Mining pools are simply a means for miners to combine their resources and share the rewards of mining, so that they can be guaranteed to earn at least some bitcoins rather than take their chances mining alone. There are many different pools available, and they each offer different advantages and terms for joining.
Bitcoin block rewards
The bitcoin network represents a huge amount of hashing power. With bitcoin difficulty passing 1,000,000,000 at the end of 2013 and 5,000,000,000 by the end of March 2014, miners need ever-faster rigs to compete for a limited share of coins. At the present rate, 25 bitcoins are released every 10 minutes, on average.
However, bitcoins are not evenly shared amongst the network. Every time a block is awarded, it is given to just one miner: the one who finds the hash that is used to verify that block. This all-or-nothing approach means that powerful miners have a better chance of gaining some rewards, whereas miners with lower-powered rigs stand practically no chance of ever receiving any bitcoins. This essentially means that a miner going it alone will be extremely lucky to see any return on their investment.
Pooling resources
The answer to this problem has been the development of mining pools. These allow miners to join together and form associations that can bring enormous collective hashing power to the network. Instead of being awarded to a single miner, any bitcoins received go to the pool. They are then shared amongst its members on a proportional basis, depending on how much hashing power each miner contributes. Lower-powered miners will receive less coins that those who contribute more hashing power. However, the benefit is clear: everyone will receivesomething.
Fees
There are many pools available, and each will have different terms. You should research these carefully as some may be more or less suitable for you. You can find a comprehensive list of pools here. As a broad rule, the amounts these pools pay out is roughly equal; however, there are slight differences and certain models appear to offer advantages at different stages of mining over the months. Others are better suited to newcomers.
Hashrates
The hashrate of a pool is the total amount of hashing power it brings to the network. This is not particularly important in itself, since the rewards you receive will be proportionate to the hashing power you bring, rather than the full pool. When it does become an issue is if a single pool collects enough miners that it represents more than 50 percent of the total mining power in the network. At this point there is a theoretical security issue, since that pool ‘decides’ what the official blockchain looks like. When this has come close to happening in the past, miners have left for other pools to prevent the potential for this to vulnerability to cause an issue.
Merged mining
Some pools allow mining on more than one blockchain using the same hashing. This only works on bitcoin derivatives which use SHA-256 (not on Litecoin and other Scrypt-based cryptocurrencies). It is a way of increasing your potential earnings.
Finally, you should check the reputation and track record of any mining pool you consider joining. Some pools have been subject to hacks and security issues.
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| Comparison of mining pools |
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