun way to mine together.

The p2pool model is different from what OP suggests. A private P2Pool setup could be safer than these centralized solo mining groups. With P2Pool, you know the coordinator can't steal your coins if you find a block, but setting it up requires some tech skills, which is why it kinda died off.

Limited support for some ASICs is part of the problem too. However, P2Pool for Monero is still going strong with about 5% of the global hashrate.

Yeah, true. The lack of compatibility with a lot of gear hurt P2Pool. The PPS payment method really knocked out a ton of non-PPS pools. P2Pool went down quicker because it wasn’t user-friendly.

Good point. P2Pool for Bitcoin still utilizes PPS while Monero switched to PPLNS recently. I checked out that block mined with P2Pool software. Not sure about the site on its coinbase tag, but it seems they might have changed it.

It’s actually been modified and is maintained by a member here. He has two nodes, one in the U.S. and one in Russia. The block I mentioned earlier came from the Russian node. The website should be accessible, but the SSL cert is broken.

We’ve got around 250 TH/s from 200 miners. Our pool had a split a while back, and larger miners went off to form their own group. You can check out the stats for Willi’s pool if you want.

Not sure how you’re gonna split the rewards, but splitting 400-500k among 200 people doesn’t sound appealing. I think keeping groups smaller, like under 10, would spark more interest in actually getting rich instead of just a paycheck.

Seriously, would 400k-500k even make you rich? This pool's all about letting small miners team up to boost their chances of finding a block together. Willi's Pool has a straightforward rule: whoever finds the block gets 10% of the reward, and the rest goes to those who maintained a certain hashrate over the week.

In my country, a regular job over 40 years nets around 500k, so that could be life-changing for someone educated. A couple thousand bucks isn’t a big deal, but it’s still a nice profit.

Where are you from, Cape Verde? That amount could really help a family stabilize, maybe even secure a home. For me, it's more about the learning experience and having fun.