all pools give each asic unique data. but that data is managed by a pool.
even the ck pool manages what data an asic gets. thus its not a solo miner.

the difference of ck pool is not about the mining. but the rewarding.
ck pool is a 98% reward pool. not a 'solo miner' thing.

yes that guy is lucky to have got 98% of a block reward. instead of a 0.00x% share. but for the next few hundred years its getting nothing.

https://solo.ckpool.org/pool/pool.status
using the stats of the users and asics
{"runtime": 50640030, "lastupdate": 1643159450, "Users": 2223, "Workers": 13310, "Idle": 533, "Disconnected": 343}

https://btc.com/stats/pool/Solo%20CK
using the stats of last 10 blocks found by the POOL
720,175    6.25 + 0.30800548 BTC    2022-01-24 11:59:13
718,379    6.25 + 0.01810839 BTC    2022-01-13 00:34:07   
718,124    6.25 + 0.10461270 BTC    2022-01-11 06:56:58
712,217    6.25 + 0.04444555 BTC    2021-12-02 10:27:03   
706,369    6.25 + 0.02885278 BTC    2021-10-23 23:50:10
689,382    6.25 + 0.21643754 BTC    2021-07-02 06:36:03
660,588    6.25 + 0.86256768 BTC    2020-12-09 06:19:21
632,928    6.25 + 0.37420818 BTC    2020-06-03 22:29:30
621,073    12.5 + 0.26845492 BTC    2020-03-10 10:41:08
618,616    12.5 + 0.17632101 BTC    2020-02-23 08:13:22

it has only found 10 blocks in 23 months
those 13310 asics means ~ 2551 years before each asic has achieved a win (if fairly spread)
or because users have more then one asic
these 2223 users will need to mine for 426 years to each have a chance of a win.

yes one guy has got ~$220k($6.25*$35k) and a different guy got it 2.3months later(average) .. but the same guy is not going to probably get another $220k for another 400 years+

What would be the incentive?

Keep in mind that a mining farm is also a solo miner but with a higher hashrate. Also, it is not just the address that indicates this is a solo miner it is the fact that the miner is not sharing the work with other miners and the work they perform is unique (on a block that is different from every one else).

This is a personal opinion held strongly by franky1. It is not an incorrect way to think about the differences between solo and pool mining, but it is also not the only way of describing solo mining.  It is not even the most commonly accepted description of solo mining. While there are others that would agree with franky1 that you are not "solo mining" if you are not personally running and managing the software that creates the block headers, it is far more common to describe solo mining in reference to the mining rewards.  For the majority of people, you are solo mining if you ONLY earn a reward when one of YOUR hashers find the solution to a block, and your are pool mining if you share in the rewards when hashers run by OTHERS in the pool find a solution to a block.

If a pool exists where the rewards are shared among participants based on the amount of hash power that they each contribute to the pool, BUT each participant gets to run their own software to choose for themselves which transactions are included in the block (and builds those blocks themselves), would you call that solo mining? Since the rewards are being shared, most wouldn't. I've asked this question of franky1 in the past and haven't gotten an answer from him yet, so I'm not sure what his thoughts are on that or where it fits into his opinion of how to define "solo mining".


While I like this analogy, I think an alternative analogy that more closely matches would be to consider "pool" miners as those that are actual "employees".  They get paid their salary (or hourly wage) regardless of how much money they personally bring in for the business, and regardless of which employee in the company completes the job that all the employees are working on. An employee that works more hours will get paid more since he did more work, but everyone that works gets paid.  Solo mining with this analogy would be more like an independent contractor.  The contractee still assigns the jobs for the contractor to do, but the contractor only gets paid for the specific tasks that they successfully complete. The revenue that the contractor generates for the contractee is not shared among any other employees of the contractee nor any other contractors that the contractee may have contracts with. Some contractors may choose to go out and find jobs independently, others may rely on a service to find the jobs for them (and will then have to pay a small fee for that service), but in either case, they only get paid for the specific tasks that they successfully complete

your mindset is solo rewarding rather than share rewarding. ..
solo MINING is about management of the MINING WORK

also the pool is the business that has employees(workers) its not that a pool is the worker..
so dont try mixing metaphors.

a business with employees where the manager sets the work for the employees is a pool

a self employed worker with no boss telling him what to do and no one to be accountable to is solo

i know you now want to add in a new paradigm of a contractee contractor. but CK is not a contractee.. as his stratum is the same management system as a pool. all that changes is the reward share. being CK 2% worker 98% instead of CK 100% 0% worker, then negotiate share separately.

the WORK management for ck pool and other pools is the same. all thats different is the pay structure

solo vs pool MINING is about who manages the MINING the secret is in the word mining
solo rewarding vs share rewarding is about the payout rate. not the mining task

different pools have different pay schemes. changing just the pay scheme does not mean a miner is suddenly a solo miner.

a business that pays waitresses just on tip they personally worked. does not mean she is no longer an employee of the cafe. because if she was not an employee. she would not be working in the cafe being told which tables to service.
it just means she has a different pay structure and is probably going to not take home any money if she doesnt do the work

if she was self employed, she would own the cafe and serve the tables herself. and keep all the money.

I suspect that this is probably the biggest reason:


Solving a block is only half the battle.  First, the software that is building the block headers needs to hear about solved blocks as quickly as possible so you don't waste time mining a stale block at a height that is already propagated to a significant portion of the network. Then, once you do solve a block, you need to get it propagated to the majority of the network's hashpower before anyone else does the same.

2% a a fee feels a bit high to me.  While there is some risk of losing a block due to poor propagation, I'd think that for most that risk would be less than 1%?

