NerdMiner v2 setup: the board, the flasher, the pool and your real odds

NerdMiner v2 is open-source firmware, the software you install on an ESP32 A microcontroller worth a few euros, the kind in smart plugs. It can compute SHA-256, but millions of times slower than an ASIC chip: an ESP32 miner has no real chance. The lottery miner trap circuit board, published on GitHub by BitMaker. The project describes its own goal: to help you learn how mining works, and to have a nice object on your desk. It does try to find a Bitcoin block, solo, but with a microcontroller, not a mining chip.

An ESP32 is a general-purpose chip, the one found in smart plugs and weather stations. The NerdMiner puts the chip to work on the mining calculation, SHA-256 The hash calculation Bitcoin uses, and so mining. Bitcoin Cash uses the same one: the same machines mine either. applied twice in a row (the principle here), with both cores when it has two, and speaks Stratum The language machines and pools speak., the language of pools A server that machines connect to. A regular pool shares the earnings, a solo pool does not. Solo or pool?, like a real miner. Its screen cycles through three views: your mining stats, a clock, and network figures (block height A block's number: how many blocks were written before it since 2009. On this site, it is the draw number. and bitcoin price, among others).

The latest published version is 1.8.3, released in September 2025, and the 1.8.0 pre-release added hashing accelerated by the chip’s hardware (“hw acceleration” in its notes). The README lists about twenty supported boards.

The project’s original board is the LILYGO T-Display S3, an ESP32-S3 with a colour screen: the simplest choice, the one the README names first, along with its 3D printed case. A few other boards from the official list:

Expect roughly €10 to €20 depending on the model, as I noted in my fake miners guide. You also need a USB cable that carries data, not just power: it is a common reason the flasher cannot see a board. The 3D printed case is optional, its files are in the repository.

Should you aim for an ESP32-S3 board? Yes if you want the highest hashrate Computing power: the number of attempts per second of a machine or of the whole network. The higher it is, the more tickets you play in each draw., but do not pick your board for its kH/s: from the slowest to the fastest, your odds stay at zero in practice (the table below shows it). Pick the screen you like.

Flashing means copying the firmware onto the board. It all happens in the browser, with nothing to install, using a browser that can talk to USB ports: Chrome, Edge, Chromium or Brave.

1. Plug the board into your computer with a USB data cable.
2. Open the online flasher the project recommends, flasher.bitronics.store. The README suggests Chrome in incognito mode.
3. Select the NerdMiner firmware and your board model, then let the browser use the board’s USB port when it asks.
4. Start flashing and wait until it finishes, without unplugging.

The fallback method. The README also describes ESPTool, Espressif’s online flasher: download the repository, then write the .bin files from the folder that matches your board, at 115,200 baud.

If flashing stops halfway, put the board into boot mode: unplug it, hold the bottom right button, then plug it back in. On an ESP32-WROOM board, hold BOOT and press RESET. As a last resort, ESPTool’s “Erase all flash” option wipes the whole configuration: the README mentions Wi-Fi failures that were fixed this way.

To update, repeat the same steps; with ESPTool, only the 0x10000_firmware.bin file needs writing.

On first boot, the NerdMiner creates its own Wi-Fi network. With your phone or computer:

1. Join the NerdMinerAP network (or the name you set in the flasher, if you gave one), password MineYourCoins.
2. The settings page opens by itself. If it does not, type 192.168.4.1 in the browser, the default address of WiFiManager, the portal the NerdMiner uses.
3. Pick your home network and enter its password, then fill in the fields below.
4. Save: the board restarts, joins your Wi-Fi and starts mining.

These field names and defaults come from the project’s portal code and settings file. Without a Bitcoin address the NerdMiner does not mine, the README says. Use an address from your wallet (which one to choose), and never type your recovery phrase The 12 or 24 words a wallet gives you when it is created: they rebuild your keys on another device. Whoever has them has your bitcoin: never give them to anyone. 5 mistakes to avoid: a miner only needs a receiving address.

Changing the settings later. On a two-button board, USB-C on the right: hold the top button while plugging the board in to reopen the portal, or hold it for 5 seconds while it runs to wipe everything and start over. On a one-button board, a 5-second press wipes the configuration. Boards with an SD card reader can also read their settings from a config.json file, template in the README.

A NerdMiner sends very low difficulty How many attempts it takes on average to find a block. It adjusts itself about every two weeks. Difficulty explained shares. The README warns that not every pool can see it. It still mines, but you will see nothing on the pool’s website. So you need a pool that accepts very small devices.

Public Pool is already set in the firmware: nothing to change, and you follow your device on web.public-pool.io by typing your address. The README also lists pool.nerdminers.org, the project’s official pool, and several other pools meant for small devices.

