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?
Discussion
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.