Frequently Asked Questions

This pool uses solo mining only. There is no PPLNS, no PPS, and no reward sharing. The miner who finds a block receives the full block reward, minus the pool fee. If you mine here but do not find a block, you will not receive any payment.

The current pool fee is 2%. This fee is deducted directly in the coinbase transaction when a block is found — there are no secondary transfers or separate payment fees.

With solo mining, you only get paid when your miner finds a block. The time to find a block depends entirely on your hashrate relative to the network difficulty. With low hashrate, variance is very high — you may mine for weeks or months without a block.

Solo mining is best for miners with high hashrate (enough to realistically find blocks) or those who are willing to accept high variance for full block rewards. If you want consistent, predictable income, consider p2pool instead.

We recommend p2pool — a decentralized, trust-minimized pool that provides PPLNS rewards. It requires running a Monero full node but gives you proportional payouts for every share you contribute.

Yes! NiceHash is fully compatible with this pool and is our recommended method for renting hashpower. Simply point your NiceHash order to the pool stratum and use your Monero address as the username.

Yes, MRR is compatible. However, be aware that some MRR rigs are NiceHash resellers and may charge a markup. Verify the rig source, or use NiceHash directly for better pricing.

Solo mining means each miner competes independently to find a block. When a block is found, only the miner who found it receives the reward. It is a high-risk, high-reward approach compared to pooled mining where rewards are shared among all participants.

Every block found by this pool goes through the following lifecycle:

This pool only accepts standard primary Monero addresses, which always start with the digit 4. Subaddresses (starting with 8) and integrated addresses are not supported by our pool implementation — the connection will be refused at login. Always use the main address of your Monero wallet (the one that starts with 4) when configuring your miner.

This pool uses a split coinbase transaction to pay miners — the same technique used by p2pool. When a block is found, the coinbase transaction is constructed with two outputs: 98% sent directly to the miner's address, and 2% to the pool as fee. Your reward arrives as a coinbase output — the network itself records your wallet as the mining reward recipient. No secondary transfer is ever made.

Why does this matter? Traditional pools work differently: they receive the entire block reward into the pool's own wallet, and then — once the block matures — deduct their fee and send you a regular transfer. That payment is an ordinary transaction with no verifiable connection to mining on the blockchain.

With split coinbase, the payment IS the coinbase. It is provably a mining reward, not a transfer from a third party. To our knowledge, only p2pool and this pool implement this approach for Monero.

This distinction can be significant if you are ever asked by an exchange or financial institution to demonstrate the origin of your funds. A coinbase output is a definitive, blockchain-verifiable proof of mining income. A regular pool payout is not.

Yes. This pool operates with full transparency and can be audited by anyone at any time through two methods.

Via the community explorer: Visit https://blocks.p2pool.observer/proofs where our pool is audited by the community. You can verify every block we have found on-chain.

Via our public API: You can query our API directly to retrieve block and pool data programmatically.

For on-chain verification you can also use the following pool view key at any time:

Address: 42n8gMGBrgc5UzcDTvtXBtYFfxkUfBGzKN5cMLCPzNJPgLdtbXhDBr3NJCxK9NMHF3BwHfJERS6NsStdyPypxMms2SCPGqo

View key: 940d3bbd1f111924209a7e7ce85b37b4b66bf40afa86e8940e19b25a87aaa709

Because this pool is not a custodian of funds, each block mined produces exactly two outputs in the coinbase transaction: one sent directly to the miner's wallet, and one to the pool as fee. What you can verify is that we mined a block and received our fee output — miner details remain private by design. Whether to reveal their address for public audit is entirely the miner's choice; if they choose to do so, their address and associated block rewards become publicly traceable on-chain.

Yes — cryptographically, no trust required.

When a block is found, the pool builds the coinbase transaction with two outputs using an ephemeral transaction key (tx_key) it generates internally. This key is the cryptographic secret used to derive the stealth output addresses in the coinbase. Anyone who holds the tx_key and the miner's address can independently verify that a specific output in that transaction was sent to that address — this is a standard Monero outgoing payment proof.

The pool records and publishes the tx_key for every block found. On any block detail page in this dashboard, the Onchain Proof badge links directly to blocks.p2pool.observer — an independent community verifier that cryptographically confirms both outputs of the coinbase transaction for you.

Solo mining — mining independently without sharing rewards with other participants — directly strengthens the decentralization of blockchain networks. When miners distribute their computing power individually rather than concentrating it in large centralized pools, no single entity controls the majority of the network's hash power — making it more resilient, censorship-resistant, and trustless.

Beyond ideology, solo mining returns full autonomy to you: you receive 100% of the block reward when you find a block, you are not dependent on any pool operator, and your earnings are verifiable on-chain as a coinbase output. Anyone with mining hardware can participate, at any scale.

For Monero in particular, the only truly decentralized PPLNS option is p2pool — a peer-to-peer network with no central operator, no custodian of funds, and proportional rewards distributed to all contributors. We strongly recommend p2pool for miners who want consistent payouts while maintaining decentralization principles.

OwnBlock facilitates solo mining because we believe in decentralization as a core principle. That said, we understand that not everyone has the infrastructure to run their own full node, load balancer, or production-grade optimized stratum server. We provide that layer so you can focus on mining.

Running your own stratum software sounds straightforward, but in practice, most open-source Monero stratum implementations available on GitHub are unmaintained, poorly optimized, or lack compatibility with commercial hashpower marketplaces like NiceHash and MiningRigRentals.

OwnBlock has invested significant time and resources in lab testing across diverse hardware configurations, validating full protocol compatibility with XMRig, NiceHash, and other mining clients. Our stratum infrastructure is built for performance and reliability — not a generic off-the-shelf script.

The only stratum software we consider production-ready for Monero without those caveats is p2pool — purpose-built, actively maintained, and decentralized by design. It is worth noting, however, that p2pool uses a PPLNS reward model: your earnings are proportional to your contributed hashrate and shared among all participants. You will not receive the full block reward when a block is found. If capturing 100% of the block reward is your goal, solo mining through OwnBlock is the right choice.

A critical note on pool selection: avoid PPLNS reward models in centralized pools. When you mine in a centralized PPLNS pool, you are effectively handing your computing power to a single operator. That operator controls block submission, reward distribution, and your earnings — with no cryptographic accountability. This concentrates power exactly where it should not be, directly contradicting the founding principles of cryptocurrency.

No. OwnBlock is not an open-source project. We deeply believe in open-source principles — every layer of our infrastructure is built on open-source software — but our stratum pool implementations (v1 and v2, with full NiceHash compatibility) are proprietary software authored by TECLATINA and form part of our commercial product portfolio.

We do not publish our source code. That said, we firmly believe that access to reliable, production-grade solo mining infrastructure should not require deep technical knowledge, capital investment, or hidden costs. That is why OwnBlock is freely accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world — no registration, no barriers, no surprises.

The only cost is the openly disclosed 2% pool fee, deducted automatically from the block reward at the exact moment a block is found — and only then. Mine for an hour, a week, or a month without finding a block, and you pay absolutely nothing. No subscription, no minimum commitment, no fee unless you earn.

Our contribution is the infrastructure layer that makes Monero solo mining simple and accessible for everyone.