Which Pool Should an Aussie Bitaxer Actually Use in 2026?

There are five pools that an Aussie home miner will realistically consider in 2026. Each one has a clear reason to exist, and a clear reason to avoid it. This is the honest tradeoff table.

The five pools that matter

Pool	Model	Fee	Account?	Endpoint closest to AU	Aussie-politics angle
ausolo.ckpool.org	Solo	0%	No	Hosted in AU	Aussie-run, lowest latency on mainland
Parasite Pool (parasite.wtf)	Solo	2% on block finds	No	EU primary, SG failover	Low-fee, direct wallet payouts, vibes-based cohesion
Ocean (ocean.xyz)	TIDES (pooled, transparent)	0% explicit + TIDES weighting	Yes	Singapore, Tokyo	Luke Dashjr’s project; open block templates, no censored txs
Braiins Pool (braiins.com)	FPPS	2.5%	Yes	Prague HQ, global CDN	Longest-running pool (est. 2010 as Slush); Stratum V2 reference implementation
Braiins Solo (braiins.com)	Solo (CKPool stack)	0.5%	No	Prague HQ	Same CKPool software as solo.ckpool.org; 0.5% credits CKPool authors
Public-Pool (public-pool.io)	Solo (variant)	0%	No	US primary	Community-run, open-source, minimal gui

Nothing else is worth the stratum string. Scam pools proliferate — if a pool isn’t on this list, treat it as unknown until proven otherwise.

ausolo.ckpool.org — the obvious default

ckpool infrastructure hosted in Australia, running the solo variant. This is the default pool for Aussie Bitaxers for two reasons:

1. Latency: stratum RTT from Sydney is consistently <10 ms. Melbourne and Brisbane: <20 ms. That’s half the RTT of any international pool.
2. Solo payouts: if your shares find the block, you get the full 3.125 BTC block reward (minus ckpool’s 2% donation, which is conventional). There is no pooled payout — hit or miss.

Use ausolo when: you want the lowest-latency endpoint and the solo-lottery story, and you’re OK with the realistic odds (a Bitaxe Gamma has a ~0.01%/year chance of finding a block at current difficulty). The jackpot is AU$312,500 at $100k BTC.

Don’t use ausolo if: you want steady daily sats. The expected daily payout is zero — everything is variance.

Parasite Pool — the Aussie-adjacent cult classic

parasite.wtf is not an Aussie pool, but culturally it’s the pool Australian solo miners most identify with. Run by the parasite community out of Europe, with a Singapore failover endpoint.

Key differences from ausolo:

• 2% fee only charged when your block is found (so effectively free for most miners)
• Direct wallet payouts — no pool account, no sign-up, you paste your bitcoin address as your stratum username
• Higher latency from Australia — expect 250–300 ms RTT on the EU primary, ~150–200 ms on SG
• Cultural cohesion — the parasite.space dashboard, the memes, the block-find celebrations

Use Parasite when: you want solo variance AND the community. Every block found on Parasite is celebrated across Nostr and X — if you hit, you hit publicly.

Ocean — for the ideologues

Ocean (ocean.xyz) is the project Luke Dashjr and friends launched as a political statement: transparent block templates, no censorship of OFAC-flagged transactions, and a novel payout model called TIDES (a rolling window that weights recent shares more heavily than FPPS, reducing luck-based variance but slightly penalising new joiners).

• Payout model: TIDES — pooled, but with different incentives from traditional FPPS
• Fee: 0% explicit, TIDES weighting is the implicit cost/benefit
• Endpoint from AU: Singapore is ~80 ms, Tokyo is ~120 ms
• Requires an account — sign up at ocean.xyz with your payout address

Use Ocean when: you care about the politics — you want to mine with a pool that publishes its templates, refuses to exclude transactions, and pays out via Lightning optionally. You get steady sats but you’re also contributing to a deliberate protest pool.

Don’t use Ocean if: you just want the simplest setup and the steady payouts FPPS gives you.

Braiins — the pro’s choice

Braiins Pool (formerly Slush Pool, oldest continuously-running pool on bitcoin) is the boring, reliable, FPPS option with 15+ years of uptime. If you came from a Whatsminer or Antminer background, you probably already have an account.

• Fee: 2.5% FPPS (per Braiins Academy). Account-holder payouts are net of this.
• Stratum V2 reference implementation — V2 adds encryption (MITM protection) and eventually lets miners choose their own block templates. Template-choice is the decentralisation story; today’s V2 mainly buys you hashrate-hijack resistance. V2 on Braiins requires Braiins OS firmware; stock firmware and AxeOS V2 are not yet spec-compatible.
• Global CDN endpoints — from Australia you’ll hit the Singapore/Tokyo POPs, latency ~80–100 ms
• Requires account, payout threshold configurable

Also: Braiins Solo. Braiins runs a separate solo endpoint on the CKPool software stack (same codebase as solo.ckpool.org). 0.5% fee (credits CKPool authors), no registration, anonymous — use your BTC address as the stratum user. Functionally similar to ausolo but hosted in Prague.

