Glossary
Mining terms explained simply
From ASIC to Stratum: the key terms around Bitcoin mining at home.
- ASIC
- An ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) is a special chip built for a single job, which it does very efficiently: in Bitcoin mining, computing SHA-256 hashes. All modern Bitcoin miners rely on ASICs.
- AxeOS
- The open firmware of the Bitaxe. Through a web dashboard in your browser you set pool, frequency and voltage and see hashrate and temperature live, without a manufacturer account. The Nerdaxe, NerdQaxe and NerdOctaxe use NerdOS, an open offshoot of AxeOS.
- BM1370
- A Bitmain mining ASIC from the current chip generation. It sits in the Bitaxe Gamma, NerdQaxe ++ and NerdOctaxe and delivers a lot of hashrate per watt, around 12 to 19 J/TH depending on the device.
- Bitaxe
- An open design for a miner with a single ASIC (currently the BM1370). Many people start home and solo mining with a Bitaxe. See the Bitaxe Gamma 601.
- Block reward
- The amount of Bitcoin plus transaction fees that the finder of a block receives. In solo mining you get the full reward if you hit a block.
- Difficulty
- The mining difficulty adjusts roughly every two weeks so that on average a block is found every 10 minutes. As the global hashrate rises, difficulty rises too.
- Efficiency (J/TH)
- Joules per terahash measures how much energy a miner needs for a given amount of compute. The lower the figure, the less the same hashrate costs in electricity.
- Halving
- About every four years the block reward halves. This makes Bitcoin scarcer and shapes mining economics over the long term.
- Hashrate
- A miner’s compute power, measured in hashes per second (e.g. TH/s = trillions per second). More hashrate means a higher chance of finding a block.
- Lightning
- The Lightning Network is a second layer on top of Bitcoin for fast, cheap payments. You can use it to pay in our shop.
- NerdQaxe / NerdOctaxe
- Open-source miners with several BM1370 ASICs for more hashrate than a single Bitaxe. The NerdQaxe ++ uses four, the NerdOctaxe eight ASICs.
- Nonce
- A number the miner keeps changing to find a valid block hash. Trying vast numbers of nonces is what mining actually is.
- Pool mining
- Many miners combine their hashrate in a pool and share the reward by contribution. Instead of the all-or-nothing of solo mining, you get small payouts regularly.
- Solo mining
- You mine alone against the entire network. If you find a block, the full reward is yours; if you do not, you get nothing. More on this in our guide on solo mining.
- Stratum
- The protocol your miner uses to connect to a pool. In AxeOS you enter the stratum URL, port and your Bitcoin address.