Jan 3rd Mining Block Party ~ Place your bid and mine with me \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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Jan 3rd Mining Block Party ~ Place your bid and mine with me

1610 sats \ 300k boost \ 56 comments \ @evanbaer 1 Jan bitcoin

I'm coordinating a group solo mining party - aka block party - for Genesis Block day.

Bid on hashrate (starting at 100 sats)
We combine our hashrate on Friday, Jan 3rd ⛏️
We mine with 1,000+ TH/s to try and mine a block

The Goal

We mine a block, earn 3.125 bitcoin + tx fees, and split the reward 🎉

The Incentive

I've always wanted to mine a block, and so I'm adding a special twist:

After each auction, I'll add bonus hashrate to improve the mining odds.

If there is a new bidder? I'll add bonus hashrate
If the winning bid is higher than the previous auction? I'll add bonus hashrate
If the mood strikes me? I'll add bonus hashrate

You can see the bonus hashrate on the auction bid calculator.

Details

https://upendo.rigly.io

Hashrate and auction hosting is provided via Rigly and we will use CK Pool to mine.

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121 sats \ 1 reply \ @Aardvark 1 Jan

Ok. So winning an auction basically buys you into the pool?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @evanbaer OP 1 Jan

Correct.

117 sats \ 1 reply \ @Heisenbergbitcoin 1 Jan

Bit of a novice in terms of such auctions. I am trying to understand how the whole process works. So please don’t mind if my questions are basic.

I signed up for a rigly account and checked, and joined the party. It shows that the current bid is 1800 sats. So for example if I bid for 1900 sats, and if by chance, that is the closing bid, then do I have to pay 1900 sats ?
What is the relation between the bid amount in SATS and the hashrate?
How I do I know if I am selected in the pool of people who will earn a percentage of the reward?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @evanbaer OP 1 Jan

Yes, you would pay 1,900 sats
You can calculate a hashprice for bid / 21 TH/s and compare to what you could earn in a "trad" mining pool

However, since I am adding bonus hashrate that tilts the odds for the block party, there isn't an easy way to compare to the block party's value..

(hence the auction!)

You pay your winning bid, you will get your fair % of reward if we find a block

I email everyone before the party starts mining on Friday.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Aardvark 18h

Well, we tried. I'd do it again.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @evanbaer OP 16h

Awesome. We will.

20 sats \ 2 replies \ @b73dba08c0 3 Jan

Hello, I sent my sats but I haven't received the link yet.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @evanbaer OP 3 Jan

Details coming by noon ET today

121 sats \ 0 replies \ @evanbaer OP 3 Jan

sent in email to the auction winners - reposting here

We will start mining to CK Pool at 18:15 GMT - details:

Block party is 4,200 TH/s!
I added 3,200 TH/s of bonus hashrate (1,000 TH/s + 3,200 TH/s bonus hash)
Each auction is 2% of total reward, if we find a block
We will mine for 24 hours

You don't need to take any action to point your hashrate to CK Pool, I will do that.

We are mining with CKPool and the payout escrow address is 3Gk1GfP3bHA6M2ZzK5mHdqbWN1iNsqAenH

Monitor: https://solo.ckpool.org/users/3Gk1GfP3bHA6M2ZzK5mHdqbWN1iNsqAenH

Also:

if you have not yet paid for your auction, pls pay now - i will be putting those lots back up for auction
if you prefer to exit the party and send your hashrate (21 TH/s) elsewhere, please reply and lmk

Best of luck, Evan

20 sats \ 3 replies \ @BlokchainB 1 Jan

Lotto mining

79 sats \ 2 replies \ @evanbaer OP 1 Jan

Somewhat true - and certainly compared to FPPS pool mining

However, compare solo mining odds with low hashrate:

Chance of a block in 1 day @ 2 TH/s: 1 in 2,369,757 Chance of a block in 1 day @ 14 TH/s: 1 in 338,537

To "lotto mining" odds in a block party with more hashrate:

Chance of a block in 1 day @ 1,000 TH/s: 1 in 4,740 Chance of a block in 1 day @ 5,000 TH/s: 1 in 948 Chance of a block in 1 day @ 21,000 TH/s: 1 in 226

Source: https://solochance.com

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @AlCoHoLnAcEtOnE 2 Jan

Those are still some rough odds but for the fee of a few bucks is very much worth it.

