Stratum Protocol V1/V2 Configuration: Ports, Passwords & Difficulty Explained

The Stratum protocol is the de-facto standard TCP-based client-server communication mechanism used between cryptocurrency mining hardware and mining pools. It distributes work packages (job IDs, extranonce, merkle branch) and receives computed proof-of-work shares.

When configuring your rental destination on RentMiningRigs, you provide 4 essential parameters:

1. Host: The domain or IP of the pool (e.g. solo-bch.2miners.com or stratum.viabtc.top). Note: Do NOT include http:// or stratum+tcp:// prefixes.
2. Port: The dedicated TCP socket port (e.g. 3333, 9393, 8888).
3. Worker: Your pool username or payout address, optionally followed by .workerName (e.g. 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa.rig1).
4. Password: Usually x or custom flags like d=4096 to specify custom initial share difficulty.

When renting high hashrate clusters (e.g. 50+ TH/s), sending shares at default pool difficulty (diff 1 or 512) can overwhelm the TCP connection with hundreds of share messages per second. Setting a static difficulty in the password field (e.g., d=16384 or d=65536) instructs the pool to only accept high-difficulty shares, minimizing network latency and maximizing efficiency.