Use Braiins FPPS when: you want steady FPPS payouts, a mature dashboard, and don’t care about the political angle. This is the least interesting choice and the most likely to just work.

Why FPPS exists at all

FPPS pays a fixed reward per share regardless of the pool’s actual luck, which eliminates pool hopping — the practice of jumping between PPLNS pools to harvest high-luck streaks. PPLNS and TIDES are hop-resistant by design; FPPS is hop-proof because there’s nothing to hop toward. Worth knowing because some marketing copy implies FPPS is inferior to PPLNS; the tradeoff is actually variance vs hop-proofing, not yield.

Public-Pool — the chaos option

public-pool.io is community-run, open-source, and… patchy. The dashboard is minimal. Occasionally goes down. Endpoint is US-hosted so RTT from Australia is ~180–220 ms.

• Fee: 0%
• Solo variant — you get the full block reward if you hit
• No account, wallet-as-username like Parasite
• Smaller share population — your shares are a bigger fraction of the pool’s work, which some argue gives better “luck”

Use Public-Pool when: you want solo lottery but don’t want to trust either ckpool or Parasite’s infrastructure. A contrarian third option.

The one-screen decision tree

I want steady daily payouts, the least hassle, and I don’t care about politics.

Braiins Pool. Singapore endpoint. Done.

I want steady daily payouts AND I care about censorship resistance / open templates.

Ocean. Singapore endpoint. Sign up.

I want a lottery ticket with the lowest latency possible.

ausolo.ckpool.org. Aussie-hosted. Use your wallet address as the username.

I want a lottery ticket and I want it to be fun.

Parasite Pool. EU or SG endpoint. Join the parasite Nostr relay for the vibes.

I want the minimalist open-source solo option that isn’t ckpool.

Public-Pool. US endpoint. Expect the occasional outage.

Latency in practice (rough pings from Sydney)

Pool	Endpoint	Typical RTT
ausolo.ckpool.org	AU	5–15 ms
Ocean	Singapore	80–120 ms
Braiins	SG / Tokyo	80–150 ms
Parasite (SG failover)	Singapore	150–200 ms
Public-Pool	US	180–220 ms
Parasite (EU primary)	Europe	250–300 ms

For a Bitaxe submitting one share every few seconds, the difference between 10 ms and 300 ms is functionally zero — maybe 0.01% stale shares. So don’t pick on latency. Pick on model and politics.

Why “Aussie” actually matters

You’ll read US blogs recommending pools based on the US retail context. An Aussie miner’s decision is shaped by three facts those blogs miss:

1. ausolo.ckpool.org exists and is run out of Australia. That’s a home-ground advantage no overseas pool can match on latency.
2. Parasite has strong Aussie community representation — disproportionately so given the pool is European. Block-finds by Aussie miners get celebrated in AU bitcoin group chats within minutes.
3. Solo variance is more palatable in a high-solar household because your marginal mining cost is 5 c/kWh feed-in opportunity cost. Solo mining on free sunlight is a genuinely different proposition from solo mining on US$0.30/kWh peak retail.

If you’re mining at home in Australia in 2026, the default is: ausolo for the solo lottery, Ocean or Braiins for the steady pooled sats. Parasite if you want the community. Everything else is a curiosity.

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Pool landscape changes. Endpoints move, pools shut down, new ones launch. We’ll keep this comparison updated — subscribe via RSS to catch revisions.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the lowest-latency pool for an Australian Bitaxe? +

ausolo.ckpool.org (Australia-hosted solo ckpool) has the lowest stratum RTT for most of the mainland — typically under 10 ms. Parasite Pool's primary endpoint is in Europe so you'll see 250–300 ms; the Singapore endpoint for Ocean is usually ~80–120 ms from Australia.

Does pool latency actually matter for a Bitaxe? +

Not much. A Bitaxe shares every few seconds; even 300 ms RTT only costs fractions of a percent in stale shares. Choose on fees, payout model, and politics, not ping time.

Is solo mining 'better' than pooled? +

Only if you value the jackpot lottery over steady payouts. Pooled FPPS earns predictable sats every day. Solo earns zero sats for years, then either a full 3.125 BTC block reward or nothing. The expected value is the same; the variance is enormous.