123 sats \ 0 replies \ @evanbaer OP 2 Jan

20 sats \ 2 replies \ @south_korea_ln 1 Jan

Last time, I paid several of the auctions I won (some likely twice) on https://upendo.rigly.io but their status remained "unpaid". Do you know what the issue was? After payment confirmation, it always sent me to localhost page to which I have no access. Maybe that's why the status wasn't updated?

Has this issue been resolved? Just making sure before I try some new auctions~~

EDIT: Yay, a new hot page boosted post.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @evanbaer OP 1 Jan

Thanks for bidding.

Yes, I will still have to mark the auctions as "paid" manually, after payment is received.

The status and redirect to localhost are known bugs, i'll fix soon.

I'll also send an email after the auction is complete, same as last time around.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 1 Jan

Ok thanks :)

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @aliceandthewonderland 3 Jan

Do we need to manually set up our settings to point to CK Pool under upendo account?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @evanbaer OP 3 Jan

No, I do that - details coming in email

21 sats \ 5 replies \ @evanbaer OP 1 Jan

Congrats to the first auction winner 🎉

I'll add +400 TH/s of bonus hashrate to the block party

I have to restart the front-end to update the env variable for bonus hashrate, so bear with me while the website is offline for a few mins

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Aardvark 2 Jan

Hey, that's me. Thanks.

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @evanbaer OP 1 Jan

Congrats to the 2nd auction winner!

Another +100 TH/s of bonus hashrate

11 sats \ 2 replies \ @evanbaer OP 1 Jan

2 more auctions sold...

Current Boost: +567 TH/s

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @evanbaer OP 2 Jan

Congrats to the winners of all today's auctions

Current Boost: +1,470 TH/s

21 more auctions to be posted for tomorrow!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @evanbaer OP 2 Jan

Just 15 more auctions left..

Current Boost: +2,100 TH/s

10 sats \ 4 replies \ @evanbaer OP 3 Jan

Block party is mining now 🚀

Telegram chat: https://t.me/+K8JjHpTgqoFjZmIx

For last minute bidders - there are several auctions still available

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @evanbaer OP 3 Jan

Someone pointed out there's a couple high bidders taking all the remaining lots

If you want in and can't win an auction, DM me on telegram @evanbaer

I'll hold back some of the remaining lots to ensure space for plebs

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @charonnakamoto 4 Jan

Thanks for considering such requests. I’ve won the auction due to that consideration. Excited to participate in decentralizing the mining network and standing a chance to mine a block :)

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nym 4 Jan

Excited to see how you do!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @charonnakamoto 4 Jan

It looks like the odds of finding a block in 24 hours, as per solochance.com, is 1/1158. Fingers crossed.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @evanbaer OP 16h

The block party is done, we did not find a block.

However, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, we all had some fun and I learned a few things along the way.

Block Party Recap

40 auctions sold (21 TH/s each, or ~2% of reward)
Total hashrate: 4,850 TH/s
- I added +3,200 TH/s in bonus hashrate
- Another miner added +650 TH/s to our party (!)
Lowest/highest winning bid = 1,000 / 20,200 sats

The lowest bid occurred about halfway through the auction and was an outlier, the average winning bid was ~5,000 sats.

The highest 3 winning bids occurred at the end of the auction.

The high cost of bidding near the end of the auction led to some frustration, so I held a few auctions aside to sell peer-to-peer - no one took me up on them.

CK Pool is a great resource for solo mining block parties. The json api allows everyone to verify the mining and the pool has a track record of successfully mined blocks. The new solostats gui is nice too.

The anonymous gift of +650 TH/s once we started mining was awesome.

We mined for 24+ hours and, while we managed to hash some high-scoring difficulty shares in the trillions, still fell short of hashing a block below the network difficulty

My takeaways

Bitcoin mining is like a lottery, but real work is involved

One of the first things I heard when I started learning about mining was "it's like a lottery.. it isn't just solving complex math problems" ... and while this is somewhat true, in the sense of finding a serviceable hash, the concept of "mining as lottery" discounts all the work that goes into finding that hash.

It's a huge amount of work to mine!

Our party mined with ~5 PH/s, or roughly 40 mining rigs consuming ~3KW each. We generated trillions upon trillions of hashes, some of which were near(ish) to the target.

I'm sure Pick 4 and Powerball use their share of electricity; however, buying a lottery ticket is no comparison to the work done by bitcoin miners.

Network difficulty makes solo & block party mining daunting

You only truly feel the network's difficulty when you try to mine a block.

