Replying to Avatar The Bullish â‚¿itcoiner

Gotcha! So what do you connect to if not OCEAN? And are there any pros/cons either way?
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Dikaios1517 9mo ago

If you are lottery mining using DATUM, you aren't connecting to anyone else, just your own stratum server hosted on your node via DATUM. Your node, of course, is connected to its peers on the Bitcoin network, and they gossip about what transactions are waiting to be added to blocks. That's how your node knows what transactions are waiting, even if they were submitted by someone half the world away.

Now, the downside of this, as with any lottery mining, is that you don't get anything if your Bitaxe never finds a block. I am not someone who can crunch the numbers on that likelihood, but I seem to remember someone saying that if all you have is a BitAxe, you will find a block on average once every 30,000 years at the current network difficulty, and you are just praying that you will get exceptionally lucky and have it happen in the portion of that 30,000 years that overlaps with your lifespan. 😂

Another way of saying it is, if you have 30,000 BitAxes, then your chances are pretty good that one of them will find a block each year. You might go a few years without any of them finding a block, while you find two or three blocks another year, but it will average out to about 1 block a year.

When you are connecting to OCEAN through DATUM, you are no longer lottery mining. The downside of this is, if you find a block, you have to share the rewards with all the other miners in the pool. But the upside is, you will get rewards for your small contribution to trying to find a block, even when it is someone else in the pool who found it. And because OCEAN has Lightning payouts, you can get paid directly to your Lightning wallet via a BOLT-12 invoice each and every time the pool finds a block, with no need to wait to build up enough sats owed to you for an on-chain UTXO.

So it's the difference between having a chance at a MASSIVE payout, that probably will never come, vs getting exceptionally small payouts virtually every day.

Either way, though, if you are a noderunner already, and you want to do some home-mining, I don't see any good reason not to use DATUM and either lottery mine on your own, or connect to OCEAN for pooled mining.

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The Bullish â‚¿itcoiner 9mo ago

Ah I see. I thought anything DATUM meant solo mining. But DATUM *alone* is solo mining, and DATUM + OCEAN is pool mining (similar to Braiins) except I get to create my own block templates. Is that right?

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Bitcoin Mechanic 9mo ago

Yes. It depends on how you use "solo"

Solo really means making your own blocks which is what DATUM does even if you're pooling.

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Like Ice Cream 9mo ago

What is the incentive for making my own block? Is I am earning small rewards daily, does it matter that I have the ability to make my own block?

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Bitcoin Mechanic 9mo ago

50% discount on fees on OCEAN. Sovereignty. Make Bitcoin decentralized again.

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Like Ice Cream 9mo ago

Ok that makes sense. I'm still learning.

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The Bullish â‚¿itcoiner 9mo ago

Good question.

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Dikaios1517 9mo ago

I am going to flip that question on its head a bit. What is the incentive NOT to make your own blocks? If you already run a node that has its own mempool, why would you want to be beholden to someone else dictating what your miner is hashing? What do you get out of that that you would not get if you created your own block templates?

In my mind, the only reason not to create your own block templates is if you aren't running a node. And then question is, why the heck aren't you running a node?

And then, yes. OCEAN gives a discount on the pool fee for those who use DATUM to create their own templates, and you pay zero pool fee whatsoever if you are lottery mining using DATUM. So the incentive is you get paid more in either scenario. Assuming you are fortunate enough to get paid at all in the lottery mining option.

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Like Ice Cream 9mo ago

It sounds like with DATUM there is no excuse to not make your own blocks now or rely on someone else to. And I agree, I feel mining and node running go hand-in-hand at this point. Obviously the lotto mining is a tough sell, that's where OCEAN comes in. It's all coming together. In the future it may be common for Nodes and miners to come packaged together. And then I'd love to see a way to plug in renewable energy tech to these devices. A bitaxe branded solar panel or hydro/wind turbine perhaps. 🤔 Maybe I'm thinking too far ahead

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Dikaios1517 9mo ago

You're not thinking too far ahead: https://www.solosatoshi.com/product/solarbit/

There are currently only three reasons not to generate block templates yourself:

1. You don't run your own node and don't want to start.

2. You don't like OCEAN for some reason, such as preferring FPPS payouts rather than only getting paid when the pool finds a block.

3. You don't want to run Knots as your Bitcoin node implementation.

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Like Ice Cream 9mo ago

Woah, that is cool. I had not seen this yet. Man things are moving fast.

Knots makes sense to me and I had never really considered that seeing as Bitcoin core was the more common option.. but the deeper I dig the more I understand why. Competition is good, having choices is important, values and incentives need to align as we all hunt for the truth.

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Dikaios1517 9mo ago

This is what makes things confusing, right?

"Solo" really only refers to who is making the block templates, while "lottery" refers to only the miner who found the block receiving the payouts.

These are also the two main services a pool CAN provide to you. The pool can provide you with block templates to hash, and it can provide you with more regular payouts than if you were mining without the pool.

Standard pools provide both of those services: Block templates to hash and regular payouts whenever anyone in the pool finds a block.

Lottery pools only provide the first of those services: Block templates to hash. They don't provide regular payouts. You only get paid if your miner finds a block.

Until OCEAN, those were the only two structures. No one had yet figured out a way for a pool to provide regular payouts whenever anyone in the pool found a block without also providing block templates for those within the pool to hash. So, solo miners were all, by default, lottery miners, because they had no pool they could connect to and still be able to create their own block templates.

This led to confusion with people equating solo mining with lottery mining, when it really only refers to creating your own block templates.

But now, with OCEAN, you actually CAN create your own block templates while being connected to a pool only for the sake of regular payouts. So you ARE solo mining when you use DATUM, regardless of whether you are connecting to OCEAN for block reward splits or lottery mining without any pool at all.