I recently acquired two KS0 Pro ASIC miners. And they have been trucking away like well ASICs. But I also tried some new things I had not yet tried when it comes to mining. I thought I would share my experiment and its results.
In case you are not familiar with the KS0 Pro, it is an ASIC miner that works for Kaspa and Kaspa only as it is currently the only Coin on that algorithm. That is because ASICs are designed to compute note algorithms and do that well. But it does mean that if multiple coins share an algorithm you can mine them using the same ASIC. As an example. Litecoin and Dogecoin both run on the algorithm Scrypt. This is why you can mine either of them on the same ASIC, and in that case, even duo mine, meaning mining both at the same time.
With me having two KS0 Pro, I for the first time had an ok amount of hashpower. Seeing I previously only have mined on one or two GPUs at the same time. So I thought I would try my hand at solo mining. And if you are either new to mining, or never bothered to look into it before. Let me explain the difference. There are two ways to mine, pool- and solo mining. When you pool mine you cooperate with other miners and "pool" your hashpower in order to succeed in solving the algorithm so you can be the one who gets to add the next block, aka get the reward. And as there are many people in the same mining pool they all share in the reward, usually in accordance with their contribution.
When it comes to solo mining, it is just as you have guessed. It is you vs everyone else. Your hashpower is competing against everyone else who is solo mining or pool mining. As you probably guessed this means the odds of you succeeding and being the one to solve the algorithm is very low. But on the other hand, if you do succeed in solving it you get all of the reward for yourself.
And I thought I would try my hand at solo mining, mostly because it is probably the only time I have any chance whatsoever to succeed to any bigger extent. At least that was the theory.
I switched over my ASICs to solo mining on December 10, and on the 13th I found my first block and was able to cash in almost 150 Kaspa. according to the effort meter I was slightly unlucky as it read 129%. But better luck next time right? I watched the solo effort slowly tick up % by %. Hoping to get some of that RNGesus luck to shine my way. But I did not get any super luck and I was again approaching the 100% mark.
Then I passed it, approaching the 129% mark, where I found the block the first time. And I shot past that like it was nothing. I was not starting to wonder and doubt slowly started to creep in. What if, yeah what if I don't find a second block, what then?
On December 21 I decided to pull the plug and swap back to pool mining. The solo effort then read 241% and no second block was ever found.
In short, the result of my experiment was a roaring failure. I solomined 11 days and only found 1 block in that time. In order for me to be on par with pool mining I would have had to find a block every 3ed days. But alas I did not. Thus concludes my foray into solo mining.
Will I ever solo min in the future? While one never should say never I do not see that as a likely scenario. Unless I am spec mining some unlisted coin or have some other reason to do it. Likewise, I can not recommend any hobby miner, or smaller miner for that matter, to solo mine. Unless it is simply to try it out and learn from it. And with that, I hope you now do not have to wonder about solo mining anymore. I know I am not. =)
But I would love to hear if you have had any mining experience and if you have tried solo mining, what did you mine and did you have any luck? Please sound off in the comment section below.
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