Even with almost 5 PH/s across our party, we faced long odds of mining a block -- 1 in 1,000+ for 24 hours. Compare the odds of winning a single number in roulette (1 in 36) gives an idea of how long the odds are -- though nowhere near as long as solo mining with 1 TH/s (1 in 5,820,208 for 24 hours)

And so, yes I get that the network difficulty's purpose and that the difficulty adjustment keeps the network the "right size" for ~10 minute block times and keeps things balanced ... yeah ok, but when you're mining to get a solo block, you want the network difficulty low!

Network difficulty of ~110 Trillion makes for a mighty high bar to go over (or under)

Picture It:

If the network difficulty was 100x lower, our 5 PH/s would have found a block and we would by splitting up $300k in bitcoin right now.

Who wins with a 110 Trillion network difficulty?

One of my favorite catchphrases is follow the money, it always leads to new insights.

Who benefits from 110 Trillion network difficulty? Hardware vendors? Bitcoiners? Miners?

It's always great to sell shovels, and bitcoiners certainly benefit from a wall of energy securing their net worth ... but pity the miner.

How could things be better?

Satoshi gave us a wonderful gift 16 years ago and network difficulty has proven to be a balanced way to scale the network to trillions in value.

Unfortunately for miners - and especially solo miners! - Satoshi's gift came bundled with an arms race. It did not include a way to coordinate a cooperative reduction in difficulty.

There's no way, today, for every miner to stand down 90% of their fleet - which is certainly in every miner's interest to do - and benefit from lower difficulty.

Maybe one day.

In the meantime, the block party was a blast and I'll continue hosting them.

Stay tuned for the next one on Jan 11th.

Thanks for reading, Evan

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Aardvark 16h

I'll be there.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @cyphercosmo 4 Jan

{
   "workername": "3Gk1GfP3bHA6M2ZzK5mHdqbWN1iNsqAenH",
   "hashrate1m": "4.49P",
   "hashrate5m": "4.47P",
   "hashrate1hr": "4.39P",
   "hashrate1d": "2.28P",
   "hashrate7d": "482T",
   "lastshare": 1735990450,
   "shares": 134921892167,
   "bestshare": 1652742553786.171,
   "bestever": 1652742553786
  }

The best share/ever can be written as 1,652,742,553,786 and the current difficulty is 1,735,862,400,000.

If the first number was equal or higher than the second we would've found the block. Is that correct?

186 sats \ 4 replies \ @evanbaer OP 4 Jan

Yes, that is correct:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMining/comments/u4e977/solo_mining_questions_solo_ckpool/

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @cyphercosmo 21h

I just thought of something ChatGPT called selfish mining or block withhold attack which doesn't make sense in a solo mining pool like CK but for the ones that distribute payment per block found it is theoretically possible.

It would require miners running rogue firmware but it is possible, that's super interesting.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @evanbaer OP 23h

Correction..

Hmm, where did you find the current difficulty number?

I see current network difficulty is 109 trillion, per Clark Moody dashboard [1]

Best Share: 1,652,742,553,786 Network Difficulty: 109,782,075,598,910

[1] https://dashboard.clarkmoody.com

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cyphercosmo 23h

Thank you for the correction @evanbaer!

I got the number from https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/difficulty and they offer a "download JSON" option, but it comes with so much data that I got the wrong one.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cyphercosmo 4 Jan

Fuck my life dude, we got so god damn close 😂 feels exciting tho!

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @nikotsla 4 Jan

How was the experiment?

5 sats \ 3 replies \ @aliceandthewonderland 4 Jan

nah, mempool.space does not show any sign of ck solo block

26 sats \ 2 replies \ @evanbaer OP 4 Jan

Still 6 hours left of mining

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @aliceandthewonderland 4 Jan

sincerely hopeful for a block.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nikotsla 4 Jan

thanks for the update :).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @PictureRoom 4 Jan

These mining bid auctions are new to me. I'd love to learn more and participate in the next one. I currently have my Bitaxe Gamma connected to the Braiins pool

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @josephbaske37 4 Jan

https://www.coinspeaker.com/satoshi-nakamoto-launched-bitcoin-this-day-16-years-ago/

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BeeAye 3 Jan

my setup appears to be working just fine 🙂 so there is no transactions logged anymore, looks like? 🤙

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cyphercosmo 3 Jan

Here's a SimpleX group for today's party

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Blank 2 Jan

I really like this idea, and have won an auction. Hope to see more of this in the future :)

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @AlCoHoLnAcEtOnE 2 Jan

Tried signing up but just keep getting bad gateways when I click the sign-up link in the email