Bitaxe – Invalid Worker: Lightning Address / Username Pasted Instead of BTC

Open AxeOS Settings at the Bitaxe's IP. Copy the Stratum User field into a plaintext notepad to inspect it at full size. Look for any `@` symbol, any `lnbc`/`lnurl`/`lightning:` prefix, or any string that does not start with `bc1`, `3`, or `1`. If you find any of those, the field contains something that is not a BTC address. Delete the entire contents of the field.

Open your current Bitcoin wallet. If it's Wallet of Satoshi, Phoenix, Breez, Blink, Cash App, or Strike, find the toggle labelled `On-chain`, `Bitcoin network`, `Base layer`, or `L1`. Some of these wallets bury the on-chain option; some offer none at all. If no on-chain receive is available, skip to step 4 and install a different wallet.

If your wallet supports on-chain: tap Receive, select Bitcoin/On-chain/L1, copy the resulting `bc1...`, `3...`, or `1...` address. Paste into the AxeOS Stratum User field, Save, power-cycle the Bitaxe (10 seconds off). Within 60 seconds the home screen should flip to `Pool: Connected`, hashrate should climb to nameplate, and the pool's own dashboard should show your worker in its online table.

If your current wallet doesn't do on-chain receives, install one that does. Sparrow Wallet (desktop, recommended) at https://sparrowwallet.com/, or Electrum (desktop), or Blue Wallet (mobile, on-chain mode). Create a new wallet, write the seed words on paper and store offline — this seed now controls any sats you mine. Generate a fresh bech32 receive address. One-time setup; the address is reusable indefinitely.

Cross-validate every new address on mempool.space BEFORE pasting into AxeOS. Paste the string into mempool.space's search bar; a valid but unused address loads a zero-balance address page, a malformed string returns 404. This one-minute check prevents re-entering the same mistake.

Verify the network path to the pool from a laptop on the same network: `ping public-pool.io` for sub-200 ms responses, then `nc -v public-pool.io 21496` (macOS/Linux) or `Test-NetConnection public-pool.io -Port 21496` (Windows PowerShell). You should see `Connected to...` or `TcpTestSucceeded: True`. This isolates the Stratum User value as the fault vs. a router/firewall/ISP problem.

Run a raw stratum handshake to test your new address. In `nc public-pool.io 21496`, paste: `{"id": 1, "method": "mining.subscribe", "params": ["BitaxeTest"]}` then newline, then `{"id": 2, "method": "mining.authorize", "params": ["YOUR_NEW_BC1_ADDRESS", "x"]}` then newline. You should see `{"id": 2, "result": true}` — the pool accepting the address at the protocol level.

If your preferred pool rejects even a known-valid address, switch to `public-pool.io:21496` as the canonical reference — it accepts any valid mainnet address with no registration and no special policy. Stratum URL `public-pool.io`, Port `21496`, User your `bc1...`, Password `x`. If auth succeeds there, your original pool had a policy mismatch (address flagged, username-auth required, geo-blocked), not a format problem.

If worker shows online on the pool but hashrate stays at 0, your auth fix worked and you now have a different class of issue (stale shares, clogged stratum, or frozen ASIC). That is Bitaxe — Pool Rejected Shares High Rate, not this error. Close this diagnosis and open that one.

Paste-sanity check. If you originally copied the bad string from a PDF, a support email, or a website, re-paste it into a plain monospace editor (VSCode, Notepad++, vim) and look for non-ASCII characters, zero-width joiners, curly quotes, or non-breaking hyphens. Retype by hand from your wallet's QR/display if you suspect hidden characters are surviving the copy-paste.

For advanced users: build ESP-Miner from source with DEBUG-level Stratum logging. Clone `github.com/bitaxeorg/ESP-Miner`, raise log level in `main/tasks/stratum_task.c` and `components/stratum/stratum_api.c`, flash over USB. Serial log exposes the exact bytes sent in `mining.authorize` and the exact pool reply — catches UTF-8/ASCII encoding bugs, trailing newlines, and escape-character issues that the AxeOS web UI hides.

NerdQAxe++ against Kano pool or any username-authenticated pool: stock ESP-Miner assumes address-auth solo-pool semantics and will always fail on username pools. Either switch to an address-auth pool (public-pool.io, solo.ckpool.org, Ocean), or fork the firmware and modify the `mining.authorize` builder to send `registered_username.worker`. Issue #501 in `shufps/ESP-Miner-NerdQAxePlus` tracks the auth-style toggle feature.

Read the pool's open-source handler if the pool is ckpool or public-pool. `github.com/benjamin-wilson/public-pool` and ckpool source both expose their `mining.authorize` parse routines; reading the code tells you exactly which address formats the pool accepts (bech32, P2SH, legacy, Taproot, mainnet-only, etc.). Useful when you suspect a pool-specific edge case.

Tier 4 escalation: only when you've validated the address on two explorers, `public-pool.io:21496` also rejects, and raw `nc` confirms a well-formed `mining.authorize`. Open a D-Central support ticket at https://d-central.tech/contact/ with the raw handshake capture, address, and pool hostnames tested. This class of escalation is <1% of tickets for this error; most resolve from a screenshot of Settings.

D-Central bench process for Bitaxe config: as the pioneer manufacturer of Bitaxe accessories (original Mesh Stand, first Bitaxe + Hex heatsinks, full lineup stocked), we diagnose the bad Stratum User value in under 60 seconds from a screenshot. Free with any Bitaxe purchased from us. We'll tell you which wallet to switch to, which address format to use, and which pool to start on — typical end-to-end resolution under 10 minutes.