// 01 · The Core Distinction
Open Loop
vs Closed Loop
Every mining operation is either running open loop or closed loop. Most miners don’t know the difference. The distinction determines everything about long-term performance.
Static
Mining
- Fixed pool, fixed chain — no adaptation
- No awareness of difficulty changes
- Camps one chain through droughts with no self-correction
- Blind to orphan risk accumulation
- Reward dependent on luck of single chain
- Runs on assumptions, not live data
- Like an OBD1 car stuck in cold-start open loop — rich, inefficient, unresponsive
The
CryptoFan
Method
- Live EMA tracking drives every routing decision
- Autonomous chain switching on 60-second cycles
- Drought detection — knows when a chain is overdue
- Share weight protection — won’t abandon invested PPLNS position cheaply
- Threshold auto-tuning every 15 minutes
- Era detection adapts to global network difficulty regimes
- Like a modern fuel-injected engine reading the O2 sensor in real time — always trimming, always optimal
// 02 · The Analogy That Defines It
Your EMA Is
the O2 Sensor
“In open loop, the engine runs on a fixed fuel map — no feedback, no correction. In closed loop, the O2 sensor reads exhaust gases in real time and the ECU trims the mix every millisecond. One adapts. One doesn’t. The difference is everything.”
— The CryptoFan Mining Method, 2025The Carburetor Miner
A cold engine on a carbureted system runs rich — dumping fuel on fixed assumptions with no sensor feedback. It runs, but it wastes. It can’t respond to conditions. This is every miner who picks a pool and walks away. The pool changes. The difficulty shifts. The miner never knows.
The EFI Miner
A modern fuel-injected engine reads O2 content, coolant temp, and throttle position continuously. The ECU trims fuel delivery in real time. The CryptoFan system reads sidechain difficulty via EMA, cross-references expected time-to-find against auto-tuned thresholds, and switches chains when the math says to. Every 60 seconds. Autonomously.
// 03 · How the Fan Oscillates
The Oscillating
Fan Concept
A fan doesn’t cool a room by pointing in one direction. It oscillates — distributing airflow across the entire space. The CryptoFan method applies this principle to Monero mining across P2Pool’s chain hierarchy.
if SOLO · network diff below era floor → maximum reward, no pool split
elif MAIN · p2pool main chain TTF within threshold → largest payout window
elif MINI · p2pool mini chain TTF within threshold → primary operating zone
elif NANO · p2pool nano chain TTF within threshold → fallback, small pool
else HI_POOL · all p2pool chains exceed threshold → external high-hashrate pool
// 04 · System Architecture
The Feedback
Engine
Two scripts. Fully autonomous. Running every 60 seconds and every 15 minutes respectively. No human intervention required once deployed.
Modifier
Selector
Switch
EMA Difficulty Tracking
10-period Exponential Moving Average over live P2Pool sidechain difficulty. Smooths out noise while staying responsive to real trend changes. Updates every 60 seconds from local node data.
Drought Detection
Monitors time since last mainnet block per chain vs expected average. When a chain is overdue, the stickiness modifier loosens its effective threshold — protecting your accumulated share weight investment before abandoning ship.
Share Weight Protection
Reads your live block_reward_share_percent from local P2Pool stratum API. Non-zero PPLNS weight means you have skin in the game. The modifier scales with your invested position — more weight, more stickiness.
Autonomous Threshold Tuning
A separate autotune script runs every 15 minutes. Counts verified blocks per chain over the last hour. Loosens thresholds when chains are active, tightens when slow. Always within configured guardrails.
Era Detection
Global Monero network difficulty is classified into eras — Chaos (>600G), Settling (500–600G), Classic (<500G). Each era has a different solo floor, allowing the system to engage solo mining at the right time for each regime.
Nano Ceiling Enforcement
A hard difficulty ceiling on the Nano chain prevents routing to an oversaturated small pool. If Nano sidechain difficulty exceeds 125M, Nano is excluded from consideration entirely — regardless of TTF calculations.
// 05 · Defined Here First
The Glossary
These concepts were developed and named on this site. This is the primary reference for CryptoFan mining terminology.
CryptoFan Mining
The overarching mining methodology based on autonomous oscillation across multiple P2Pool chains. Named for the oscillating fan — distributing hashrate across the pool ecosystem rather than pointing in one fixed direction. Monero XMR specific.
Closed Loop Mining
Mining with continuous sensor feedback driving routing decisions. The EMA reads sidechain difficulty like an O2 sensor reads exhaust gases. Contrast with open loop mining where no feedback exists and behavior is static.
Open Loop Mining
Traditional pool mining — fixed pool, fixed chain, no adaptation. Runs on static configuration regardless of network conditions. Named for the automotive open loop fuel state where the ECU ignores sensor input.
Drought-Aware Routing
A routing modifier that factors in how overdue a chain is relative to its expected average block time. Overdue chains receive loosened effective thresholds, preventing premature abandonment of a chain that is statistically due.
Share Weight Protection
The principle of treating your PPLNS window shares as invested capital. A chain where you hold active share weight deserves protection from cheap switching. Implemented via the stickiness modifier driven by live block_reward_share_percent.
Stickiness Modifier
A threshold multiplier combining drought status and share weight into a single chain-retention signal. Applies up to 40% loosening to a chain’s effective threshold. The EMA always wins when conditions are genuinely bad enough to leave.
Era Detection
Classification of global Monero network difficulty into behavioral regimes. CHAOS, SETTLING, and CLASSIC eras each carry different solo floor thresholds, allowing the system to adapt its solo engagement logic to the current difficulty landscape.
EMA TTF
Expected Time To Find — the number of seconds your hashrate would statistically need to find a block on a given chain, derived from the EMA-smoothed sidechain difficulty divided by your hashrate in H/s. The primary routing signal.
