NerdMiner: what it is, its solo odds and setup
The NerdMiner is open-source Bitcoin mining firmware for small ESP32 boards, published by BitMaker: a palm-sized board with a little screen that hashes, shows its shares and turns Bitcoin mining into something you can hold. It has no mining chip, so it is a lesson and a lottery ticket, not a miner that earns.
Mining solo at today's difficulty, one NerdMiner v2 would expect to find a Bitcoin block about once every 250,000,000,000 years: a 1 in 89,000,000,000,000 chance on any given day.
Every NerdMiner in the catalog
| Model | Hashrate | Power | J/TH (lower is better) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
NerdMiner v2firmware for ESP32 boards · BitMaker (open source) · ESP32 microcontroller (no mining ASIC) BitcoinMerch ↗ In stock Power Mining ↗ In stock | about 78 kH/s (the project publishes no figure) | not published | not published |
J/TH is joules per terahash: the electricity each unit of work costs, so lower is better. (calc.) means power divided by hashrate, worked out by us because the maker does not print it. Makers usually allow about ±5% on hashrate and ±5–10% on power. The Source column links the page each figure comes from.
Power, odds and the wait
Chance of a block in any one year: 1 in 250,000,000,000 · open in the calculator
Computed at the live network difficulty of 140.58T with the same formula as the odds calculator: mean wait = difficulty × 232 ÷ hashrate. Power bars are to scale with the other machines shown; wait bars use a log scale, so very different waits fit side by side.
A mean wait is not a countdown. Each hash is a fresh, independent draw, so a miner can find a block on its first day or run far longer than its mean wait and find nothing. More hashrate shortens the average; nothing guarantees a block, a payback or any income.
About the NerdMiner
Its hashrate is counted in thousands of hashes a second, where a Bitaxe counts in trillions, so its odds are not small but astronomical: at today's difficulty one NerdMiner would expect a block about once in hundreds of billions of years, the exact figure being at the top of this page. That is the point of it. It mines the way a big machine does, on real block templates with real shares, just slowly enough to make the size of the lottery visible.
People run one for the same reasons they keep a Bitaxe on the desk: to watch shares arrive, to learn how a pool and a block template work, and for a chance that is tiny but not zero. If you want odds that move, the next steps up are a Bitaxe or a NerdQAxe++.
Firmware
The firmware is flashed from a web browser with the project's web flasher and then set up from the board's own Wi-Fi setup page: the pool, the port and your Bitcoin address. It runs on several ESP32 boards, the LilyGO T-Display S3 being the best known. The project publishes no hashrate, so the figure on this page is the calculator's 78 kH/s.
Power and cooling
- USB power. A NerdMiner runs from a USB port or a phone charger. The project publishes no power figure, so this page shows none.
- No heat or noise to plan for. There is no fan and no mining chip; it is a small microcontroller board doing the arithmetic in software.
Where to buy
No shop is checked for the whole family yet. These list the exact model, with the stock each showed when last checked:
NerdMiner v2
- BitcoinMerch ↗ In stock Referral link
- Power Mining ↗ In stock Referral link
SoloLuck doesn't sell mining hardware directly. Some retailer links may earn us a commission on qualifying purchases. These referrals do not affect mining fees, block rewards, mining odds, or our independent hardware recommendations.
Set it up on SoloLuck
- How to point a NerdMiner at a solo pool
- Start mining: the SoloLuck setup wizard
- Solo mining odds calculator
- Is solo mining worth it?
- Risk disclosure: what expected time really means
Other hardware: Bitaxe · NerdQAxe · Avalon · Lucky Miner
How this page is paid for
The mining pool is free. Hardware referrals help support SoloLuck. The pool's fee is 0%, a found block pays the finder in full, and referral links have been on these pages since October 2026.
Links marked Referral link may earn SoloLuck a commission if you buy; links marked Plain link earn nothing. No shop can buy a spec, a place in a table, different odds or a better word from us. Specs come from the makers' and designers' own pages, linked next to each figure. How shops can work with us: Partners.
Quick answers
Can a NerdMiner v2 find a Bitcoin block?
Yes: every hash is a fresh draw. At today's difficulty one NerdMiner v2 would expect a block about once every 250,000,000,000 years, a 1 in 89,000,000,000,000 chance on any given day, and most never find one.
Can a NerdMiner find a Bitcoin block?
In principle, yes: every hash is a fresh draw. In practice its odds are astronomically small, so treat it as a lesson and a lottery ticket, not as income.
Which SoloLuck port is for a NerdMiner?
Port 3335, the Nano tier for CPUs and NerdMiners, whose minimum difficulty of 1 lets even a tiny hashrate show shares. Use your own Bitcoin address as the username.