Forge Solo Bitcoin Cash II home miner

Forge Solo

Mine BCH2 at home on your own full node.

Forge Solo is one app: a BCH2 full node, the stratum your miners connect to, and a dashboard. It runs on Umbrel, Windows and Linux, with no pool fee.

Get Forge Solo How it works

Free and open source. Downloads are on GitHub.

How it works

Your own node builds every block your miners work on. In Settings, under How blocks pay, you choose Solo or TIDES pool.

Solo

  • A block you find pays your BCH2 address in full, straight from its coinbase.
  • Nothing until you find a block, then all of it.
  • On Umbrel and Windows, solo mode also merge-mines 1175 (ESF), a second chain, once you set a 1175 payout address, at no extra hashrate cost.

TIDES pool

  • Team up with other miners in Forge Pool's TIDES window.
  • Every TIDES block (a block found on work Forge Pool registered) pays everyone with work in the window, in proportion to that work, straight from its coinbase. Forge Pool's pages call it a DATUM block.
  • 0.00% fee, and no pool wallet. An amount under 546 satoshis is carried to a later TIDES block.
  • Forge Solo mines solo while Forge Pool cannot be reached or will not take a job. At a new block it also mines solo if the pool has not taken the block's work within 2 seconds, until the pool takes it. A block found on solo work pays your BCH2 address in full.
  • 1175 merge-mining is off in TIDES mode.

The live TIDES window

Either way there is no payout schedule: the coinbase pays you directly. A block's reward can be spent after 100 blocks, the network's coinbase maturity.

What's inside

BCH2 full node

It syncs on its own and keeps the whole chain, so other nodes can sync from it.

1175 (ESF) node

On Umbrel and Windows, for merge-mining.

Stratum

Port 3333 for your miners. Port 3335 for NiceHash and MiningRigRentals.

Dashboard

Hashrate, effort, your blocks, payouts and the TIDES window.

Your settings, blocks and payouts are kept in one SQLite file, forgesolo.db. The README's What's inside has the details.

Get Forge Solo

The Windows and Linux downloads are on GitHub, on the page of the latest release. Umbrel installs Forge Solo from an app store.

Umbrel

In Umbrel, add the community app store https://github.com/BitcoincashII/umbrel-app-store, then install Forge Solo from BCH2 Community Apps.

Directions for Umbrel on GitHub

Windows

64-bit Windows 10 or 11 on an x64 PC, or Windows 11 on ARM. On the latest release, under Assets, download ForgeSolo-Setup-<version>.exe.

Forge Solo is not yet signed by a certificate Windows trusts. The directions say what to do when SmartScreen or Smart App Control stops it.

Directions for Windows on GitHub Latest release

Linux

Downloads for x86_64 PCs and for ARM boards such as the Raspberry Pi, and also for i686 and riscv64. They are fully static: they run on any distribution with kernel 3.17 or newer.

BCH2 only: the Linux version does not merge-mine 1175.

Directions for Linux on GitHub Latest release

Set up in three steps

  1. Install it

    Follow the directions for Umbrel, Windows or Linux. On Windows they include setting your network to Private: while it is Public, miners on your network cannot connect.

  2. Set your payout address

    On the dashboard's Settings page, enter your BCH2 payout address and save. On Umbrel and Windows, add a 1175 payout address to merge-mine in solo mode. Saving asks for Forge Solo's password: Connect a miner in the README says where each platform shows it.

  3. Point your miners at it

    stratum+tcp://<your machine's address>:3333. The dashboard shows the address. The worker name is only a label. NiceHash and MiningRigRentals use port 3335.

Everything else is in the README: connecting a miner, the ports to open in your router and rented hashpower.