Put your hashrate where your mouth is. 🤘

quoting
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The fight is on. Pick your side!

Most solo mining pools are boring. You plug in your miner, you stare at a dashboard, you wait. Maybe you find a block. Probably you don't. That's it. That's the whole experience. Arguing about Core vs. Knots is boring as well.

I built something different. Welcome to the Battleground! A real-time hashrate war between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots, running 24/7, powered by actual mining hardware, with Lightning sats on the line.

Here's how it works

Two solo mining pools run in parallel. One connected to Bitcoin Core. One to Bitcoin Knots. Both mine real Bitcoin blocks on mainnet. You point your miner at the side you believe in. Your hashrate becomes your vote.

Core: stratum+tcp://pool.gobrrr.me:3333

Knots: stratum+tcp://pool.gobrrr.me:3334

The tug-of-war bar doesn't lie. It shows exactly which ideology is winning, in real time, with real proof-of-work behind it.

The Battleground isn't Social Media. You can't ratio your way to victory. You either hash or you don't. Walk the walk, don't talk the talk!

Fairness?

Both Nodes are absolutely identically specced to ensure no unfair advantage. A VM with 12 Cores, 32GB, 2TB SSDs for each of the nodes. Same server, same location, same internet connection. A level playing field! But, users who connect via the standard port (3333) will automatically mine on the Core side, which kind of mimics real life. If you want Knots, you have to act.\ \ The Nodes

Warriors, XP, and way too much time spent on this

Each connected worker is a Warrior. Warriors earn XP. XP unlocks levels. Levels go from Satoshi Nomad at Level 1 all the way to Nakamoto at Level 21, the only mythic rank, blood red, basically unreachable unless you're seriously committed or seriously degenerate. Probably both.

Here's how you stack XP:

• +1 XP per active minute of mining

• +500 XP daily uptime bonus (24h continuous mining)

• +500 XP one-time milestone for your first share ≥ 1G diff

• +50 XP for giving a zap, +25 XP for receiving one

• +5,000 XP weekly reward winner bonus

• +50,000 XP for finding a block (yes, really)

The quality tiers are straight out of WoW loot tables:

⬜ Common → 🟩 Uncommon → 🟦 Rare → 🟪 Epic → 🟨 Legendary → 🔴 Mythic

Your best-ever share difficulty determines your color. Below 1K is Common. 1M+ gets you Rare. Hit a 1G+ share and you're Epic. 1T+ and you're Legendary. 10T+ and you've achieved Mythic status, something most miners never will. I spent way too much time balancing these thresholds, but the result is pretty satisfying.

The grind to Level 21

Let's be real, reaching Nakamoto status is not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be a badge of honor, proof that you've been in the trenches, hashing away while others were just watching charts. You need 300K XP to hit Level 21. That's a lot of minutes.

The XP curve gets steep. Really steep. Level 10 feels achievable at around 100K XP. Level 15 takes dedication. Level 21? That's reserved for the ones who simply don't quit. When you see a Nakamoto on the leaderboard, you'll know they earned it.

But here's the thing. If you look at the XP table closely, you might notice there are multiple paths up the mountain. Some warriors have already figured out that the obvious grind isn't the only way. I'm curious to see what strategies people come up with.

Will anyone actually reach Level 21? I honestly don't know. But I want to find out.

Clans? Hell yes!

Warriors can form or join a Clan, shown as a colored tag on your warrior card. Each clan belongs to one side, Core or Knots. You can create a clan via the + Clan button on the warriors table, or join an existing one at battleground/register. As a Clan Leader, you can set a fee in Sats and define the cost for others to join your Clan, of course you can also kick them. Clan treasuries are accounted for separately and will be paid out to the Clanleaders LN Adress on the 21st of each month, at 21:21 CET.

Why clans? Because wars are fought by armies, not just individuals. Coordinate with your fellow warriors, build a reputation, make your mark on the leaderboard as a group. The clan tag travels with you.

Lightning rewards

Register a Lightning Address and the ⚡ zap button becomes active on your warrior card. Anyone can zap you sats. You can zap enemies. You can zap allies. And here's a detail some people miss: zapping others also earns you XP. Twice as much as receiving, actually. Make of that what you will. This is the most important part, if you don't register your LN Adress, you won't be able to receive any payouts and the other players will thank you for your donation.

Weekly Rewards: Every Monday at 00:00 UTC, 7% of the Pool Wallet gets split among the top 5 warriors per side, ranked by weekly shares. That's 0.7% each, automatically sent to your Lightning Address. No claiming, no waiting. You need a registered Lightning Address to be eligible, obviously. This also means, the more traction this gets, the higher the payouts will be, so, tell your friends and start hashing!

Don't have a Lightning Address? Your rewards stay in the pool wallet and will be added to the next payouts. Forever. That's on you. By the way, BIG shoutout to LNbits (nprofile…elle) for creating the infrastructure that makes integrating the Lightning Network a breeze!

Spawn Hosted Warriors: Put your sats where your ideology is

The Spawn Warriors campaigns let you fund actual mining hardware that gets deployed into the battle permanently. Bitaxe Gammas start at 19K sats, NerdQAxe++ units at 99K sats. First contribution kicks off the campaign, others can join in. When the goal is reached, the miner goes live and mines for 4444 blocks.

You choose the side. The device goes live. The hashrate is real.

This is probably the only place on the internet where you can financially weaponize a Bitcoin civil war. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but it's definitely a thing.

Why Core vs Knots?

Because it matters. Bitcoin Knots filters ordinals and inscriptions at the mempool level. Bitcoin Core doesn't. These two node implementations have genuinely different visions for what gets mined and what gets relayed.

Instead of arguing about it on Twitter like everyone else, I made it a hashrate competition. Your hash is your speech. Put your hashrate where your mouth is!

Monthly Hardware Giveaway

Every month, the warriors with the highest monthly share difficulties win prizes:

🥇 Rank 1: Bitaxe Gamma 🥈 Rank 2: NerdMiner 🥉 Rank 3: TNA BDOC Firmware Coupon for a miner of your choice

No entry fee, no raffle, no bullshit. Just mine, get lucky with a fat share, and walk away with free stuff. Winners get announced at the start of each month. Hardware ships worldwide. You need to be actively mining until the month ends, if your drop out earlier, there's nothing the pool can do. He who's not on the battlefield can't win the fight. 🤷

Still zero-fee, still solo

The pool itself hasn't changed, aside from the fact that now two pools are runnin simultaneously. Zero-fee, solo-mining only. Every block your hardware finds, you keep the full reward. The Battleground layer runs on top of that. The Lightning economy is separate from block rewards. You're not trading one for the other.

A 2% pool fee applies to Lightning transactions (zaps, weekly rewards). This is beta software, so only deposit sats you can afford to lose.

This was a lot of fun to build. I hope it's equally fun to use. Mine solo. Earn Sats. Fight your Enemies!

Join the Battleground:

<https://pool.gobrrr.me/battleground>

Register your warrior:

https://pool.gobrrr.me/battleground/register (or just click the LN icon next to your warrior's name.)

Pick a side. Hash or be hashed.

Got ideas?

This thing is still evolving. If you have suggestions, complaints, or features you desperately need, drop me your BIPs (Battleground Improvement Proposals). I know you want to tell me what's wrong with it. That's fine. I probably agree with half of it anyway.

Fieel free to shoot me a message. The best ideas will make it into the next update.