Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about BTCB2 mining, hardware compatibility, reward distribution, payout maturity, and pool architecture.
Hardware & Firmware Compatibility
Q: Do I need custom firmware for BM-S3 or other ASICs?
No. Standard factory stock firmware is wire-compatible without custom flashes. The pool and its RATUM gateway translate Knots' BTCB2 164-byte block header into the exact 80-byte work structure that stock Sia-generation firmware expects (physical ASIC qualification bench active).
Q: Which ASIC models are wire-compatible?
The primary wire-compatible models under active qualification are the iBeLink BM-S3 / BM-S3+, Innosilicon S11 SiaMaster, Bitmain Antminer A3, and Obelisk SC1 family. Any hardware speaking Sia-Stratum V1 BLAKE2b is protocol-compatible (physical qualification bench active).
Q: Can I mine using consumer CPUs and GPUs?
Yes. Both CPUs (AMD Ryzen / Intel Core with AVX2) and GPUs (NVIDIA RTX 20/30/40 via CUDA and AMD via OpenCL) are fully verified and active. The pool supports vardiff starting at difficulty 1 for CPUs and difficulty 8+ for GPUs.
Q: Do I need to create a pool account or register?
No. The pool operates on a completely accountless model. Use your native SegWit (Bech32 bc1q...) Bitcoin address as your Stratum username. Block rewards are credited directly to your address on-chain.
Rewards & Payout Accounting
Q: When do mining rewards mature and pay out?
Per standard Bitcoin consensus rules, all newly minted block coinbase outputs require 100 on-chain confirmations before funds become spendable. Once 100 blocks pass, the coinbase transaction settles directly to your wallet.
Q: What is the minimum payout threshold?
The minimum payout per block is 546 satoshis (0.00000546 BTC), which is the standard Bitcoin dust prevention limit. Any sub-546 satoshi shares are safely accumulated in the pool's persistent owed ledger and paid on subsequent blocks.
Q: How does PPLNS-8D reward accounting work?
Instead of counting raw share counts, our pool uses Work-Weighted PPLNS-8D. Every share is weighted by true mathematical work performed (W = Difficulty × 2^32) over the last 8 network difficulties. High-diff ASICs and low-diff GPUs are rewarded strictly proportional to hashes completed.
Q: What is the Next-Block PPLNS Payout Preview and when do I get paid?
The Next-Block PPLNS Payout Preview on your miner dashboard calculates an estimated proportional entitlement for the hypothetical next block if the pool solves a valid on-chain block right now. It is computed in real time by multiplying the net distributable block reward (gross subsidy minus the dynamic pool fee) by your current share of accepted work in the active 8-day rolling window.
- 1. Hypothetical Projection: Before a block is solved, this is only an estimated calculation; no funds exist.
- 2. Immature Coinbase: Once a real block is discovered on-chain, the reward enters an immature coinbase allocation.
- 3. Matured / Pending Payable: After 100 consensus confirmations, the reward matures and enters payable pending balance.
- 4. Settled Historical Paid: Payout transactions automatically settle to your on-chain wallet once the ≥546 sats threshold is met.
Q: How does the Privacy Shield protect miner addresses and rigs?
To prevent public surveillance of physical mining farm hardware, all miner addresses and worker rigs on public leaderboards and telemetry endpoints are pseudonymized by default (bc1qda••••956nfh, Worker 1). Rig owners can authenticate control of their dashboard at any time without creating an account or password by signing a one-time Stratum cryptographic challenge nonce.
Q: What is the pool fee and how does it scale?
The pool employs an Adaptive Dynamic Fee Model (0.00% – 16.00%) engineered to exert continuous economic decentralization pressure and disincentivize excessive hashrate concentration:
- 0.00% Baseline at 0% pool share (maximum incentive for new and small miners).
- 2.00% Advisory Fee at 25% pool share (linear slope: 8.00).
- 4.00% Warning Fee at 33% pool share (linear slope: 25.00).
- 8.00% Approach as pool share approaches 50% from below (linear slope: 23.53).
- 16.00% Emergency Step Clamp immediately upon reaching ≥50% pool share (hard emergency discontinuity & clamp at 16.00%).
Economic Safeguard Framing: Fee escalation is designed as an economic disincentive to discourage single-entity dominance; it does not constitute an absolute guarantee against a 51% attack.
Historical Immutability: Every fee rate is snapshot at the exact moment a block is solved and permanently locked in the coinbase transaction. PPLNS-8D historical reward distributions are fully verifiable on-chain and are never retroactively adjusted.
Security & Decentralization
Q: Are my private keys or funds at risk on the pool?
Never. The pool operates non-custodially with provable key isolation: zero wallet seeds or private keys exist on internet-facing stratum nodes. Block rewards are split directly in the block coinbase transaction on-chain.
Q: What is Sovereign DATUM mining?
Sovereign DATUM (Surface #3) allows larger mining farms to run a local Bitcoin Knots node and build their own block templates on-premise, eliminating transaction censorship while pooling shares via an encrypted DATUM uplink.