> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.basedmining.xyz/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How It Works

> Hybrid lottery pool in one page. No claim flow, no operator fee, no fluff.

## The short version

1. Miners — hardware, NFT-backed rentals, and (soon) agents — point hashpower at the pool.
2. The pool aggregates that hashpower and works the current Bitcoin block.
3. When a block is found:
   * **The miner who solved it gets 1 BTC**, paid directly by the Bitcoin protocol.
   * **The remaining \~2.1+ BTC + fees** is split proportionally among everyone who contributed to that round.
4. NFT holders on Base get their share of pool rewards via \$cbBTC. Sent directly to their wallet. No claim involved.
5. Home miners connecting with a Bitcoin wallet get paid out via \$BTC
6. **0% operator fee** on block rewards. The pool earns when you do, not from your mining.
7. Payouts go out automatically.

That's the whole thing. The rest of this page is just detail.

## The hybrid model

Most mining pools are one of two flavors:

* **Solo pools** — finder takes everything; everyone else gets zero. Great if you win, brutal if you don't.
* **Traditional pools (PPS / FPPS)** — finder gets nothing extra; everything is split smoothly. Steady, but you never get a big hit.

BasedMining is **hybrid**:

* **Finder reward: fixed 1 BTC**, paid by Bitcoin itself via the coinbase transaction. Chain-enforced — even the pool operator can't reroute it.
* **Pool remainder: \~2.1+ BTC + fees**, distributed proportionally to everyone who contributed work to that round, by accepted-share difficulty (PPLNS-by-diff).

So you get the upside of solo (a real shot at 1 BTC) plus the steady accrual of a traditional pool (your share of every block the pool finds).

See [The Hybrid Model](/pool/hybrid-model) for the deep dive, or [Pool Comparisons](/pool/comparison) for how this stacks up against solo and PPS pools.

## Where hashpower comes from

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="Home miners" icon="hard-drive">
    Anyone running an ASIC machine— Bitaxe, Antminer, Nerdminer, etc. — pointing at our stratum endpoint.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Hashpower NFTs" icon="sparkles">
    NFT mints rent real spot-market hashpower and route it to the pool for the duration of a Block Party.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Agents (soon)" icon="robot">
    Programmatic hashpower purchases from AI agents, settled via x402. Mining skillsets shipping soon.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Rounds and Block Parties

<Steps>
  <Step title="A round is open">
    A round starts the moment the previous block was approved. Every share submitted while the round is open counts toward your share of the eventual reward.
  </Step>

  <Step title="The pool finds a block">
    A miner connected to the pool finds a valid block and submits it to Bitcoin. The 1 BTC finder reward is paid by the Bitcoin protocol — no operator action needed.
  </Step>

  <Step title="The remainder is distributed">
    The pool distributes BTC and cbBTC, splitting it amongst contributors proportional to their work.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Rewards go out">
    Rewards are paid to:

    * Direct miners — to the BTC address registered on their worker
    * NFT holders — to the EVM address that holds the NFT
  </Step>

  <Step title="The next round opens">
    The cycle resets. Your shares from the previous round don't carry over — the round model rewards work done in the most recent window.
  </Step>
</Steps>

**Block Parties** are scheduled 24-hour events where the pool concentrates extra hashpower (Hashpower NFT mints activate during these windows) into a single round. More hashpower in the same round = better odds of finding a block. Every Hashpower NFT mint auto-queues for the next Block Party.

## What you don't have to do

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Home-first" icon="house">
    The pool is tuned for small miners. No minimum hashrate, no enterprise gating, no opaque scoring formulas.
  </Card>

  <Card title="On-chain rewards" icon="link">
    NFT holders interact with mining the way they interact with everything else on Base — through their wallet.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Agent-ready" icon="robot">
    The pool is being designed so AI agents can buy optimization services per-call using x402. See "For Agents" for the planned spec.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Operator transparency" icon="eye">
    We publish what we do. Hashrate, fee, blocks found, and payouts are live on the dashboard.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

* **Hardware miners** receive BTC payouts directly to the address they registered as their worker username. We don't custody it.
* **Hashpower NFT holders** receive cbBTC payouts on Base proportional to the hashpower their NFT contributed. Sent directly. No claim, no approval, no wallet interaction.
* **Agents** (when live) will receive payouts to the address attached to their x402 settlement payload.

## What you can do

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Connect a miner" icon="plug" href="/miners/connect-your-rig">
    Five-minute setup. You're contributing as soon as your first share lands.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Mint Hashpower" icon="sparkles" href="/onchain/mint-hash">
    Four tiers from $15 to $250. Pay in ETH, USDC, or cbBTC.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Watch the live dashboard" icon="chart-line" href="/dashboard/overview">
    Pool hashrate, leaderboards, network conditions — public.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Calculate your odds" icon="calculator" href="/calculator/overview">
    Plug in a hashrate, see your probabilistic shot at the next block.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>