Open-source, self-hostable Bitcoin mining pool. Solo and PPLNS modes. No custodied funds — payouts direct from coinbase. One-click deployable. Anyone can run their own pool. AGPLv3 licensed.
Hydra Pool is an open-source Bitcoin mining pool developed under the 256 Foundation grant program, built to be self-hosted and one-click deployable by anyone. Mining pools today are naturally centralized, prohibitively complex to operate, and almost entirely closed source — leaving miners vulnerable to coercion, censorship, and KYC demands from pool operators. Hydra Pool changes that by putting pool infrastructure in the hands of individual miners.
Written in Rust under the AGPLv3 license, Hydra Pool supports both private solo mining and PPLNS share accounting. Payouts go directly from the coinbase transaction — the pool operator never custodies funds. Users can download and independently verify all share accounting via the built-in API. Deployment is Docker-based, and a Prometheus + Grafana dashboard is included out of the box for monitoring pool, user, and worker hashrates.
A live test instance is running at pool.256foundation.org:3333 with stats at dash.256f.org — point a miner there to try it before running your own.
This category is the place for community discussion around Hydra Pool. Use it for:
- Setup & deployment — Docker installation, Bitcoin node configuration, VPS vs. local hardware, networking and DNS
- Configuration help —
config.tomlsettings, RPC connections, PPLNS vs. solo mode, donation and fee configuration - Troubleshooting — pool connectivity, Grafana/Prometheus dashboard issues, share accounting problems, block weight configuration
- Running a public pool — reverse proxy setup, authentication, exposing your pool to outside miners
- Development discussion — extending payout schemes, P2Pool v2 integration, Stratum V2 support, novel accounting models
- Integration with the full stack — running Hydra Pool alongside Ember One, Libre Board, and Mujina as a complete self-sovereign mining system
What belongs on GitHub instead: Bug reports, pull requests, and feature requests with technical detail belong in the Hydra Pool GitHub repo. This forum is for the surrounding conversation — setup questions, operator experiences, ideas, and community coordination.
Funded by the 256 Foundation