Public Mining Pool URL: Stratum Address & Setup Guide
The public mining pool URL for Public Pool is a stratum address — stratum+tcp://public-pool.io:
What Is Public Pool, and Why Does It Have Its Own URL?
Public Pool isn’t a mining company. It’s an open-source program that turns a Bitcoin full node into a pool with exactly one member — you. The hosted version at public-pool.io runs the same code anyone can download and run themselves; there’s no company behind the URL deciding your payout or taking a cut of your reward.
That matters for how you read the address. A regular pool’s URL points to servers an operator maintains for thousands of miners sharing a payout. A Public Pool URL points to one node validating blocks for one Bitcoin address: yours. There’s no shared balance, no pool operator’s wallet in the middle, no “your share of the reward this round.”
Public Pool isn’t a company — it’s software that turns your own node into a pool with exactly one miner: you.
That’s also why it has no pricing page, no account dashboard with a balance owed to you, and no customer support line. You’re either using someone else’s running instance (public-pool.io) or running your own. Either way, the stratum address is the entire interface between your hardware and the Bitcoin network.
The Stratum Address, Port, and Login Format You Actually Need
Every piece of mining hardware that supports Public Pool needs the same four pieces of information, entered exactly once in its pool configuration screen. Get the address and username format right, and the rest of this guide is mostly context.
- Stratum address:
stratum+tcp://public-pool.io - Port: listed on public-pool.io itself and on the project’s GitHub page — check it before connecting, since it can change between releases and differs for the hosted instance versus a self-hosted one
- Username: your Bitcoin payout address, followed by a worker name — the common pattern is
your-btc-address.worker-name, so you can tell multiple devices apart on the same dashboard - Password: left blank or set to any value; Public Pool doesn’t authenticate on it
If you’ve configured a stratum address, worker name, and payout address on a conventional pool before, this will look familiar — the structure is the same, only the destination changes. Once connected, public-pool.io’s dashboard shows your worker as “online” within a minute or two; if it never appears, recheck the port and the exact username string before assuming the hardware is broken.
Hosted public-pool.io vs. Running Your Own Instance
You don’t have to run anything to solo-mine through Public Pool — the hosted instance at public-pool.io works the moment you enter the stratum address. Running your own copy on your own node is the alternative, and the two trade off differently on privacy, uptime, and speed.
On the hosted version, your Bitcoin payout address and hashrate sit on a server you don’t control, visible to whoever operates it. A self-hosted instance — commonly run through Umbrel, which packages a Bitcoin node and Public Pool together — keeps that data on your own hardware. It also tends to answer your miner’s requests with lower latency, since there’s no round trip to a third-party server for every share submitted.
The hosted instance buys you convenience; self-hosting buys you privacy and control over uptime — neither one is the “correct” answer for every miner.
| Criterion | Hosted public-pool.io | Self-hosted (e.g. via Umbrel) |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy | Address and hashrate visible to the host | Stays on your own node |
| Uptime | Depends on the public instance’s availability | Depends entirely on your own hardware |
| Latency | Extra network hop to a third-party server | Typically lower — local node |
| Setup effort | None — just enter the stratum address | Requires running a node 24/7 |
If you’re testing the waters with a single Bitaxe, the hosted instance is the practical starting point. If you already run a node around the clock, self-hosting removes the one party you’d otherwise have to trust.
What You Need to Self-Host: Node, Disk Space, and Sync Time
Self-hosting Public Pool means running a Bitcoin full node first — a pruned node won’t have the full chain data Public Pool needs to validate blocks, so check the project’s documentation before assuming a lighter setup will work. The node is the actual engine; Public Pool is a thin layer on top of it.
Budget disk space generously. The full Bitcoin blockchain is already comfortably over half a terabyte and keeps growing every year, so plan storage with headroom rather than cutting it close. Initial sync time varies with your connection and disk speed — a fast SSD and a decent line sync in hours, a slow drive can stretch that to days.
The practical shortcut most self-hosters take is UmbrelOS: it installs a Bitcoin node and Public Pool as a single package on a home server, instead of configuring both pieces by hand. You still wait out the initial sync, but you skip the manual node configuration entirely.
Connecting Bitaxe, NerdMiner, and Avalon Nano to Your Public Mining Pool URL
The stratum address and username format don’t change by device — only the screen you type them into does. Here’s where that field lives on three common solo-mining setups.
Bitaxe
- Open the Bitaxe’s AxeOS web interface in a browser, using its local IP address.
- Go to the pool configuration section and replace the default pool entry.
- Enter the stratum address and port, then set your BTC address plus worker name as the username.
- Save and reboot — the Bitaxe reconnects to Public Pool instead of whatever pool it shipped configured for.
