Is it possible to solo-mine on a non-public node?

Question

I am wondering whether it is possible to solo-mine, with a non-public node. I have no port-forwarding configured at this stage, so when I display the monerod status, it doesn't show any outgoing connections obviously:

Height: 1173753/1173753 (100.0%) on mainnet, mining at 24 H/s, net hash 24.21 MH/s, v3, up to date, 8+0 connections

It looks like it's technically possible to start the mining, but it may not make sense … I suppose that when a block is found (ignoring the very low hash rate), it cannot propagate this to the network, right?

Answer 1

Those outgoing connections are also 2-way. All connections are 2-way. Having an incoming means that your node can listen for others that want to connect. With no incoming, your node can still connect to other nodes.

So long story short, you can solo mine on a non-public node.

Answer 2

Another way to look at it is that a node isn't a factor (as long as the node is up to date). When you mine, you're already requesting that if the work you perform mines a block, the block reward goes to a particular address. The only reason for the node is so your mining software knows it's mining the current block.

It sounds like you also have a concern that even if you successfully mine a block, you'd lose out on the block reward if your node isn't allowing incoming connections. You can think of this scenario as analogous to broadcasting a transaction that you initiate. That is, whether or not your node is allowing incoming connections, you can still broadcast a transaction to the network. The same is true of solving a block.