FindMyBlock is the solo pool I built, so I am saying it plainly: I am not neutral. Its core is based on Public Pool, it recognises NerdMiners and gives them a suitable share difficulty, so they show up on your page. In the portal: eu.findmyblock.xyz as Pool url, 3335 as Pool port, and your address followed by a dot and a name as the address. The FindMyBlock guide covers the rest.

Solo CK (solo.ckpool.org), great for a Bitaxe, is listed by the README among the pools that do not suit low difficulty shares. Its own page sets a minimum difficulty of 10,000, advises against mining Bitcoin below 100 GH/s, and takes 2% of the block. To compare every solo pool: which solo pool to choose.

Your odds depend only on your hashrate compared with the network’s: about 1,006 EH/s, or 1,006 billion billion hashes per second (network as of 17 October 2026). The trap is in the units: 250 kH/s is 0.00000025 TH/s. One kH/s is a thousand hashes per second, one TH/s a trillion: a factor of a billion between the two.

Published hashrate of a few NerdMiner boards, compared with a fake ESP32 miner and two real ASIC miners. Odds of finding a block per year solo, device running all year, computed from the difficulty of the network as of 17 October 2026. 1 kH/s is a thousand hashes per second; 1 TH/s is a trillion.

Device	Published hashrate	Source	In TH/s	Odds of a block per year, solo
ESP32-C3 Super Mini	24 kH/s	release notes 1.7.0	0.000000024	1 in 800 billion
Wemos Lolin S2 Mini	38 kH/s	release notes 1.7.0	0.000000038	1 in 500 billion
Classic ESP32 (DevKit, WROOM)	up to 50 kH/s	release notes 1.6.1	0.00000005	1 in 380 billion
LILYGO T-Display S3	up to 56 kH/s	release notes 1.6.1	0.000000056	1 in 340 billion
LILYGO T-Display S3 AMOLED Touch, Waveshare ESP32-S3-GEEK	78 kH/s	release notes 1.7.0	0.000000078	1 in 250 billion
ESP32-S3, recent firmware	about 250 kH/s	nerdminers.org	0.00000025	1 in 77 billion
Gold Nugget, ready-made fake ESP32 miner	about 350 kH/s rated	my guide	0.00000035	1 in 55 billion
NerdNOS, ASIC chip (my review)	0.12 to 0.2 TH/s rated	manufacturer	0.16	1 in 119,700
Bitaxe Gamma, BM1370 ASIC chip (my review)	1.2 TH/s rated	manufacturer	1.2	1 in 16,000

Read the last column as a waiting time: at 250 kH/s, a 1 in 77 billion chance per year also means about 77 billion years on average before a block, more than 5 times the age of the universe. The older release-note figures predate the hardware acceleration of version 1.8: your board may do more (nerdminers.org quotes about 250 kH/s for an ESP32-S3), which changes nothing in practice.

For comparison, a Bitaxe Gamma is about 4.8 million times faster than a NerdMiner at 250 kH/s, and even the small NerdNOS about 480,000 to 800,000 times (0.12 to 0.2 TH/s rated). The solo mining calculator redoes these sums live, for any hashrate.

Very little, but I could not find a reliable measurement published by the project: nerdminers.org shows figures that disagree from one spot to another on the same page, from under 1 W to about 20 W. So I will not give you a number I have not measured myself. Power use also depends on the board and its screen.

To put it in perspective, at €0.20 per kWh, running 24 hours a day:

To know yours, plug a small USB power meter between the charger and the board: it is the only figure that counts. For real machines, the miner power consumption guide gives wall-meter measurements.

It is great for:

• Learning. Flashing a board, understanding what a pool, a share, a difficulty and an address are: all of solo mining, in miniature, for the price of a meal.
• A desk object. The clock, the block height and the live price, on a screen that makes no noise.
• A symbolic lottery ticket. In theory a NerdMiner can find a block; in practice its odds are so low that it is best seen as a bit of fun.

It will not make you money. Even if earnings were shared like in a regular pool, a NerdMiner at 250 kH/s would earn about 0.0041 satoshi a year on average (network as of 17 October 2026): it would take about 240 years to earn a single satoshi, a hundred-millionth of a bitcoin. A NerdMiner is not profitable, and no setting will make it profitable. For profitability in general, see is Bitcoin mining profitable in 2026.

The NerdMiner itself is not a scam: it is a free, open-source project that says clearly it is meant for learning. The trap is ESP32 miners sold ready-made, at a high price, as a chance to win, like the Gold Nugget at about 350 kH/s. Three things to check before buying: check the unit (kH/s or MH/s, walk away), the chip (an ESP32 is not an ASIC miner), and the price per TH/s. It is all in the ESP32 lottery miner trap. Same story for computers and phones: mining on a PC or a phone.

If the NerdMiner made you want more, there are two next steps, with a real mining chip:

To compare every machine for your budget: which miner to choose. And to keep your feet on the ground: even with 13 machines and about 50 TH/s, I still have not found a block.