Solo mining is a method of mining cryptocurrency in which a network participant works individually, using only their own equipment and not joining a mining pool. The miner independently tries out solutions to the cryptographic puzzle, and if their node is the first to find a valid block, the entire reward and transaction fees go to them without having to share with anyone.
How solo mining differs from pool mining
Unlike pool mining, where participants combine their computing power and distribute the reward in proportion to their contribution, a solo miner receives a payout only on the condition that the block was found by their own equipment. This means rare but large payouts instead of the frequent but small payouts of a pool.
- The full block reward with no pool fees;
- Independence from a third-party service and its rules;
- Highly irregular income and a dependence on luck.
Solo mining makes sense above all when one has a sufficiently large hashrate relative to the entire network. For solo miners with modest equipment, the probability of finding a block alone is usually extremely low, so this approach is far from suitable for every market participant.
