How do I point an Avalon Nano 3S at my own pool?

What is the Avalon Nano 3S?

The Avalon Nano 3S is a desktop Bitcoin miner from Canaan, one of the large ASIC makers. It is built to double as a small heater: about 6 TH/s from 140 W, with a fan that blows warm air out of the top at 30 to 40 dB. It comes as a finished product with a case, a 140 W GaN power adapter and a USB WiFi module. It can also connect with a network cable.

Out of the box it is set up for F2Pool through a QR card in the box. You can point it at any standard stratum pool instead, including DirectPool. This guide shows how.

What do you need before you start?

• The Nano 3S, its adapter and its WiFi module, or a network cable to your router.
• The Avalon Family app (iOS or Android), or a computer on the same network for the web page.
• A Bitcoin address starting with bc1 or 3, copied from your own wallet.
• A flat, open spot. Warm air leaves through the top, so do not put it on carpet, a bed or under a shelf.

How do you get the Nano 3S onto your network?

1. Plug in the WiFi module and power

Insert the USB WiFi module, then connect the power adapter. If you prefer a cable, connect the miner to your router instead; it then gets an address from the router without any WiFi setup.

2. Add the miner in the Avalon Family app

Install the app and follow its prompts to add the miner and give it your WiFi details. The app then lists the miner and its IP address. You can also find the IP address in your router's list of connected devices and open it in a browser.

Which pool settings do you enter on an Avalon miner?

3. Open Pool Config

In the app or on the web page, open Pool Config. You can ignore the F2Pool QR card if you use DirectPool; it only sets up an F2Pool account.

4. Enter DirectPool in Pool 1

Avalon miners use one combined URL field. Unlike AxeOS, it needs the scheme and the port in the same box:

Pools 2 and 3 are backups used only when Pool 1 is unreachable. You can leave them empty or add another pool there.

5. Save and reboot

In the app, tap Save. It asks for the miner password, which is admin by default, and restarts the miner. On the web page, click Submit, then go to the dashboard and click Reboot.

Careful: change the default admin password after setup. Anyone on your network who knows it could change the pool and take your hashrate.

How do you confirm it is mining on DirectPool?

After the reboot, the app or web page should show Pool 1 as active and a hashrate building up to about 6 TH/s over a few minutes. Then paste your address on the DirectPool home page. The worker appears after its first shares, and its hashrate there settles over about an hour.

If the miner still shows F2Pool, the settings were not saved or the miner was not restarted. If the pool shows as dead, check that the URL includes both stratum+tcp:// and :3333. More checks are in the troubleshooting checklist.

What goes wrong most often with Avalon setup?

1. Leaving out the scheme or port. stratum.directpool.io alone does not work in an Avalon Pool URL field; use the full stratum+tcp://stratum.directpool.io:3333.
2. Scanning the F2Pool card and expecting DirectPool stats. The card creates an F2Pool setup, not yours.
3. Typing the address by hand in Worker. Copy and paste it.
4. Saving without rebooting. The miner keeps its old pool until it restarts.
5. Blocking the top vent. The fan speeds up, the noise rises and hashrate can drop.

Does the Nano 3S make sense as a heater?

Every watt a miner uses ends up as heat in the room, so a 140 W miner heats like a 140 W electric heater. That is about the lowest setting on a small fan heater: enough to take the chill off a small office, not to heat a house. The mining income offsets a small part of the electricity cost in winter, when you would pay for that heat anyway. In summer, the heat is wasted and may add to air-conditioning costs.

Income and odds use the network difficulty and the price of $86,431 per bitcoin on 2026-10-05. Both change; the odds calculator uses live values.

Should a Nano 3S mine solo or on a pool?

Canaan markets the Nano series partly as a solo lottery ticket, and some owners do run them solo. Small solo miners do win now and then: in July 2026 a Bitaxe Gamma of about 1 TH/s found block 957,382 on Public Pool. Those wins are rare exceptions, and the many small miners who never win do not make the news. Can a Bitaxe find a block? lists the documented cases.

On a pool, the Nano 3S earns a share of each block the pool finds. DirectPool pays these shares directly inside the block, with no account balance held by the pool, and carries balances under 10,000 sats forward. DirectPool is small, so its blocks are irregular. Solo vs pool for small miners runs the numbers for both choices.