CKPool claims:

But, I am left wondering where that 2% is going if it isn't being kept as profit. Perhaps running a pool like that is more expensive than I realize.

as danny is now seeming to realise(congratulations) that its CK that create the block templates and ck that make the payment arrangement to give 98% to someone.

the reason for the 2% is easy to explain.
2% was worth alot less years ago. and ck simply has not reduced it to 1% or less, in recent years.
the user that got a 98% reward. has 4 asics averaging 3thash/s each, all using the same reward address
{
 "hashrate1m": "10.2T",

   "workername": "3EoqjNmeaaVvVDCPbVXxQQRH6UFpDUqpPg.Golf1",
   "hashrate1m": "2.97T",

   "workername": "3EoqjNmeaaVvVDCPbVXxQQRH6UFpDUqpPg.MegaRig02",
   "hashrate1m": "0",

   "workername": "3EoqjNmeaaVvVDCPbVXxQQRH6UFpDUqpPg.TheOmen",
   "hashrate1m": "4.15T",

   "workername": "3EoqjNmeaaVvVDCPbVXxQQRH6UFpDUqpPg.MegaRig01",
   "hashrate1m": "3.41T",
}


ck pool manages
{"Users": 2325, "Workers": 13532,}{"hashrate1m": "26P",
thats ~ 13532 asics running at ~2thash/sec each

with 26peta at play all working to solve a block. every 2.3 months on average the pool solved a block. and within that pool the asic that was the lucky one gets the win

emphasis on average
out of 190exahash network, the 26peta pool is a 1 in 7300 chance of solving a block
every fortnight there are 2016 blocks so on average a block 'should' be solved by ck pool once every 1month 3 weeks
but looking at the last 10 blocks solved by ck pool, it has averaged at a rate of 1 every 2.3 months.
so it has had a period of bad luck and now having a period of goodluck.
thats the thing about randomness. its never an even projected/predicted result. you can have good and bad months

its not just about solving a block. its then propagating that solve out to the whole network so other peers can "first seen" it and declare it a winner if its validated before another pool gets a solve.

a pool is not connected to just 8 nodes like a normal home hobby user is. a pool is usually connected to hundreds of nodes including other pools.
other pools dont waste their connections on that many random users. they prefer to white list other pools and then merchant services(economically important nodes) who then propagate out to their peers.

so the more connections a pool has to important peers means their block solve gets seen and validated before other pools solve their block. and of course a pool is connected to the 13000 asics(2325 users)

..
a normal hobby miner doing true and very well known actual solo mining where it has to get the previous block, create its own header and then send the work to its own asic, takes longer. for these reasons:

its not in the same hierarchy of the important nodes peer connections (pools and merchants) so it gets its last block delayed by atleast two peer 'relay times',
..then because its usually managed by a desktop computer which validates the previous block slower. and then prunes off the spent coins out of mempool and then picks the unspent transactions from mempool to add to a template. means the hobby miner managing itself would take longer to form a template. and then because its not then well connected to other peers. if it solved a block, propagating that block might require several 'relay times' before the important nodes see it.

all of which gives pools an upper hand of multiple seconds compared to a home hobby miner doing it truly solo.

---

with that said yes 2% seems high. but then again 2% was not worth much years ago and CK simply has not decreased his amount.
and the asics that use CK have no choice. accept what CK programs to give them or use another pool. because after all asics/users dont set the rate, the pool does

Thanks, that's exactly what I was asking about.  That said, I didn't do the math, but 1% (or 2%) of in case I find a block within seconds of another blocks...

How many seconds of latency must a miner save for the odds of a block collision to decrease by 1%?

And don't I have to just trust the claim about being "well connected" or is there a way for a miner to verify that?

I am in no way saying that it doesn't have legitimate use case.  "I'd rather pay a cut than having to bother with all that" is absolutely legit.  As for the connectivity advantage, I still feel that the line is so fine that we may only guess whether it it is worth that 1% or 2%.

Though, considering the current value of the block reward, it's still difficult for me to think that the owner of a farm large enough to mine solo would not want to "bother" doing it itself.

the pool (looking at stats in previous posts) is not a farm, its lots of small users in different locations.
the users (looking at stats in previous posts)its hobby miners not farms, its ~2200 people with 5-6 asics each on average.

a block if we average it as 600 seconds.
imagine your a normal home user with 8 connections to peers and say there are 80,000 nodes to reach where each peer also has 8 connections

8*8*8*8*8=32k(4 relays)  so your going to need 5 relays to reach 80k nodes meaning if each relay takes just 1 second that is atleast 5 seconds
(EG home internet at 8mbps = >1 sec to send 8 blocks)

then its the case that because you are not in the centre circle of the important nodes you are going to get previous block a few relays after the important nodes. which is another few seconds.

so just at relay delay of getting pre block and sending out your solved block is more then 1% delay(>6seconds)


however pools that are at the centre of the circle with 900mbps speed can reach the important nodes(otherpools and merchant tools) in 1 relay under 1 second. and the rest of the network in a couple fast relays
so what might take you 7-10 seconds just in bandwidth time can be just 1-2 seconds for pools

then its the smaller millisecond math of how fast a blocktemplate can be formed and then sending the work to an asic and updated the asic with new work each time it runs out of extra nonces. generally a pool can do this and send it to your asic faster than a home hobby miner can do self managed locally.

so the 'speed benefit' of pooling might be 1.x% but also a pool has lots of servers and thousands of bandwidth connections to cost in.
so 2% might not actually be unreasonable.

---

but then again. a block reward is 6.25*$35k=$218k so 2% is $4375
however although the POOL showed it solved 10 blocks in 23 months.
an average user if it did indeed go solo would take 400 years to mine a block. and the monthly internet bill of a 900mbps connection to have the same low latency delay as a pool will cost you more then $4k by the time you get a lucky block