This topic is designed for miners who are still deciding in MARA Pool. Good replies should compare luck, consistency, profitability, psychology, variance tolerance, and why some miners are better suited for one option than the other.
I ran into this after changing pool settings and thought the machine was the problem. In my case the miner was fine, but the network path was unstable and the shares started coming through only after I fixed DNS and restarted cleanly.
Same issue here. The miner looked connected, but it turned out the worker format was wrong.
I agree with the general advice here, but I would also check the wallet address, worker naming, and temperature at the same time. A lot of people focus only on the connection and miss something obvious.
This is exactly the kind of question many new miners search for before they commit money or hardware.
I think the most helpful answers here are the ones that explain what to check first, not just the final fix.
A practical comparison with real setup details would make this thread much more useful for future readers.
It helps a lot when people include what symptoms they saw, what they tested, and what actually changed the result.
This is a strong SEO-style topic because it matches the real questions miners keep asking again and again.
