Common Questions & Friendly Tips

Summary: Everything you’ve wondered about solo mining but were afraid to ask. Plus practical tips to keep your device running happily for years.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: How long will it take to find a block?

This is the most common question — and the answer is both simple and frustrating: nobody knows.

With a Bitaxe (1 TH/s), the statistical expected time is measured in centuries. But “expected time” is not a promise. It’s an average across millions of hypothetical miners. In reality, you could find a block tomorrow, or never.

Think of it this way: if you flip a coin 10 times, the expected number of heads is 5. But you might get 10 heads in a row. Probability is weird.

The healthy mindset: Run your Solo Miner for the joy of participating. Consider any block found as a miracle — not an expectation.

Q2: My screen shows hashrate but no “Accepted” messages. Is it broken?

No — this is the most common misunderstanding about solo mining.

In pool mining, your miner sends “shares” (partial solutions) to the pool every few seconds. Each share is “accepted” and recorded. That’s why pool miners see a constant stream of accepted messages.

In solo mining, your miner does not send shares. It only sends a solution when it finds a full block — which is extremely rare. So 99.99% of the time, your miner will show zero accepted shares. That’s normal.

How to verify your miner is working:

• Check that the hashrate is stable and non-zero
• Check that the temperature is reasonable (below 70°C)
• Check that the uptime counter is increasing
• If all three are true, your miner is working perfectly.

Q3: Can I use my Solo Miner with a regular mining pool?

Yes, you can. Most solo mining devices also support pool mining mode. You would simply change the Pool URL to a regular pool like stratum+tcp://pool.supportxmr.com:3333 (for Monero) or a Bitcoin pool.

However, if you do this, you are no longer solo mining. You become a pool miner — and your tiny device will earn fractions of a cent per day. Most people find this unsatisfying. The magic of solo mining is the all-or-nothing possibility.