Solo Mining

A solo miner keeps the entire block reward but receives nothing until a block is found. On Bitcoin, a single S21-class machine's odds make expected waiting time measured in centuries — yet solo lottery wins happen regularly via services like Solo CK Pool, and make headlines precisely because of the odds.

Solo becomes rational on smaller networks where your hashrate is a meaningful share, or philosophically via decentralised options like Monero's P2Pool, which combines solo-style sovereignty with pool-style payout smoothing.