A miner is a participant who provides computational work to find blocks and secure proof-of-work blockchains.
Miners assemble transactions, construct block candidates, and search for a header hash below the difficulty target. The first valid block broadcast is accepted by the network.
"Pools coordinate many miners, distributing work and sharing rewards to smooth income."
"Solo miners operate their own nodes and hardware, accepting greater variance in rewards."
Incentives include block subsidies and fees. As subsidies decline due to halvings, fee markets become increasingly important for sustaining mining.
"High on-chain activity raises fee revenue, improving miner incentives beyond the subsidy."
"Orphan risk and stale blocks reduce effective revenue if network connectivity is poor."
All terms and definitions may update as the Cryptionary improves.