If you’ve only ever connected a Bitaxe to a pool that ships preconfigured out of the box, this is the same screen — you’re just pointing it somewhere else.
NerdMiner
- Open the pool settings, either through the on-device menu or its web portal, depending on firmware version.
- Enter the same stratum address, port, and username format as above.
- Double-check the BTC address for typos — the small screen and tiny keypad make long addresses easy to mistype, and a wrong character means lost shares with no error shown.
Avalon Nano
- Open the device’s own web interface or companion app.
- Look for a custom pool or stratum field — not every Avalon Nano firmware version exposes one, so confirm this against current documentation before buying with Public Pool specifically in mind.
Monitoring Your Hashrate and Getting Paid
The public-pool.io dashboard shows two numbers that matter: your instance’s total hashrate and the hashrate of each worker you’ve connected, broken out by the worker name you set during setup. That’s the whole monitoring surface — there’s no earnings chart ticking up in real time, because nothing is owed to you until a block actually lands.
Payout works differently from a regular pool. There’s no minimum payout threshold and no weekly payment — the reward pays directly to your Bitcoin address the moment your node finds a valid block. Most of the time, the dashboard will simply show your hashrate holding steady with no payout at all, for a long stretch. That’s not a malfunction; it’s what solo mining looks like by design.
One setting worth checking before you connect: the minimum difficulty (min diff) your device negotiates with the pool. ASIC and USB miners need this set low enough that the pool actually issues them work at their hashrate — check the current recommended value in Public Pool’s documentation for your specific device.
How Long Until You Actually Find a Block? Do the Math
The expected wait before you solo-mine a block follows one formula: divide the Bitcoin network’s total hashrate by your own, then multiply by the network’s roughly 10-minute average block time. That ratio is your expected time between blocks — not a guarantee, an average.
Network hashrate changes constantly, so pull today’s figure from a live tracker rather than trusting any number printed here. What stays constant is the math: if your device is one-millionth of the network’s hashrate, you should expect to wait, on average, one million blocks’ worth of time — which at 10 minutes a block is close to 19 years. Double your hashrate and that expected wait halves.
| Your share of network hashrate | Rough expected time to a block |
|---|---|
| 1 in 100,000 | ~2 years |
| 1 in 1,000,000 | ~19 years |
| 1 in 10,000,000 | ~190 years |
The number that moves this calculation isn’t luck — it’s your own hashrate relative to the network’s, and that’s the only variable you can actually control.
Variance around that average is enormous: you could find a block far sooner, or wait far longer, and either outcome is consistent with the math. The only lever worth pulling is more hashrate, whether that’s a bigger Bitaxe, more of them, or pooling your own devices into one solo instance.
Public Pool URL vs. Joining a Regular Pool: Which Fits You
Solo mining through Public Pool and joining a conventional pool are two different economic bets, not two versions of the same thing. Solo mining means rare, large, all-or-nothing payouts with no mining pool fee eating into them. A regular FPPS or PPS pool means small, frequent, predictable payouts, smoothed out by sharing the reward across everyone’s combined hashrate.
The practical cutoff is your own hashrate relative to the network. At a few terahashes from one or two Bitaxes, the expected wait for a solo block runs into years or decades — fine if you’re mining for the lottery-ticket upside and don’t need steady income from it. At meaningfully higher hashrate, the variance shrinks enough that solo mining starts looking less like a gamble and more like a different payout schedule for the same expected return.
Before deciding, it’s worth looking at what you’d actually trade away — compare Bitcoin pool fees and hashrate live to see what a regular pool’s cut and payout frequency look like next to going solo. There’s no universally “right” choice here: it comes down to your hashrate today and whether you’re willing to run a node for the privacy and control that self-hosting adds.
If solo mining fits what you’re running, the stratum address above is all you need to switch tonight. If it doesn’t, the fee and hashrate comparison linked above is the next thing worth fifteen minutes of your time.
Frequently Asked Questions
It’s a stratum+tcp://public-pool.io address with its listening port — check the current port on public-pool.io or the project’s GitHub before connecting, since it can change between releases.
There’s no pool fee to pay — you’re mining solo against your own node, so the block reward goes straight to your Bitcoin address with no operator taking a cut.
Yes — enter the stratum URL and port in the Bitaxe’s AxeOS config, with your Bitcoin payout address plus a worker name as the username.
Self-hosting keeps your Bitcoin address and hashrate off a third-party server and can lower latency, but it means running your own node around the clock — the hosted instance trades that privacy and control for convenience.
Sources
- Public Pool — Public Pool official site
- Umbrel — Umbrel, the node OS commonly used to self-host Public Pool
- Running a Bitcoin full node — Bitcoin.org
